Disco Dan

Your Spectrum

Andrew Base MISS

Johnathan Norman MISS

Mike Skinner HIT

JOYSTCK JURY Evaluating the batch this month is the Gloucester Computing Club. Any club wishing to offer their services should contact Ron Smith, Your Spectrum, [redacted]. This month's reviewers (all ten of them!) are members of the Gloucester Computer Club and, in alphabetical order, they are: Stephen Avent (28), Andrew Base (15), Robert Ledbury (22), Mark Manning (15), Nigel Newland (13), Peter Newland (15), Johnathan Norman (15), George Price (35), Mike Skinner (30) and Richard Vernon (15). They all set to work with Spectrum, pen and paper to tell us what's right and what's not so right with the latest new releases. THE GLOUCESTER COMPUTING CLUB In a moment we'll get on to the verdicts of our nimble-fingered, boggle-eyed band - to find out which new games are bound for the YS Top 20. But first, some details on the club. It was formed approximately eight months ago by Mr B Ledbury (who happens to be the father of Robert - one of our reviewers) and it's already built up a membership of 35 enthusiasts - ages ranging from 10 years to 'mature'. Meetings are currently held in two rooms at Mr Ledbury's home; one for games evaluation, the other for more serious studies. Membership is free and for more information, contact Mr Ledbury, [redacted]. DISCO DAN GEM Software £4.95 Your mission is to de-activate some highly unstable nuclear reactors orbiting in space. You are taken to the first by a patrol ship which drops you in a hypertunnel.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 7/10

Sound 5/10

Originality 6/10

Lasting Interest 7/10

Overall 7/10

Stuart N Cooke 7/10

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K CONTROL: Keys, Kemp, Cur FROM: Gem Software, £4.95 With a name like Disco Dan you'll probably be expecting to find a teenage bopper going around his local discos. Well you'd be wrong. This Disco Dan is about to stop the Galaxy exploding and rescue all of its inhabitants. A number of nuclear reactors in space have become very unstable. Dan must visit these reactors and deactivate them. Once the patrol ship has dropped him off you find Dan in the hyper-tunnel that leads to the reactor core. Dan must run down this tunnel while avoiding potholes, lasers, and mutant pac-men. Dodge the potholes and pac-men and jump over the laser beams. The tunnel is represented in 3D with the nasties getting bigger as they come towards you. Once you've reached the Beam room Dan is kitted out with a laser and a radiation suit before being beamed down into the reactor. The reactor consists of a number of coloured discs. Each of the discs has a number between 0 and 6 marked on it. A 6 means that the disc is about to explode and a 0 means that the disc is stable. By jumping around the discs he can reduce the numbers on them. The numbers eventually reach zero and stability. To make life difficult for Dan a number of mutant atoms appear in the reactor. If these touch Dan his energy is reduced. A shot from Dan's laser will blast the atoms away from him. At later levels Dan can expect visits from Ron the Robot. If Dan comes into contact with Ron he loses one of his lives. So Dan must use his laser to stop him moving around. All of the graphics in this section move very well, the atoms spin and Dan rotates in response to the control keys. Disco Dan has obviously been derived from Q*Bert. However, enough new touches have been added to make it original and fun to play.

Crash

Use of Computer 78%

Graphics 81%

Playability 84%

Getting Started 90%

Addictive Qualities 86%

Value For Money 90%

Overall 85%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Gem Software Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £4.95 Language: Machine code Disco Dan might be described as a 'Q-Bert' style game with a few differences, which makes playing it quite a change from others of a similar ilk. For a start off, it is a two-screen game. The scenario makes you wonder what the title has to do with the game since it says you are Dan, sent into reactors in space which have gone unstable. In the first screen you must dance your way along a 3D corridor, avoiding hazards to reach the reactor room. Once there the 'Q-Bert' bit takes over. The reference to disco only bears examination in that the roundels which must be jumped on look like pools of coloured disco lights. Still, who cares? The game is fun. In screen 1 the 3D corridor is effected by rectangles of mauve moving outwards from the dark centre. Disco Dan stands at the bottom of the screen and may move left or right to dodge the various hazards like potholes, which drain his energy, mutant pacmen which swerve after him and kill, and dotted force lines, which also kill. These last two hazards can be jumped. Energy loss is shown as a falling multi-coloured bar at the base of the display area. Surviving the corridor for a sufficiently long time results in reaching the core of the reactor and the screen cuts to a new scene. Here there are five rows of staggered roundels (seen in perspective) with five roundels in each row. These represent the unstable rods of fuel. They have eight states before they explode, designated by colour and a number. Safe is green (0), and then variously cyan, blue, mauve, yellow, white and red (6). When a red 6 starts flashing it is about to explode and the flashing 6 vanishes when the rod has gone. Disco Dan is lowered into the reactor on a tractor beam and he must then jump about from disc to disc, changing their colours with each jump. The aim is to get them all to green, in which state they remain stable. Unfortunately all the discs (unless they're green) are quite rapidly changing upwards. If Dan lands on an exploded disc it drains energy. There are vagrant atoms jumping about as well, and these speed up the change of colours, as well as draining energy from Dan on contact. Later screens increase the number of atoms and bring Ron the Rapacious Robot into play as well - a real killer! What makes this screen different from 'Q-Bert' games is not only the difficulty of keeping a check on 25 discs through seven stages of colour deterioration, but also the fact that Dan can jump up, down (diagonally) but also left and right along a line. This is done by rotating left/right and jumping. Surviving the reactor core means Dan must run along another corridor and on to a second reactor. The elements in the game speed up and the hazards multiply. COMMENTS Control keys: Bottom row=fire, P=jump, Q/W rotate left/right Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek Keyboard play: very responsive, although tricky to get the hang of the rotation Use of colour: good Graphics: good to very good Sound: continuous, good Skill levels: progressive difficulty Lives: 5 Screens: 2

Arriving by teleport, Disco Dan prepares to get down and boogie...

Hopping from rod to rod is a frenzied business, especially with two vagrant atoms changing all the colours back again - two sixes are about to start flashing.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition