CORE
(A'n'F, 1986)

The asteroid mining base Eroc 1 has come under attack from aliens, and all 720 personnel are dead. You, Andrew Angello, have been sent to the base to investigate what has happened. You must explore the mines and retrieve all the bio-memory units that recorded events at the base. During your search, you will need to find batteries to replenish your energy, and several other useful objects, such as a metal detector and laser gun, are buried, so you must also find a spade. The mines are very large (there are over 1,000 screens!), so it will take a long time to find all the units. Making a map is essential, but the graphics are drawn in monochrome, and one room looks very similar to the next. The icon-driven menu system for selecting commands is also extremely fiddly to use.

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4

Two players must battle it out to locate the pieces of the star-bomb which are scattered around several levels. Each level is actually a long corridor, and the parts are found at the very end of the corridors. The first player to assemble the star-bomb wins by blowing up his or her opponent. That's all there is to this game, really. To make it last a bit longer, you can configure the difficulty level and the number of pieces to collect. The graphics are ugly and the colour schemes which are used are horrible. The music, if you can call it that, is even worse! This is a really boring game which lacks action and anything which might be exciting.

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3

Corsarios is one of the few beat-'em-ups released by Spanish software companies. The first part is a 15th century version of Target Renegade, where a pirate has to fight his way out of a prison and go a long way to a ship. It's quite enjoyable, but too difficult for my liking. The second part is a side-view platform game in which you have to rescue a girl before she is executed. This part is less interesting at first, but it's easier, and so you'll enjoy it for longer than the first one. And that's all; good graphics and sound, and an interesting game.

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7

Mike Bronco has been hired by the mayor of Chicago to clean up the city and rid it of the gangsters who have been terrorising it for years. The game is set in the 1920s, and as Mike Bronco, you must search nearly 100 screens to locate and kill five gangster chiefs – but their henchmen are out to get you as well! Shooting the henchmen will leave behind boxes of ammunition which you must collect, as your own supply is limited. You will probably also need to make a map, as it is easy to become lost in the city. The graphics and sound effects have a cartoon-like quality to them, and while there are some annoying niggles (such as losing more than one life in quick succession due to bombs or enemies not being erased from the screen), it isn't a bad game overall and it will provide some enjoyment.

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7

Rebels have sabotaged a mining base on one of Jupiter's moons and placed twelve pumps around the base, which will destroy it completely. This is a job for the Cosmic Sheriff – you! You must find the pumps on each of the three levels by firing at locks. Each lock displays a number, which decreases when you shoot it; if you do this continuously, you will destroy it – but not all of the locks contain pumps. Of course, the base is filled with rebels, monsters and tanks who will shoot at you if you're not quick enough! This is a great target shooting game with excellent graphics, as one would expect from Dinamic, although there are very few sound effects and they're mediocre anyway. It's a simple yet challenging game, and thankfully it's not too difficult.

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8

Strap yourself into your CZ Neutrozapper space fighter and prepare to travel through the many dimensions of the universe in order to save it. There are two rather worrying problems, though; the fighter is in need of repair, and you forgot to bring the servicing manual with you! This is a basic 3D shoot-'em-up; blast some aliens, then go to the next level. To make things slightly more interesting (but only slightly), every so often, your fighter will suffer damage, and you must repair it by replacing components on a circuit board within a time limit; if you run out of time, the ship explodes. There are no power-ups to collect, the frame rate is slow, and blasting alien after alien soon becomes very dull – and it doesn't help that the game itself crashes after a few levels.

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3

Ted Blewitt is going on holiday to Spain, but all his luggage has been stolen, so he must find his credit card and buy all of it back, and take and develop 36 photographs to prove to the staff at the Chip Factory that he really was away in Spain. You might remember Ted from his previous outing in Technician Ted. Well, this sequel looks and feels very similar indeed, although you can pick up and drop objects, and get drunk as well, which can sometimes prove useful... The graphics are still primitive and haven't been improved at all, the music is very annoying indeed, and the difficulty level is again much too high – and you can easily lose all your lives if you jump to another screen incorrectly. This is a game to avoid.

See also: Technician Ted.

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3

This is based on the well-known TV quiz show that has been running on Channel 4 since the early 1980s. There are nine rounds in the game, which consist of three types – the anagram game where you attempt to make the longest word from nine letters; the number game where six numbers are picked and you have to use them to calculate another number chosen at random; and the final round, the conundrum, which is an anagram of a nine-letter word. You can play either against a friend or the computer, but it's no fun at all (you can cheat at the anagram game), especially since there are hardly any graphics to speak of, and the rendition of the theme tune at the start of the game is awful!

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4

Anyone who's played the travesty that is Count Duckula II will wince in fear at the prospect of another Count Duckula game. But thankfully, its predecessor is not quite as awful! Based on an episode of the dire cartoon series, the aim is to wander around a huge pyramid, find keys to unlock doors, solve basic puzzles and get the magical saxophone at the pyramid's peak, which can transport Duckula back to his castle – all within a pretty tight time limit. I said this wasn't as bad as Count Duckula II, but it's still pretty bad – the graphics, though detailed, are boring and bland, and the sound... well, the hilariously bad rendition of the show's theme tune says it all! Too 'mazey' and too dull; avoid.

See also: Count Duckula II.

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2

How could something like this could ever have been released as late as 1992? To say this game is rubbish is scratching the surface. It's an absolute insult to my intelligence; I thought it was written in BASIC! It's a slow and crushingly boring platform game with awful graphics and animation, poor collision detection and ping-ping sound effects, and the tomato gun that Count Duckula is armed with is useless. The tune is the only thing that's worth talking about. If you want to see an even funnier review of this game, you should look at Amstrad Action's review, where they gave it 3%.

See also: Count Duckula.

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