Dan Dare II: Mekon's Revenge

Sinclair User

Overall 7/10

Tamara Howard 7/10

Label: Virgin Author: Gang of Five Price: £9.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tamara Howard If there's one thing you can surely say about an arch-villain, that is that the guy won't give up without a fight. If there's a sequel in the offing, your really suave super criminal won't be left languishing in jail when the credits are rolling. And thank god for that, because if it wasn't for such incredible tenacity on the behalf of the Mekon, you wouldn't be able to cop hold of Dan Dare II, the Mekon's Revenge. For those of you who were Dan Dare fans, this new game will cause no end of excitement. You may want to skip this paragraph because this is the boring background bit to fill in those silly people who've never even heard of Dan Dare, and that, she said, shamefacedly, includes myself. The Mekon is a very unappealing (both physically and mentally speaking) alien of the obligatory green colour, and his main aim (the thought that dominates all other inside that little dome-shaped head), is to take over the earth. Last year, he was foiled by gold old DD, and this year, having spent quite enough time sulking thank you, he's back, and he's got a new plan. (Welcome back all Dan Dare I fans.) The Mekon's new plan is to release a genetically engineered race called the Supertreens on to the earth and let them get on with all the rampaging and pillaging. Then he can snaffle up all the glory and rule Earth to his heart's content. Fortunately, DD is there to spoil his dastardly plans, and rescue us poor saps. And this is how he does it: Armed to the back teeth with a sort of machine gun affair, DD rides his awesomely powerful jet-bike on to the Mekon's ship, with the express aim of nobbling all the cute little Supertreens, who are all asleep in little glass pods. (Ah, diddums.) Accompanying Dan are a few chums in need of a bit of exercise. The opening sequence is rather stunning. A ship flies through space, beautifully detailed. Choose your options, controls and so on as usual, then decided whether you want to play DD or the Mekon. I should point out here, that if you want to play the Mekon, there's no point in trying to kill the Supertreens, all you have to do is kill Dan and friends. The interiors of the ship are also wonderful. Well detailed, with a good, almost comic book feel about them, well up to the first game's previous high standards. But then, after the backgrounds, things got a tad wobbly. Anything that moves is naff. A bald statement (nearly as bald as the Mekon, arf arf), but sadly true. It's almost as if someone completely different put the moving characters on after everyone else had gone home. Spindly, flickery white sprites that all look alike, tear around the place like nobody's business. One of the big problems with Dan Dare II is that there are two separate things going on at once. There are members of Dan's squadron flying around (all looking like Dan), fighting members of the Mekon's forces (also looking rather like Dan). So trying to find your own piddly little sprite is very hard. Not only is finding your sprite tough, but controlling the little beggar is a nightmare. The jet bike seems to have a mind of his own, and tears around all over the place. It's enough to give you treble vision and dyspepsia just looking at the thing. Should you be a thoroughly intelligent person and be able to suss out just how to control your bike, you'll find the gameplay itself highly taxing. The ship is made up of four levels, each containing a certain number of Supertreens. Not only are the STs asleep behind glass they're protected by a force field that you have to work your way through. How to do it is tricky, and you've only got a certain amount of time to do it. Once your time is up, the security system will locate you and terminate you without so much as a by your leave. And just so's everything's fair, if you're playing the Mekon, you'll get mullered too. Along the way there are things to help you, energy blocks to replenish your stamina come in extra handy. But watch out for the suction tubes which will deposit you outside the ship's along with all the other waste, the Treens who will try and shoot you, the security system and the numerous other alien horrors waiting to make life difficult for you. Dan Dare II is a very hard game to get into. That's not to say it's a bad game. It needs patience and a lot of skill to get through it. If you have that patience you could find it thoroughly rewarding, spindly graphics or no. But if you want something that you're going to be able to sit down and play straight off, go for something else, Dan Dare II doesn't make life easy for you.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 7/10

Sound 5/10

Value 7/10

Playability 8/10

Paul Boughton

MACHINES: Spectrum 48/128/Plus 2/Plus 3/Amstrad SUPPLIER: Virgin PRICE: £7.95 VERSIONS TESTED: Spectrum/Amstrad Heroes don't come more heroic than this. Dan Dare, clean-cut, square-jawed, stiff-upper-lipped, all British good guy who will never let you down. He's the sort of chum you need in a tight corner - when the Mekon, evil scientific mastermind leader of the Treens, is threatening to overrun the Good Ship Earth with a genetically engineered race of Supertreens, for instance. These Supertreens are kept in Plexiglass Life Support Systems throughout the four levels of the Mekon's spaceship. He must discover and explore all the levels, find all the Supertreens, sabotage their control boxes to activate the level destruct sequence. However, the destruct sequence starts from the very first moment Dan blasts the control box. And that means he only has limited time to destroy all the other controls and escape to the next level. If you don't want to play the good guy, you can take on the character of the Mekon. He also must locate the Supertreens and then activate them. Dan Dare's arrival in the craft has activated the destruct sequence, so he - or it - is also up against time. The Mekon's ship is like a huge maze, filled with Treen guards on jetbikes equipped with lasers, forcefields, lasers and, of course, your own space pilot pals. The Mekon vessel is shown in cross-section the main features of which are: Ventilation ducts - used to circulate air around the spacecraft and the air currents can be used to help your progress around. Of course, trying to move against the air flow is a little difficult. Force field - these seal off and protect areas of the craft. They are controlled by one of four forcefield generators. Lasers - these laser cannons will rapidly drain your energy. Best to avoid them. Air lifts - used to deploy Treen guard squads only. Artificial gravity generators - although harmless they can make movement awkward. Blast doors - these doors will open when blasted. But they will re-close within a few seconds. Force field generator computers - these control current around the ship and can be destroyed. Refuse crushers - designed to remove waste products from the ship, the crushers are very dangerous to pass. In a straight head to head (rather unfair, I know) I plump for the Spectrum version as the victor. It's colourful and - although at times it was a little difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad - it was more playable and I was able to get further into the game. The Amstrad Dare, while quite nice to look at, felt a little "dead" on play. Although quite playable in fairly unoriginal way, I still feel Dan Dare and the Mekons as a concept has a lot more to offer than this game achieves. Will there be a Dan Dare III?

A Treen bites the dust on the Amstrad.

Dan dares uncharted areas, again on the Spectrum.

Desperate measures for Dan on the Spectrum.

Your SinclairYour Sinclair Megagame

Graphics 10/10

Playability 10/10

Value For Money 9/10

Addictiveness 10/10

Overall 9/10

Tony Worrall 9/10

Virgin Games £7.95 Reviewer: Tony Worrall Dan Dare's back, and what a completely skill follow-up to the original. Just a couple games was enough to convince me that Dan Dare II is the first megagame of 1988. If it doesn't top the charts in the next few months I'll eat my pet hamster (lightly fried, with chips and peas)! Dan's mission is no easier his first outing on the Spectrum. The evil and thoroughly green Mekon is still up to his diabolical tricks. His plan this time is to invade the Earth with an army of mighty Supertreens - a new race of green tinted super beings genetically engineered by the Mekon himself. These creatures have been placed in protective life support capsules aboard a vast and powerful space ship. This ship is fast approaching the Earth and it is Dan's unenviable task to put his foot down with a firm hand, and show the green ones, once and for all, who's the boss. The Mekon's ship is made up of four separate sections, each containing a certain number of Supertreens. Dan must search out and destroy all of the life support cells in each section before gaining access to the next. The Mekon has filled the space ship with traps, force fields, and all manner of bits and bobs designed to slow down any potential attacker (oh, and there is a time limit to beat once the first Supertreen has had its comfy nest blown to smithereens). The Mekon has also installed a generous helping of normal Treens, but to combat this threat Dan can call upon his own troops, scattered about the space craft. As in the original, Dan can find objects to help him in his task. Extra firepower and energy are the most useful. Getting around the maze of tunnels could prove a bit expensive in terms of time, so in Dan Dare II our hero is fitted with a cool jetbike. The trouble with this is trying to handlle the 'realistic' bike movements! Precious seconds can be lost while you frantically try to squeeze into a new corridor, or pass over strong magnetic currents. Of course this is part of the game. It makes it frustrating and extremely addictive at the same time. The graphics have to be seen to be believed. They are simply amongst some of the best I have ever seen on the ol' pregnant calculator. In my opinion they knock spots off the original Dan Dare game, and that was terrific! The game is choc-a-block full of brilliant little programming touches, such as the Supertreens thumbsucking animation, flickering backgrounds and computer panels, and refuse crunchers. Each a joy to sit and watch (if you have time!). Pop-up captions infrom you how you're doing, and a frightening explosion ends the game if your progress has been exceptionally bad. If you are totally bored with playing the good guy all the time, there's an absolutely spiffing option that lets you play the Mekon himself. But beware - this makes the game so hard that it is best left to experienced (or heroic) players. Everything from the loading screen to the end sequence has been lovingly crafted by the programming team, and it feels as though the game has had a pretty thorough play-testing. Action is non-stop and swear-inducing, and about as playable and addictive as anyone could wish for. Could this be the prefect Spectrum game? If not, I bet you could count better games on the finger of one hand! I loved Dan Dare, and I simply adore Dan Dare II. I might as well go out and buy 100 gallons of midnight oil, because there is no way I am going to put this game down until I have beaten that dastardly Mekon once and for all! See you in about two years (if I'm lucky!).

Desperate Dan Dare has to outwit a tailing Treen while trying to blam the Supertreen baby bubbles on the left and right. As soon as the first bubble is burst Dan has a meagre 12 hours to accomplish his mission, or it's goodbye civilisation as we know it!

Well on his way to defeating the Mekon now, our hero has just wasted the force shield generator system and opened up the rest of the Treen ship to exploration. Remember not to shoot your own troops or get caught in the deadly crossfire.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 69%

Graphics 71%

Playability 57%

Addictive Qualities 63%

Overall 74%

Mike Dunn 64%

Nathan Jones 77%

Nick Roberts 81%

Producer: Virgin Games Retail Price: £7.95 Author: Andy Green Dan Dare's nemesis, the Mekon, has returned. Having escaped Dan's earlier attempts to defeat him, the runaway Treen has been slaving away in his lab to produce a squad of SuperTreens who are at present contained within Plexiglass lifesupport bubbles in the Mekon's battleship. Armed with only a blaster, Dan enters the vessel astride his jetbike and seeks to find these creations and destroy them. As soon as Dan blasts the first, however, a selfdestruct sequence begins. The time remaining until the resultant destruction of the battleship is shown at the bottom of the screen. To escape a fiery death, Dan destroys all the SuperTreens on the current level - only then do the double blast doors between levels open to allow progress through the ship. The SuperTreens and the spacefleet personnel are also involved in their own feud, and Dan can become caught in the crossfire. His vitality is reduced every time he's shot, and if his vitality reading goes down to zero, one of his six lives are lost. There are four levels to be completed, and if Dan reaches the last, he finds a pod which is used to initiate his escape. Dan Dare II offers the option to play the role of either Dan or the Mekon, in which case the player must find, activate and eject the SuperTreens' life support boxes before the ship explodes. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: plenty of colour - but distributed without thought Sound: pretty reasonable Options: control of either Dan or the Mekon

If it's worth making once, it's worth Mekon twice: Virgin Games's Dan Dare II.

The Games Machine

Overall 76%

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.95 Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.95, Diskette: £12.95 Amstrad CPC Cassette only: £9.95 MEEK 'N' MILD The cleverest move Virgin ever made with the 1986 Dan Dare (apart from securing the licence in the first place to one of Britain's greatest hero characters), was to provide each of the popular 8-bit machines with its own discreet game, thus avoiding invidious comparison and ensuring that each was a success in its own right. Now, two years later, Dan's back in a second adventure against his bitterest enemy, the Mekon, from Virgin's in-house programming Treen-team, The Gang Of Five. Once again the evil Mekon, aided by his Venusian Treens, has turned his baleful attention towards Earth and its Spacefleet forces. The attack is under way. Inside the Mekon's new and sophisticated battleship the little green horror' has mucked around with genetics to create a race of Supertreens. Supertreens, housed in plexiglass life support bubbles in embryonic form, are scattered around the battleship's four levels. The Mekon's plan is eject the bubbles from each level in turn - at which point the level self-destructs, providing the game with time limits - and scatter them into Earth's atmosphere, where presumably - the scenario does not make this clear - they will eventually land, grow into full-sized Supertreens and take over the planet. Playing Dan Dare - spacepilot of the future, your objective is to explore the ship and destroy Supertreens when you find them. The countdown begins as soon as the first Supertreen control box is destroyed. Advancing a level can only be achieved when all Supertreens from the current level have been destroyed. But if you prefer to be evil for the day, there is a second option to play the Mekon. The object is similar, with the important exception that you are releasing the Supertreen life bubbles to continue their evil mission, but the game is harder because Dare's incursion has triggered the destruct sequence, leaving with with much less time to complete each level and escape to safety. Both characters are provided with the ubiquitous Mekontan jetcar which is tricky to control due to its high inertia. The Mekon has his supporting Treens for protection and offense, but Dan is not alone, a force of Spacefleet pilots has boarded the battleship with him. The laser crossfire, however, can become dangerously furious. The continual effect of gravity, combined with the jetcar's inertia means that controlling it is tricky at first, and getting into tight spots can be frustrating. On the other hand, this in itself lends the game a first level of play, just mastering the machine and exploring the multi-layered decks of the ship's levels. It is probably best to get to grips with the ship's layout before attempting to k ill or rescue Supertreens because the time limit is tightly calculated. Dan Dare II could have stood alone without the licence, but the Dan Dare characters help to provide an extra sense of depth to this fun blasting game. It should already be clear that Virgin have not followed their earlier scheme, and the Spectrum and Amstrad games, at least (the Commodore version is 'behind schedule), are identical in play except for the start screen positioning.

Two Supertreen embryos (already dead) sit on their platform either side of Dan in the very colourful Spectrum version.

"...the Dan Dare characters help to provide an extra sense of depth to this fun blasting game."

AMSTRAD CPC Overall: 74% The impressive graphics have one small drawback - the scenery tends to look very similar from deck to deck and room to room, making exits hard to find; otherwise the characters are detailed and well animated. The general sound FX are not significantly better than those on the Spectrum version, but the explosions are nice and thumpy. A good seek and destroy shoot-'em-up.

COMMODORE 64/128 The schedule having slipped, we will have to wait to see Dan Dare II on the Commodore, but Virgin say the gameplay elements will be identical to the other 8-bit versions.

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Graphics 8/10

Audio 5/10

IQ Factor 5/10

Fun Factor 9/10

Ace Rating 814/1000

Andy Milton 814/1000

Can Virgin do it again? Great Scott, Digby! The Mekon's up to his old tricks again. He's poised to unleash his dreaded Supertreens on Earth in this new Gang of Five epic, with only the Pilot of the Future to stop his fiendish schemes. Can you don Dan's spacesuit and save the day? On each of the game's four side-on view levels, your mission as Dan is to kill the Supertreens by wrecking their life-support capsules. It's a tall order, quite aside from the amount of jetbike-assisted exploration each level calls for. The main enemy is time: as soon as you start blasting Supertreen's you trigger a destruct sequence which will blow the entire level apart. Blast all the remaining capsules and reach the airlock to the next level before the countdown reaches zero, and you'll survive for another round of tougher exploration and wrecking: take too long and it's game over. But there's plenty to stop you: forcefields block your path, airborne Treens blast away at you and tunnels suck you off course (possibly to your doom). Gun turrets, giant garbage compactors and conveyors also cause problems. Most hazards sap your stamina level - when this reaches zero your dead - but things like compactors lose you one of your six lives straight off. Sick of being Mr Nice Guy? Want a tougher challenge? Then play the Mekon instead! Dan's already triggered the destruct sequence, the idea goes, so you've got no time for exploration or mistakes Dash round, switch all the Supertreen capsules on and then get in that airlock before the level blows. Manage that and the next level's timer starts immediately, so you really have to know your way round. Reviewer: Andy Milton RELEASE BOX C64/128, £9.95cs, £12.95dk, Imminent Spec, £7.95cs, Out Now Ams, £8.95cs, £14.95dk, Out Now Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 80/100 1 hour: 80/100 1 day: 75/100 1 week: 70/100 1 month: 60/100 1 year: 10/100

Spectrum: Get too close to that tunnel mouth and you'll be sucked down into the garbage compactor below. Nasty!

AMSTRAD VERSION Terrific Gang of Five colours make this a real treat to look at, and carefully drawn graphics capture the original comic-strip's feel precisely. Graphics: 9/10 Audio: 6/10 IQ Factor: 5/10 Fun Factor: 9/10 Ace Rating: 838/1000 Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 90/100 1 hour: 85/100 1 day: 75/100 1 week: 70/100 1 month: 60/100 1 year: 10/100

SPECTRUM VERSION Bnght bold clash-free colours make this a great-looking game, but tough controls will cause you some problems at first.