Sporting Triangles

Crash

Presentation 64%

Graphics 62%

Sound 45%

Playability 52%

Addictivity 48%

Overall 50%

Mark Caswell 45%

Nick Roberts 55%

CDS £9.99 cass, £14.99 disk We've had Every Second Counts, A Question Of Sport, Mike Reid's Pop Quiz and Bob's Full House, and this is the latest TV quiz game. Based on the Central TV sports quiz it starts with the options screen where you pick how many players want to participate (up to three), the computer skill level (if you can't find a couple of friends to rope into the 'action'), decide the length of a round and finally 'throw' a dice to decide order of play. You are then given twelve sporting categories and asked to choose one, after which a 'studio set' appears with three figures sitting behind desks waiting to be asked tough sporting questions. Five of seven rounds are standard question sessions, where each contestant in turn is asked to throw a die. The resulting number is transferred to a triangular board split into coloured segments, and a cursor is moved round the board. Each colour corresponds to a subject on the board. When the question is asked you are offered an 'answer' or 'give up' option. The idea is to speak the answer out loud and be honest when the computer asks you if you answered the question correctly or not. In the Hit For Six round the player is offered seven different answers and six points for a correct answer if he gets it right first time. The more attempts made, the lower the score. The Jigsaw Picture round is similar, with a pictoral clue gradually revealed to give the player a chance to answer the written question correctly. Again the six points initilly offered decrease with more tries. The final round is a finger on the buzzer job where the player with the quickest finger gets to answer the question, though again you have to be honest when asked if you answered correctly. Sorry CDS but I have never been a big fan of this trivia type game, and sadly Sporting Triangles does nothing to change this. The sporting questions are very tough, and I feel most will only be answerable by the most fanatical sports fan; worse still, against the computer the game is a joke because you can cheat to your heart's content in most of the rounds. Quite a nice touch is the contestants being dressed in the clobber of their chosen sports, but the amusement this causes is very brief. MARK 45%

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Overall 82%

Paul Rand 82%

CDS Spectrum/Amstrad £9.99, Amiga £24.99 Christmas comes but once a year, and with it a horde of computer trivia games to keep the kids (and the parents, usually!) amused after the turkey has been scoffed, the presents have become boring and the BBC's showing of Only Fools And Horses has finished. Sporting Triangles is one such game. Based on the ITV quiz show hosted by smooth 'n' slimy Nick Owen, the idea is to correctly answer your way through seven rounds of frustrating sports trivia. Each of the three players (computer players are added if there are less than three players) must first choose a specialised subject from the twelve available, ranging from hortse racing to ball-sports. Should computer players be taking part in the quiz, the player is fee to select the machine's level of intelligence from one of either Perfect, Good or Average. The time allocated to the answering of each question can also be preset here, and anything from between one second and unlimited time is allowed. Sporting Triangles is fast paced and, even though the questions themselves are obviously intended for sport fans only, the answer selection system gives lots of scope to cheat (I did - I still lost though!). Sporting Triangles is a game which won't appeal to many people because of the subject matter, but if you're one of those types who watches every footy match, snooker tournament and athletics meeting on the telly, as well as some of the more obscure sports on Channel 4 late at night, oodles of pleasure can be gleaned from this accurate quiz show tie-in.

Lucky old Craig rolls a six.

AMIGA SCORES Graphics: 81% Sound: 84% Value: 86% Playability: 85% Overall: 83% Strictly for fans of the series and of sport generally. If you are one of these people, get your hands on Sporting Triangles, one of the most playable quiz games since Trivial Pursuit.

AMSTRAD SCORES Overall: 82% Practically a spitting image of the Spectrum conversion, boasting all of the good points or the other two.

UPDATE C64 and ST versions are also available, and both are as good as the other versions.

Sinclair User

Graphics 65%

Sound 60%

Playability 60%

Lastability 60%

Overall 61%

Jim Douglas 61%

Label: CDS Author: In House Price: £8.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Jim Douglas Quiz games have never really been that easy a concept to deal with on the Spectrum. They're usually licenced from other popular Quiz entities; Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary etc. And they're rarely better that their conventional counterparts. Recently, though, virtually every quizzy game around has been linked to a TV show of some sort. We've had Every Second Counts, A Question of Sport, Bullseye - the lot. Sporting Triangles continues this questionable tradition, and replicates, reasonably accurately, the Central TV quiz show. After setting up a team of three players (human or computer, as you wish) and defining their preferred subject areas, you are launched into the game proper. The overall aim of the game is to progress around the Sporting Triangle, landing the Question Marker on squares indicating subject areas. Different points are awarded for answering questions inside your subject area, in no-mans' "general sport" land and there are big points to be had by answering a question in the oppositions chosen area. Now, before we go any further, I'm afraid I'll have to blow the whistle on the game's biggest fault. Get this; the quiz is split up into a number of rounds. Some are multiple choice, but the bulk of the questions simply sit there; "Which county did Fred Truman briefly rejoin in 1806?" asking for an answer. At this point, boxes with "Answer" and "pass" appear. If you haven't the fairest idea, go for "pass". Otherwise, hit the other box and type your answer. NO! No need to type in your answer! The computer will TELL you the answer and all you have to do is announce whether you got the question right or wrong. Mad. Mad mad mad mad mad. Mad. All the answers are in the machine, so why rely in the questionable honesty of the players? Moreover, why tell them what the answer is? You'll only ever be able to ask each question once. Madness aside, the four stages play through in similar fashion to the TV version. The astonishingly lengthy disc access time was some way redeemed by the fact that the code remained resident in our 128K machine once loaded. Apparently the length of the load is caused by the random numbering of the questions, supposedly in order to produce a new game each time. Surely it would have been more worthwhile to include a sensible answering system. Despite these irritating points, the bare bones of the game is entirely sound. There are a great many challenging questions to be answered, and although a sports quiz is a sports quiz is a sports quiz, there is enough variety in the "rounds" to hold your interest for a while. The Hit for Six round presents Seven multiple choice answers to a question. Each time you get it wrong, the machine will give you another clue and decrease the number of points available. The Jigsaw Picture round is similar but instead of written clues, each incorrect answer will yield a further section of a visual clue. Sporting Triangles is a reasonable conversion of a pretty silly idea. Neither fab or poor, it doesn't deserve to be ignored, but it hardly demands attention either.

The jigsaw round. Each time you get a question wrong, another part of the pitch reveals itself. Match up the lines to a sport.

Will Garth get a question right before he goes to sleep and Tim leaps into the lead.? Looks like they've already gone to bed!

Your Sinclair

Life Expectancy 35%

Instant Appeal 37%

Graphics 60%

Addictiveness 40%

Overall 40%

Robin Alway 40%

CDS £9.99 cass/£14.99 disk Reviewer: Robin Alway I've only seen ITV's Question Of Sport rip-, er derivative a few times but the triangle in question doesn't seem very sporty to me. After all, when was the last time you saw it pole-vault 15 feet into the air, somersault three times and plunge into a swimming pool half a kilometre below? What a con. Mind you. It s still probably more intelligent than the three teams of famous sporting guests put together. This licensed TV conversion is pretty true to the original programme with a total of seven different rounds making up each game. Four of them are Standard Question ones which have each of the three players moving around the triangle on the roll of a random die. Landing on your own colour square gets you a quezzie from your chosen specialised subject (no Integral Polymer Dynamics I'm afraid, just 12 popular sports to be interrogated on). Tucked in between the standard bits are the Hit For Six and Jigsaw Picture rounds. The object here is to guess from rather unobvious clues which geezer from the list your Speccy's thinking about. The final round is Quickfire Questions which has the computer pulling random puzzlers from its 2,500 strong collection, only this time it's finger on the buzzer time with the first one to answer correctly bagging the points. And that's it unfortunately, not exactly packed with variety or any of those thrills and spills we expect in a game nowadays. All the same, it's not too bad technically. The graphics are clear and colourful, although they're not required to jump about and explode like they do in most games, and the whole thing's got a nice professional sheen to it. Basing a game around this TV prog obviously wasn't a great idea. At least that has Dennis Taylor's plankton-like witticisms to draw your attention away from the yawn inducingness of it all. Still, if sport's your 'thang', no doubt you'll be spookily drawn to it, despite your better judgement.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years