30 Games

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Value For Money 3/5

In the past few weeks there has been a flood of game compilation tapes onto the market. Are they the bargain they seem? C+VG investigates and asks are the V.F.M. - that's value for money? The automatic response to getting anything up to 30 games for a few quid is that they're a great bargain. But are they the big deal they at first appear? Or is it case of software houses desperate attempt to make money on games that weren't successful first time round? First up is a gigantic offering from Argus - 30 games on two cassettes. Titles on the Spectrum version include Jet Set Gerties, 3D Tunnel, Carpet Capers, Meteor Storm and Blood and Guts. The list seems endless. Perhaps the best known of the bunch is Jeff Minter's Gridrunner, a game with plenty of zip and a lot of zap. And Commodore owners aren't left out. Argus has also put together another package of 30 Games for them. Titles include many of those in the Spectrum collection plus others such as the Quicksilva's Schizofrenia, a fiendishly difficult game to play. Both packages offer good value. It could be months before you finish all these games. Off the Hook, the charity package put together by Electric Dreams, offers even better value for money - ten games for £6.99. And at the same time you can ease your conscience about the many hours spent hunched over your computer by the fact that all money raised by Off the Hook goes to the Prince's Trust for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. Goodies on the Spectrum include Beyond's Psytron, Blue Max from US gold, and Melbourne House's Mugsy. It also includes Elite's Fall Guy but we prefer not to talk about that. Beau-Jolly also has its Computer Hits Volume 2 out on the Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad, BBC B and Electron, price £9.95. We took a look at the BBC B collection and Amstrad. The BBC tape includes Micropower's Frenzy and Jet Power Jack and Kissin' Kousins from English Software. Perhaps the best is Superior's Starstriker, a version of the arcade classic Moon Cresta. Hewson's Technician Ted and Micromega's Codename Mat are the stars of the Amstrad collection, ably supported by Superpipeline 2, Tasket and Moon Buggy, Anirog. Remember Creative Sparks? They've been a little quite recently but now they've bought out two compilations of the Sparklers range of budget games, price £2.95. The Spectrum "TRIO" features: Desert Burner, Ouackshot and St Crippens. In Desert Burner, a fast scrolling arcade game, the lacier of a group of freedom fighters travels through the night on the Desert Burner, a powerful gun-carrying 200 mph road bike. His aim is to deliver top secret plans to the other resistance members without getting caught by his enemies. You need to be a "Quackshot" to survive in the next of the three games, where a revolution of clockwork ducks gets out of hand. St Crippens is the world's worst hospital. Escape is only possible if you can beg, steal or borrow new clothes to fool the guards who try to stop you leaving. First you must find your way through the dozens of wards. The Commodore 64 "TRIO" is equally testing with a choice of Chopper, Kayak or Merlin. The first game, "Chopper'' concerns a mighty helicopter gunship which has set Out to annihilate the enemy base. It needs a combination of both courage and skill to reach it as both man and machine are taxed to the limit. Kayak is a canoe simulation which requires first class presence of mind to negotiate the course ahead. In the third game, Merlin needs assistance in conquering the powers of evil that he encounters in this orginal arcade game. Anybody still got a VIC 20? Well grab £6.50 and splash out on Llamsoft's Viva Vic collection, included are Abductor, Gridrunner, Traxx, Andes Attack, Laserzone, Matrix, Megagalactic Llamas, Battle at the edge of Time and Hellgate. Fancy a bit of arcade fun for £4.50? Then Astro Cade on the Spectrum from DDS Software could be for you. The six games on offer are Simeon, Caverns D'Or, Bomber, Zombier, Luna Rover and Alien. The Complete BBC from Audiogenic is also worth checking out. Titles include The Chrysalis, arcade action in the cabbage patch, Drain Mania, a fairly standard platform game, and The Genesis Project, deep space action. Perhaps the most interesting game is Flip. Although it's not much fun to look at, it's good fun to play. It's a two player graphical strategy game in which hidden words must be uncovered. And last, but by no means least, Gremlin Graphics has come up with probably the two best quality compilations of the lot with 4 Zzap! Sizzlers and 4 Crash Smashes. As you may have guessed all the games have received high praise in a rival magazine. The Commodore 64 games are Who Dares Wins II (Alligata), Wizard's Lair (Bubble Bus), Drop Zone (US Gold) and Thing on a Spring (Gremlin). The Spectrum games are Spy Hunter (US Gold), Night Gunner (Digital Integration), Dun Darach (Gargoyle) and Alien 8 (Ultimate). Good fun, and excellent value at £9.95. All are well worth buying. 30 Games Argus £9.95 Off The Hook Electric Dreams £6.99 Computer Hits Vol 2 Beau Jolly £9.95 Trio Creative Sparks £2.95 Viva Vic Llamasoft £6.50 Astro Cade DDS £4.50 The Complete BBC Audiogenic £19.95 4 Zzap Sizzlers Gremlin Graphics £9.95 4 Crash Smashes Gremlin Graphics £9.95

Sinclair User

Overall 2/5

Greg Sullivan 2/5

Includes: Gridrunner, 3D Tunnel, Meteor Storm, Chess Player, Dragonsbane, Blood and Guts, Carpet Capers, The Valley, Fall of Rome, Micromouse, Strontium Dog, and Laser Zone Publisher: Argus Price: £9.95 Thirty? Yep, 30 spread over two cassettes. If your cassette machine doesn't have a tape counter the biggest game will be trying to find out where abouts on the tape the program you actually want is located. Thirty sounds like great value but how many will you actually want to play? Here are my highlights. Gridrunner was one of the few Jeff Minter games converted to the Spectrum. Most Minter games have the same basic qualities, they are very fast and consist almost entirely of killing a lot different things very quickly. Gridrunner is played on a matrix, you control two separate laser bases one running north, south, up and down the left-hand side of the screen, the other east-west along the bottom. Over a seemingly endless number of screens you zap and zap again as assorted objects zip around the matrix. Otherwise... 3D Tunnel is from New Generation who at one time had the Ultimate crown of best technical achievement in programming. The graphics on this one were astounding for their time. You travel down a tunnel in which are frogs, rats and bats. Bizarre, visually excellent and like many New Generation games a bit dodgy in the gameplay department. Meteor Storm, the first game I ever bought for the Spectrum, it's a good impersonation of Asteroids the ancient arcade game. And the rest, Chess Player is simply a very average chess program. Carpet Capers is dire - a game about laying carpets lacks a certain amount of intrinsic conflict. Dragonsbane is a sort of role-playing game where you decide in each new room whether to fight, seek, help etc. Your task is to rescue the Princess Paula - this is not a good name for a Princess. Blood and Guts is one of the few arcade games ever to be set inside the human body - instead of blasting aliens you blast infections lurking in every nook and cranny, watch out for the cholesterol and replenish your energy by finding red blood cells. So far so educational but you also have to assemble a miniturised submarine. This unrealistic touch spoilt the game for me. It goes on. There are a couple of management/kingdom games and a text adventure, and a great many really terrible arcade games. 30 Games is good value but only just. Of the 30 games I think around ten merit more than a few minutes play and perhaps five will get you hooked.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 5/10

Playability 6/10

Value For Money 7/10

Addictiveness 6/10

Overall 7/10

Gwyn Hughes 7/10

Argus £9.95 Reviewer: Gwyn Hughes This, as the truth-seeking T'zer revealed last month, is the package that Argus claims provides better value than the charity compilations, Softaid and Off the Hook. Now it's my turn to have a go because 30 Games does not necessarily mean 30 games that you'd actually want to play! Let's start with the programs that originally appeared on tape magazines - you know, those things that fall off the newsagent's shelves when you reach for your copy of your favourite monthly (no - not Men Only!). I counted eleven of these - over a third of the line-up gone - including such goodies as Battleships and Basic arcade games that you can break into and list - or more likely New! There are a few strategy games and even a computerised Rubik's cube by a name not unknown to readers of this magazine - but don't worry, Iolo, your secret's safe with us. On top of this add the geriatric arcade... classics are we supposed to call them? The Meteors is a reasonable version but even back in the mists of prehistory, Ouicksilva's Space Invaders sorry, Intruders, wasn't a favourite. And what's this raising its hairy head? Gridrunner is a Jeff Minter rave from the grave - okay, go easy on the rave perhaps, but at least you don't have to ingest large amounts of suspicious substances to understand it! This means that programs you'd want to play more than once are getting thin on the ground. However, there's at least one per side and you might, therefore, be persuaded that the package is worth having. After all, you may suddenly succumb to a strange desire to play Jet Set Gertie all night - though I doubt it! Instead, decide whether you want the four or five non-naff offerings and settle for the others as disposable extras. Even though the thirty are spread across four sides, be prepared for lots of tape searching unless your recorder has a counter! It's obviously difficult to provide ratings for a compilation so take the following figures with a pinch of salt. More importantly, remember that a bargain stops being a bargain when you have to take the dross with the gold.

Antics: A decidedly good though simple arcade maze game here with lots to dodge and secret routes to discover. It was a sequel to The Birds And The Bees and though it's fairly unsophisticated by today's standards it's also quite good fun.

Blood 'n' Guts: Originally entitled Fantastic Voyage, this is probably the star program here. It's not quite platforms because you'll spend all your time standing on the squishy bits of human innards. Fantastic graphics mark it out and it's still a lot of fun to play if you like games in this vein.

Might Magus: Platforms and ladders of the mystical kind and only just over a year old. The maze remakes itself each time and includes some very nasty traps to watch out for. Not a favourite at the time of its release but one of the best of the thirty.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Graeme Kidd

THE GAMES GATHERINGS There have always been collector's editions of books, records, tapes, and nowadays even of videos. The computer game industry has featured compilations from the very earliest days, but there have been a few recent developments in the compilation market, as GRAEME KIDD notes... One way of picking up cheap copies of original games is to pop along to computer shows, such as the ZX Microfairs, which are invariably attended by companies offering all sorts of old and not-so-old games at discount prices. The Great Space Race, for instance, is no joke at £15-odd, but for a couple of pounds it makes a reasonable bargain, if only for the large box which is very handy for keeping bits of string, conkers and other oddments in. Budget labels are on the increase - and another source of cheap games is becoming more widely available. Sometimes a firm like Mastertronic will give an 'old' game a new lease of life by re-releasing it at a knockdown price, but more often than not one of the cheapest ways to buy games or fill that gap in your software collection is to snap up a compilation tape. Compilations offer value for money, too - the price per game for titles on compilations ranges from around 33p a game in the case of Argus Press Softwares 30 Games to the more usual £2.50 per-game level. CHARITABLE INTENT Compilations of games put together with charitable intent, with software houses donating games and companies involved in duplicating, printing, distribution and sales giving their services or working at cost, have already raised considerable sums for worthy causes. Softaid, put together specially for the Ethiopian Famine appeal raised an awful lot of money for famine victims last year, becoming the biggest chart success in the history of computer gaming. This year, The Industry (with a capital I) has collected together ten games under the Off The Hook title, which sells for £6.99 with all profits going to the Prince's Trust to alleviate the suffering caused by the illegal use of drugs. War on Want, the charity set up to combat world poverty, has also just released a fourteen game compilation tape available by mail order (see the advertisement that should appear in this issue). Spending a little money having fun and contributing to charity at the same time is no bad thing... On the purely commercial front, some companies have decided to offer collections of their own games for sale. Hewsons, for instance put together a value pack last Christmas which was a compilation in all but name - a shrink wrapped set of original games in original packing. Such 'collected works' are really limited offers rather than compilations proper. Mikro-Gen is planning to collect the Wally games together one day soon, perhaps putting them out back-to-back or including them with budget titles the ranks of Wally fans will no doubt be swelling soon. IS THE FORCE WITH YOU? Melbourne House supplies Mugsy as a freebie with their new release, Mugsy's Revenge, thus enhancing the monetary value of their product quite a bit. The same company has also entered into a co-operative venture with Firebird, Activision, and Beyond. This quartet of companies call themselves The Force for the purpose of compiling game albums, and so far The Force has issued Hotshots, which contains one hit game from each team member. Plans are apparently afoot to take the Christmas market by storm, with a collection of games the like of which no Spectrum Game Player has seen before. Mindshadow, Fighting Warrior, Gyron and Shadowfire plus Tuner for £9.99 on the first Hotshots tapes must represent good value for anyone who has only got a couple of those games already. The biggest bumper bag of goodies is currently on offer from Argus in the form of 30 Games, which as its title suggests, leads the field in terms of volume. Argus has access to a massive back catalogue of titles - software house buy-outs and licensing deals as well as in-house labels, including tape magazines, puts the Argus Press Software Group in a very good position to go for The Biggest Compilation record. As is so often happens in life, however, quantity is at the expense of quality in the case of 30 Games. A few moments spent on mental arithmetic produces an average price of 33p a game - so perhaps one shouldn't really expect too much of the original titles. There are a few neat games hidden in the jungle, and half the fun of buying 30 Games for £9.95 probably lies in loading them all, one after another, and working out which ones to load again! CHRISSY COMPILATION Although They Sold A Million is a rather ambitious claim to make in the title of a compilation - unless it contains an awful lot of very good games, They Sold A Metaphorical Million doesn't have quite the same ring, as Ocean/US Gold and The Hit Squad no doubt realised when they launched their first TSAM collection in time for Christmas at £9.95. Beach Head I, Jet Set Willy, Daley Thompson's Decathlon and Sabrewulf got the title off the ground, and more recently TSAM II appeared, giving a new lease of life to Bruce Lee, Match point, Knight Lore, and the classic Match Day. Virgin is yet another company well into compilations - WOW! Games One and Two have appeared so far, at the slightly lower price point of £8.95, with the first collection featuring half a dozen games (average unit price £1.49) and WOW! II slimmed down a little to the five games level (£1.79 a game to save you working it out). Respectable games all, although Wow II probably presents slightly better value in that the quality of the games is a little better as compared with its predecessor. (That old argument about the Two Q's crops up again!) Ian Stewart, the Main Man at Gremlin Graphics hit upon the wizard wheeze of going for games to put on a compilation on the basis of reviews - CRASH Reviews, naturally for Spectrum software - and the first CRASH Smash collection has already been let out of the Gremlin stable to zoom up the charts. Yet another £9.95 collection, this one features Dun Darach, Alien 8, Night Gunner and Spy Hunter. A neat selection of top rate games that is spread across a range of gameplaying interests. Mr S from Gremlin has plans for a 'top notch' compilation in time for Christmas - this time featuring at least one Gremlin Graphics game. THE MARKETING APPROACH Marketing companies have seen the possibilities of entering the software world without the pain and aggravation of actually writing games. Beau Jolly has assembled several compilations for the Spectrum so far: a £5.99 Value Pack featuring old Imagine (of Wacky Waiters fame) product; the £9.95 Mega Hits collection; 6 Computer Games for £6.95 and 10 Computer Games for £9.95. With the possible exception of the value pack, some quite respectable titles can be had from Beau-Jolly at a very fair price, although their £19.95 mega-compilation didn't do a storm by all accounts. More compilations are on the way from the Beau-Jolly team - who learnt their trade in the record industry. Remember K-Tel? So far there have been few "theme" compilations, concentrating on the works of one programmer or on one kind of game. Global's Fourmost Adventures reviewed by Derek a little while ago sprang quickly to mind, but resident strategist Sean Masterson was at a loss to name a Strategy compilation... perhaps there's still a niche or two left unexploited in the compilation market after all! The last word in compilations must surely go to Firebird who had a bit of fun with a small collection of slightly dire games that had been submitted for consideration to the Silver Range. Don't Buy This, paradoxically, was sold. But with a strong disclaimer and a very tongue-in-cheek inlay blurb...

ZX ComputingZX Computing Globella

Quicksilva £9.95 See the history of Spectrum games programming flash before your eyes with this one score and ten grab bag of games from Quicksilva. Crammed onto two cassettes and culled from labels such as Bug Byte, Lothlorien, New Generation, Argus Press Software and Ouicksilva. Thirty Games is a collection of golden oldies and oddities which will give hours of nostalgic pleasure. Playing games such as 3-D Tunnel with its onrushing bats, frogs, rats and tube trains may not be state of the art programming but they are still great fun whatever the vintage. It doesn't take a maths genius to work out that even it you hate half the games it's still great value especially if you missed them first time around. And no we don't have space to list them all. Oh all right then ... Carpet Capers, Antics, Planet Fall, Grid Runner, Bismark, Meteor Storm, Jet Set Gerry, 3-D Tunnel, Stock Market, Fridge Frenzy, The Valley, Dragons Bane, Demon Knight, Ned's Garden, Space Intruder, Mighty Magus, Fall of Rome, Draughts, Xadom, Detective, 20 Tons, Chess Player, Micro Mare, Tube Cube, Invasion, Escape, Laser Zone, Strontium Dog, Pyromania and lastly and with a title like this probably leastly Blood and Guts.

Dragonsbane