1133 reviews from "Pelit"-books

1990 SyksyGolf games are, surprisingly, in fashion again, after Leaderboard held the sceptre of golf games in its hands for years on end. A while ago Electronic Arts' PGA Tour Golf knocked it off the throne, and now it's Accolade's turn to try to lever PGA off its stool.

For those not initiated into the mysteries of golf, let it be said right at the start that the object of the game is to get a small ball into a hole slightly bigger than the ball in as few strokes as possible. Before everyone rushes out to the golf courses bent on turning pro, let it be said that it is, incidentally, a damn sight harder than it sounds. The best way to get a feel for golf without buying a wildly expensive golf club share or paying through the nose is to buy a golf game for your computer.

All golf games actually portray golf as a fairly easy game. Thank the Lord there's no such thing as a perfect golf simulation, or at least the undersigned's computer would already be lying in small slices at the bottom of some rubbish bin. The method games generally favour is to simplify the hitting itself into merely learning the right timing. First you press the space bar once, whereupon the power meter starts climbing towards the top. The second press then sets the strength of the shot, and a third tap sets the spin on the ball. And hey presto, the ball zooms off towards the hole a couple of hundred metres away. In reality it doesn't go quite that easily.

Jack Nicklaus' Unlimited Golf is much more realistic in its difficulty than many of its rivals. And that is exactly where it comes a cropper, since JNUG is not a very enjoyable game. Instead of enjoyment, playing it all too quickly turns into gnashing of teeth. OK, the game has nice graphics, sound card support and all that sort of thing, but playing it just plain isn't fun! As a small extra gripe, let it be said that the game uses sound cards for nothing but playing the intro music, and after that all the sounds come out as beeps from the PC's internal speaker.

Even if a game looks really good, it still isn't worth buying if there's no fun in playing it. And there's none in this one. The main feeling is frustration. Save your money and buy PGA Tour Golf.

1987You are a little boy who has to get up to all sorts of mischief. If, however, you bump into people, ghosts or other creatures too many times, Jack appears at the bottom of the screen clutching his sore behind. You have five Jacks in the game, and once every one of them has a sore bottom, the game is over.

At the bottom of the screen there is a naughtiness meter, which goes up whenever you do something wicked. When the game is over, you get to see just how naughty you have been. You can, for example, jump up onto shelves, cupboards and other furniture, where you may find some object that you can pick up or drop.

The game has some funny little details: for example, when the game is paused, Jack starts whistling away, or if you shoot passers-by with your peashooter, their faces turn purple and they start chasing you. There are other pranks to be found in the game too, which you can pull to make the naughtiness meter climb.

If you like good music, go and fetch a tape recorder and headphones, and the music will start playing.

1988Little rascal Jack is back at his favourite pastime, this time in the depths of the jungle! Because of his antics last time around, the scamp and his parents were deported to Australia. But don't go thinking Jack would bow in the slightest to any authority. Using his nappy as a parachute, Jack jumped out of the plane into the jungle. With his father in hot pursuit, the brat sets about making the lives of the jungle's inhabitants as miserable as possible. The jungle animals, the natives and his pursuers all get their share. Various objects found in the depths of the rainforest help Jack beat his old naughtiness records, as long as he can figure out how to use them.

As before, Jack can carry two objects: whichever weapon he currently has in use and one other item. Weapons include, for example, coconuts, blowpipes and a dynamite charge. Useful items include shields, honey, grease and an onion, among others. There's more besides, and the principle is that everything can be used for mischief! Getting around is made easier by lianas and the nappy, which Jack can use as a parachute when dropping from high places.

The play area stretches over quite a few screenfuls and includes caves, trees, native villages, rivers, drifting sand and all sorts of other fun stuff. The graphics are pretty neat and well done, and so are the colours. The music - the rumble of jungle drums - and the other sounds fit the game like a glove. The man coding the sound side is none other than Ben Daglish, Gremlin's regular hired music man.

The game idea is a nice one for an arcade adventure, and playing it goes smoothly once you've mastered a few little tricks. There are plenty of games of this type, but Jack II stands out from the crowd in a good way thanks to a decent idea and careful execution. Fans of Wally, Willy, Jack and their kindred spirits will surely like Jack the Nipper II.

1987Konami has a solid reputation as a programmer of MSX games, and not without reason. The versions of Konami's arcade games for other machines used to be programmed by Imagine, but now Konami has broadened its range and does the 64 versions itself as well. Small wonder, considering Imagine's recent bungling. The first attempt is Jailbreak. But was giving them the boot worth it?

Jailbreak is based on the good old tried-and-tested "kill nearly everything that moves", and the hero is a trigger-happy cop. A whole bunch of convicts has escaped and is threatening everything that Western civilisation holds sacred. But the personification of Western civilisation, the Colt .45, speaks its leaden word. Balance is restored by shooting. The occasional bystander who turns up brings the brave policeman new weapons to maximise his killing power. So the game calls for a joystick, but your brain can be pensioned off. And there's certainly always room for good killing games.

There will still be room after this one, too. A proper slugfest needs fast, smooth graphics and some real action. Jailbreak doesn't meet these conditions, since the cop plods along far too slowly to be any threat to lawbreakers. The graphics are also too bare, and the sound isn't up to the standard you could expect from the Commodore 64. For Konami this admittedly falls a little short of the bar, but only time will tell. Perhaps the much-awaited Nemesis will already deliver on the promises.

1991 KevätUnderwater agent James Pond: he is fearless, he is clever and above all he is ozone-friendly. This James doesn't cruise around in an expensive convertible, nor does he chat up beautiful blondes. He happens to be a fish, you see.

The adorable finned fellow's workload consists of twelve eco-tinged missions with familiar-sounding names: Licence To Bubble, From Sellafield With Love, A View To A Spill and so on. Will that sort of thing slip past the watchful licence guardians, or will yet another software house be digging deep into its pockets in a courtroom?

The secret-agent theme stops dead at playing about with the names and a jaunty, Bond-ish soundtrack. You could almost pigeonhole the game with the jump-and-shoot games, if the hero didn't get about by swimming and, instead of a gun, use a bubble-blowing technique borrowed from Bubble Bobble.

Besides its brightly coloured, likeable, smooth-moving and all-round impeccably cuddly presentation, James Pond's trump card is the inventive variety of its missions, all set in the watery element. In the first level, for example, you have to free the crabs before the fishermen come to collect their catch, in the second you guide fish to safety away from nuclear waste dumped from Sellafield, and in the third you blow up an oil rig.

James Pond succeeds where Rainbow Warrior botched it badly, namely in presenting save-our-waters eco ideals subtly and tongue in cheek. The hero's merits aren't quite enough to earn him a place in the classics register alongside Bub and Bob, Quiffy and Kiwi. The genre's standard features, such as secret hollows and shortcuts, are well represented, but somehow the clever tricks lack that one or two hooks that set megagames apart from the mass.

Borrowing a bit from here and a bit from there, James Pond tries to convince and entertain, and manages it reasonably well. At least it clearly beats Cloud Kingdoms and Kid Gloves, Millennium's previous attempts in the difficult field of cuteness.

1987Sublogic's Flight Simulator II has been an institution among home micro users ever since it first came out. Now, after a long wait, it has finally got a sequel. This time the player is put in the cockpit of an F-16 or F-18 jet fighter, with the task of attacking ground, air or sea targets.

The very first thing you notice about the program is how easy it is to fly the jet fighter. There's enough power for anything. The easy part ends, however, when enemy missiles appear on the radar. It is nerve-racking to let a missile get really close and then pull a tight 90-degree turn without knowing what attitude and what altitude you will end up in.

Weapons are chosen to suit the mission: cannon, bombs or missiles. The aircraft type, in turn, depends on whether you are operating from an airfield or from a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The F-18 was developed especially for naval use.

There are two different types of enemy aircraft: MIG-21s and MIG-23s (naturally). When destroying surface targets, the F-16 goes after runways, oil depots, factories and missile silos. At sea, correspondingly, you have to sink Kynda-class (naturally) cruisers.

The program has nice little details, such as the option of following the plane's movements from the control tower. This makes it possible to "practise" aerobatics effectively. Also, the view from the cockpit (and from the control tower) can be zoomed all the way up to eight times magnification. Perhaps the best thing, though, is the ability to use the Flight Simulator II scenery. Now you can fly at supersonic speed over distances that would have taken the Cessna an eternity.

The program is, however, plagued by the same old familiar shortcomings - slowness and jerkiness. Targets can jump clean past the sights in a single leap. This is not the programmer's fault, though; the Commodore 64's resources are simply not up to it. If you want to see how the program ought to respond, you can select the scenery disk option in the main menu and then just leave the Jet disk in the drive. The scenery stays completely empty, but the plane really does obey the controls.

1987You are in the middle of the enemy base and your aim is to blast everything that comes your way with your laser. At the start you are met by hexagonal boxes, spherical fuel tanks and rockets flying upwards. The fuel tanks earn you bonus points. Small projectiles also whizz about all over the battlefield. As the game goes on you have to work hard to dodge the missiles heading your way. Later on there are various other objects to shoot, which you must destroy to get any further. You can fire both forwards and downwards.

The game is a sorry copy of the 64 space game Zaxxon, but what's better in this version is the speech synthesiser, which speaks fairly understandable English. The original version has no such refinement at all. The game also has pretty good title music, lifted from a film called Star Wars. The other sounds (effects) are not much good. You get fed up with their simplicity (the noise generator) pretty quickly.

The overall impression of the graphics is above average, and the game's three-dimensionality improves it further still. As in all other proper 3-D games, the shadows of the craft and the missiles show on the ground, adding interest to the game.

1988The solar system has grown rich since vast mineral reserves were discovered on the moons of Saturn. The finds are in danger, because the megalomaniac quadrillionaire de Ville - owner of one moon - is threatening to destroy his nuclear reactor unless he gets his hands on the other moons too. The radiation would contaminate all the moons and put a stop to mining the minerals.

For the unit called the Jet-boys, set up to guard the area, the only chance of thwarting the madman's plan is to switch the reactor off.

Jet-boys is a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up that can be played alone or by two players simultaneously. The game has four sectors that the player has to make it through. Every enemy you shoot yields time as well as points. The time is needed at the end of each sector, where you have to destroy a giant creature or ship before the timer runs down to zero. The jet boy's firepower, speed and shields can be upgraded by collecting icons along the way.

The game's central idea, namely shoot everything you see, is not exactly among the freshest. The game's looks and features give the impression that Jet-boys is a poor man's Sanxion and Delta rolled into one. For example, the attack waves come in formations of four ships, always in the same order at the same point in the level.

The player character's slow turning, the lack of a pause mode and the long waits for the enemies are bound to get on the player's nerves over time.

The background graphics are pleasant to look at, and the screen scrolls nicely too, without any major glitches. Real effort has gone into the sprites, as the enemies include a few really original-looking creatures. The sound effects are modest, but the theme music is nicely done.

Two years ago Jet-boys would have been a hit, but by today's standards it offers no more than a few hours of entertainment, and even that thanks to the two-player mode.

1987The basic idea of Jet Fighter is a conventional one. In the first phase of the game you fly a super fighter towards the opponent's base. At the same time the opponent sends out a fighter of its own. You can try to destroy the opposing fighter either with your own fighter or by switching roles to become commander of the ground base. From the ground you can launch four steerable missiles at the opposing fighter. Meanwhile your own fighter flies on autopilot. Whoever manages to destroy the other's fighter gets to launch their own missile at the opponent's base.

Now we move on to the second phase. If you have launched your missile, your task is to steer it through the defensive fire into the central control room. If, on the other hand, your opponent has managed to launch their missile, your task is to intercept it. The game ends when one of the players has managed to guide three missiles into the opponent's base.

What makes this game more interesting than the usual air combat game is the option of linking two MSX micros together through the joystick ports. That also makes the game more interesting, since the computer is a murderously accurate opponent. The other player naturally needs their own micro and monitor, which somewhat limits the opportunities for two-player games. Making the cable to connect the micros, on the other hand, is easy if you use the cable from an old broken joystick.

The game's graphics are fairly ordinary, but clear enough on the other hand. The fighter's instrument panel, for example, is quite readable. This game is the first in the history of MSX games to use synthesised speech. The voice is fairly clear and even slightly feminine. There aren't many messages, but the novelty value should make up for the lack of quantity. Otherwise the use of sound is sparing, mostly limited to the whoosh of missiles in flight and an alarm tone.

In two-player mode the game is interesting, but played alone it can't hold your interest for very long, because the computer is so overwhelmingly superior.

1988The 16-bit version of Sublogic's classic Flight Simulator II is something well worth showing to those people who wonder what the difference is between a PC and an Amiga. And now you can show off Jet too.

In Jet, as you'll know, you can fly either an F-16 or the navy-model F-18 fighter, destroy ground targets or knock down MiGs. The graphics are really impressive, perhaps the most realistic of any military flight simulator so far.

On top of the normal Jet scenarios (which differ from the PC version only in speed), you can also fly combined missions in the F-16, in which case the battlefield is terrain that looks blatantly like the Middle East. It's great fun bombing bridges, nuclear power stations and harbours there, and knocking down MiG-21s and MiG-29s, of which there can be as many as eight at best. There are all sorts of interesting and useful options by the bucketload. The realistic sound effects are digitised, of course.

Flying against a mate is excellent fun. This works either over a modem or by hooking the ST or Amiga up to another machine with an RS232 cable.

But there's room for grumbling about Jet too. The fighter has no missile countermeasures at all, and there are only five different types of weapon. Of these, the Mk-82 bombs, for example, behave exactly like homing missiles. You can't set the position of the spot plane yourself and there's no replay option, so Jet II is no masterpiece on a par with FS II. A shame that Sublogic has left this version half-finished as well.

Although Jet is, despite everything, an excellent simulator, it's expensive enough that it may be worth waiting for either Electronic Arts' Interceptor or Spectrum HoloByte's F-16 Falcon. The latter has already been converted to the ST, so an Amiga version should be out soon too.

1991 SyksyElectronic Arts' F/A-18 Interceptor got a new lease of life in its PC incarnation under the name Jetfighter. Programmer Bob Dinnerman immediately started knocking together a sequel. Squeezing out the very last drops of his imagination, he named it Jetfighter II.

JF II is a combined flight simulator and adventure game. The backdrop to the game's 150 missions is an extremely contrived story about communist terrorists seizing California. A really unlikely event even at the best of times, but this way the simulation could be set in scenery familiar to Americans.

You can play either as an adventure, where your success in the previous mission affects the troops' morale and the course of the whole war, and so also the next mission, or as a flight simulator, where you can pick any of the 150 missions directly. The game also has a Free Flight mode for practising flying and landing.

You have at your disposal the F/A-18 Hornet, the F-16 Falcon, the F-14 Tomcat and the F-23, which is based on Northrop's bid to the United States Air Force for a Stealth fighter. The contest was of course won by the F-117A, but the manual raves about the F-23's superiority in every respect. The plane is cheaper and faster, and it can even pull off complex manoeuvres that the F-177A can't manage. Apparently the F-117A reflects fewer radar waves, though, and that settled the contest in its favour. (The F-23 is presumably meant to replace the navy's 6E Intruders - ed. note)

Anyone who has ever tried their hand at flight simulators knows that there isn't much difference between today's flight sims. The same goes for JF II. Once you've learned what the keys do, you can shoot off into the wild blue yonder, safe in the knowledge that flying it is no different at all from flying in F-19 Stealth Fighter or F-16 Falcon. JF II is extremely easy to fly, and the excessive realism hasn't been extended as far as staying in the air.

To balance things out, the realism muscles its way in at the point where you're supposed to get the plane back onto the aircraft carrier in one piece. Whereas in MicroProse's F-19 SF you could put the plane down on the carrier deck even from the side (or rather, a skilled pilot could have dropped the F-19 onto a postage stamp), landing in JF II is a complicated, nerve-shredding operation that could happily have been made easier. The manual says a real carrier landing is one of the most difficult tasks in the world, and after dozens of landing attempts I'm certainly starting to believe Dinnerman. The VLS/ILS instrument is in this game for more than just show.

Almost the only thing by which you can settle which simulator is better is the graphics. On a VGA display JF II offers an extremely beautiful 256-colour graded horizon, opening parachutes, moving landing gear, animated explosions and objects shaded according to the light source. Despite all this, the screen update is quite brisk enough, as long as there's a machine with at least a 286 processor on your desk. On the sound side, not much comes out of the PC speaker apart from a few warning beeps. There's support for AdLib, but for nothing else.

Despite its technical advances, JF II somehow remains a dry experience, so disturbingly so that the word that springs to mind to describe it is boring. Sure, it's nice to watch the gorgeous graphics while flying at three times the speed of sound 50 metres up between the skyscrapers, but that certainly won't keep your interest up. So nothing amazingly new under the blue sky; for want of anything better, why not wait for Electronic Arts' Birds Of Prey.

1987Willy is facing the morning after the party. Naturally he'd love to hit the sack, but Willy's housekeeper Maria, a formidable no-nonsense lady, insists that Willy clean up the aftermath of the party before the road to bed is open. The player's task is to help Willy collect all the glasses, bottles and other objects from all over the house. That may still sound fairly easy, but the house has about 60 different rooms, a yacht and grounds. On top of that, almost every room has strange contraptions and weird creatures trying to block the player's way.

Compared to its predecessor, Manic Miner, JetSet Willy has a couple of improvements. There are three times as many rooms, and your interest holds up longer. Secondly, Willy can move freely from one room to another without first having to collect every object in the previous room. This way the player can get to know the house and its various routes at leisure, without getting fed up with the difficulty of the very first screen.

There really is plenty to explore in that house. It took this writer several weeks before it was more or less mapped. The designer's clever touches are there to be found. In the Rescue Esmeralda screen, once you've rescued the girl, jump straight upwards immediately - and you'll end up somewhere else entirely.

The graphics are well done, with lots of fun details. The plot side of things is also pretty successful, in my opinion. On many screens the player has to carefully choose the right route and the right moment to try to slip past all the weird creeps. Willy does have eight lives, admittedly, but they get used up surprisingly quickly.

Controlling Willy is easy. Three keys: right, left and jump. With these Willy gets around smoothly on land and in water alike, as well as swinging on ropes.

Anyone who has tried JetSet Willy certainly won't wonder for long at the huge popularity the game has won - that's how absorbing it is.

Getting to the end of the game, on the other hand, is next to impossible.

1987As you can probably guess from the name, the game is the sequel to the smash hit JetSet Willy. Part two is considerably more varied and bigger than the first one, but those who have already got to know Willy will pick up the game's tricks easily.

While Willy was in hospital, the house was extended. There are twice as many rooms. Back home, Willy throws another bash, and after a hard day he naturally wants to get to bed. But to reach his bed, Willy once again has to clear up the aftermath of the party (glasses, bottles and other such items).

There's plenty of time, but there's plenty to collect as well...

The house in the game is the same as in the first one, but outside the house you'll find interesting extensions and additions. So even those who have completed JetSet Willy will find more than enough to do in the game. You can even travel by moon rocket, not to mention down the highway to hell.

The graphics in Willy II are better than in the first one. The backgrounds are better made too, and the colours more carefully chosen. The program uses sprites a lot and to excellent effect: disembodied heads, ice-cream cones, teacups, butlers and other interesting things.

JetSet Willy II is protected by the familiar colour code system, so even if you do manage to copy the program, getting it to start is tricky. Or at least it takes a little effort, in the form of copying the colour card.

All in all, JetSet Willy II is a touch better still than the first one, which is itself already a classic among collect-and-climb games.

1988Jinxter draws the player into its own peculiar atmosphere right from the very start. As a sworn private motorist you have landed in an awkward spot: for reasons we needn't go into, the journey home has to be made by public transport. The bus's standard fittings, namely the driver and your fellow passengers, are exceedingly surly, and to top it all you get to take part in a ticket inspection. The real trouble only begins, however, when you are supposed to know how to get off, in good order, at the right stop.

Jinxter's most distinctive and most carefully drawn character is Len, who rambles on about this and that in a strange garbled mumble and is forever stuffing convenience food into the old digestive system. On the side, Len still finds time to fret over your wellbeing in a way that makes it impossible to leave the game by dying.

The task Len entrusts to you is, in all its simplicity, as follows.

The fortune and future of Aquitania are under threat, because the Green Witch Jannedor Nasty has managed to chop Turan's legendary bracelet into pieces and hide the bits who knows where. This piece of jewellery consists of five magic items, which you must find and then put the bracelet back together into one whole. That way the power of the green witches would stay within tolerable limits, and the bad luck plaguing Aquitania would exit stage left.

To begin with, you carry out your mission at home, gathering useful gear for a rainy day. On answering the phone you hear that your friend Xam is in trouble, and you hurry over to Xam's house. There you may manage to get your hands on the first magic item, and at the same time you make the acquaintance of a mad gardener who is rather casual about handling automatic weapons.

Having cracked, with your superior powers of deduction, a few tricky puzzles plus the riddle of the sock with a hole in it, you carry on to a bay by the sea. The underground and underwater brainteasers yield to good old peasant common sense, without any need to resort to magic. Your swagger starts to rise again, as the game really does feel like it is progressing in step with your skills.

A nearby village forms the game's third centre of action. Here you'll find a bakery, a pub, a post office, a weather clock and a wondrous carousel that somehow brings Turan's bracelet to mind. There you already have to fall back on the tricks of the magic items you've collected in order to close in on the game's solution in earnest.

Once you've moved on, in a somewhat peculiar manner, to the railway station, your problem becomes hauling yourself and your belongings to the castle waiting at the end of the line. If you haven't gone in for sawing back and forth between the various locations so far, now is your golden opportunity.

The game's extensive showcase of means of transport culminates here in a solo turn on the back of a unicorn. Just one last push and you'll come face to face with Being itself - or will you?

Jinxter is a text adventure, or rather a graphic one, since a large part of the all-important message can, if you so wish, be covered up with a coloured picture area. Owing to the texture of the picture surface or the shortcomings of the human eye, however, making out the letters underneath the picture proves difficult, so it's better to stick to putting your literacy to use.

The pictures tell you nothing essential, and this time the graphics don't dazzle with their quality either. This is astonishing, since a team of extremely good artists has reportedly been working on them, spending about three weeks on each picture.

Another key criterion for an adventure game is its ability to converse with the player in a way that feels intelligent. The ghost in the machine, a.k.a. the game's parser, is fairly sophisticated, even though it fails to recognise a number of words that appear in the game; then again, it can lie convincingly. It's true! What we have here is a piece of video-philosophical engineering that doesn't quite measure up to its Infocom colleagues.

All in all, Jinxter leaves you feeling a little empty. From the parser in particular you'd have expected something never experienced before. Nor have the Amiga's graphics capabilities been exploited in the manner they deserve.

1989 SyksyThe Middle Ages! That era of knights, damsels in distress and the Holy Grail. Joan of Arc is set somewhere around then, give or take a couple of hundred years. The nasty English have conquered proud France, which to this day looks down its nose at the English, and you, the player, must step into the trousers of the Maid of Orleans and drive the conquering swine away, helped by a "miracle army" of a few thousand men.

Once the game has loaded, the first thing that springs to mind is Cinemaware's "interactive movie" Defender of the Crown. The user interface and the execution are that similar; only the setting is different. After fumbling about in my usual style for 15 minutes without achieving anything visible, I got acquainted with the instructions. (The manual that comes with the game is an illuminating tome, by the way; I'd urge everyone to read it BEFORE playing) Lo and behold, Joan of Arc beats DOTC hands down.

Joan has a Defender-style map where, as usual, most of the action takes place. There are just a great many more possibilities than in DOC. Among other things, you can have troublesome opponents assassinated, and the rebellious rabble can be strung up to weigh down a rope if they revolt over tax reforms. A mindless warmongering mentality won't get you anywhere in this game.

Besides the strategy part, Joan of Arc has subgames. Armies crashing into each other are shown as armies of ants whose movements you can direct with the mouse. When the player is capturing a town, they have to sword-fight their way through the troops defending the drawbridge and then clamber up the walls in a hail of rocks and oil. When defending a town, on the other hand, the player pours oil and chucks rocks onto the attackers' heads in the manner of the ancient Orc Attack. With all the loading involved, though, it would have been nice if they weren't compulsory. Joan loads at every turn anyway, but at least it agrees to use two disk drives.

The action sections cleverly use digitised pictures as backgrounds, with the animation laid on top of the image. The sound side is limited to an irritating digitised horn solo plus digitised clangs of swords and men bellowing. The digitised sound effects do work excellently, though, in the strategy-style battle scene and in the swordfighting. About the swordfighting it MUST be mentioned that at the end of a successful bout of blade-clashing, the loser's head rolls gracefully off its bearer's shoulders and bounces charmingly along the drawbridge while blood sprays all around, with loose hands and throat-slitting thrown in too. Simply gorgeous.

In any case, JOA successfully mixes ingredients of strategy and action games, and the result is a game that ranks among the best of its kind, one that a loose package like Defender of Crown can't compete with. The road to becoming King of France is easy, but that is only where the game really begins.

1988Terrorists have kidnapped six world leaders and are holding them hostage, demanding 30 million bucks for their release. Naturally the government refuses to pay, and sends the terror of terrorists, Joe Blade, to free the hostages. Along the way Blade has to activate six time bombs and escape with the prisoners before they blow the whole lot sky-high. You are Joe Blade!

This new and interesting take on shoot-'em-ups is brought to us by Players, the king of trash games, from the far side of the Gulf of Bothnia. This time, though, the Swedes haven't failed completely. Although Joe Blade can by no means be described as a good game, on the budget front it is of reasonably decent quality.

The control systems are old and much-used. They work perfectly adequately, though. The little guys are passable, and even a tiny bit cute. There is something wrong with them all the same - not in the execution, but in the costume department. The terrorists come in two kinds: ones toddling about with a submachine gun under one arm, and fist-fighting heroes. And the submachine-gun blokes bear an uncanny resemblance to a Third Reich infantryman. And wouldn't you know it, they've got a Scmeisser tucked under their arm! Why do the soldiers of the thousand-year Reich always get cast as the villains? If World War II had ended differently, would the Brits always be cast as the villains?

The sound is hardly worth talking about. At the start there's some reasonable music that neither caresses nor grates on the musical ear. In the game proper, meanwhile, the main sound is the rat-a-tat of the submachine gun as terrorists are slaughtered (when they die they turn into a sort of bundle of clothes).

Joe Blade. Top of the class on the budget front, and it keeps you playing for a while anyway. You won't crack it quickly - there's difficulty aplenty. Its biggest merit, though, is the game you can play while it loads. This game idea turns up in other Players games too, but the thought originally came out of Kasper Systems' headquarters, from where Players has apparently since pinched it. But seeing as Kasper Systems never used the idea, it's only fitting that somebody at least does.

1988The story of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler has touched many hearts in "Gone with the Wind"; Johnny Reb II tells the less romantic flip side of the same era. So it's the American Civil War we're talking about.

The player commands either a small band of Yankees and tries to stop a stronger detachment of Southern rebels (Rockabilly is forgotten OK). Or exactly the other way round. Naturally you can also rattle sabres with a pal, just as a proper war game should allow. JR II is an icon-driven tactical battle game, a bit in the Microprose style. Unlike a few other Lothlorien games, Johannes Kap II is well executed. The troops include infantry, cavalry and artillery alike. You don't have to guess what any of the icons mean, as the unit insignia are clear, and the graphics are businesslike in general too.

Orders are issued with a joystick-controlled cursor, which you use to select a unit and point out its objective. You don't need to touch the keyboard at all. The game runs in real time.

For one reason or another my review copy was missing its instructions entirely, which didn't matter all the same, since there was good guidance on screen. Still, it would have been nice to know what each side's tactical objective actually is.

A pleasant surprise is the ability to edit the troops and the battlefield, which naturally adds to the game's lifespan. You can easily turn the game into, say, a cavalry battle fought in a town, if that sort of thing happens to interest you.

Johnny Reb II is an excellent introduction to the world of war games, and doesn't even demand a brilliant command of English. For the war-game veteran this game may admittedly be too easy, but then what's perfect these days?

1989 KevätSo the old basic basketball game One-On-One has now been given a sequel. One-On-One was quite the marvel back in the day, after all. Let's take a look at what EOA's new version has to offer us.

After a short load, a stylish picture appears on screen and a mighty sound rings in my ears. That's right: it's Rob Hubbard, over there across the pond, who has cooked something up again. With trembling hands I press fire, and next the game's main menu appears before my eyes. There's enough to choose from to be downright bewildering: eight different game modes and twelve adjustable options. You can play alone or with a friend, or watch the computer play against itself. The length of the game can be adjusted, and so can the computer's skill. There's plenty to fiddle with.

The game modes could be divided into three groups: 1 on 1, Slam Dunk and 3-Point. Within these you can then pick various variations. In the 1 on 1 game Jordan and Bird take turns trying to score baskets while the other defends. Slam dunk, on the other hand, is the ideal option for freestyle fans: the player tries to dunk the ball into the basket in as complicated a way as possible. In 3-Point you try to get as many balls into the basket as possible, as fast as possible, from as far away as possible.

All the games are carefully made and interesting. The graphics are perfectly acceptable even to European tastes, and the playability is brilliant. Interest in playing will surely last for years, since nothing is more fun than trying to thrash your mate in two-player mode. And if you like good music, buy J vs B One On One. Once again Hubbard squeezes out of the Sid everything there is to be had!

1987Who is Judge Dredd? If you don't know, you poor hopeless clod! Judge Dredd was published in Finland too, but it was cancelled because of low circulation. A crime if ever there was one!!!

JD is England's most famous comic-strip hero, and his comic is marked not only by a brisk parodic touch and black humour but also by violence and brilliant plots. Judge Dredd is also a lawman of the early 21st century, genetically selected and trained from the age of five. The only emotion Judges are allowed is a sense of justice, because a sentimental Judge wouldn't last five minutes on the streets of Megacity 1. All in all, an excellent basis for a good game.

So how did it turn out? A completely objective review would go like this: a better-than-average shoot-'em-up that owes a lot to Mission A.D. Nice graphics, nice music, nice game. That's where it would have ended if the game were called, say, Cobra. But this is Judge Dredd and I am a fantastically fanatical fan, so out goes objectivity.

Dredd doesn't look like Dredd. The helmet is the wrong colour and the boots are too small. What on earth are these Sattellat spy satellites swarming all over the city, supposedly leftovers from the Apocalypse War? Or the packs of robot dogs - which, to be fair, did at least appear in a short story called Rabies.

Luckily the Lawgiver has six different types of ammo, but why, for example, isn't a whole clip of explosive rounds enough to kill a criminal? Why are there no sound effects, only music playing in the background? The crimes range from murder to secret smoking, but the criminal is always some bloke blazing away like a maniac. Why couldn't Melbourne House's programmers have read some Judge Dredd before making the game? Drokk!!!

The title screen is good, at least, and the box cover has a Dredd drawn by Bolland.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but Dredd deserves better. Let standard-issue licensed games be saved for standard-issue heroes, but if you make a game out of a legend, it had better be legendary. Still, if you're not under Dredd's spell, give the game a look: there have been worse. And to annoy the peace campaigners, let's finish with Dredd's comment on the nuclear war in which hundreds of millions died: "This war taught us something. Next time, we start it."

1987You work as a truck driver in various cities. Your job is to haul timber, coal, oil or fruit from various loading sites to the city's main depot. Sounds easy, but even just steering the truck takes a fair bit of practice before you've got the hang of it.

You only get one truck per game, but the task still isn't impossible, since the cities have several service stations where you can get repairs or fill up. On levels that have a telephone, you can ask where the coal loading sites are, or where the service stations are, and so on. The computer shows the locations as flashing markers on the map. You can call up the map even in the middle of the game, so you can check your route plan.

The game also has a practice option for driving through junctions, parking and so on. You can also choose the size of the truck's trailer yourself. The bigger the trailer, the harder it is to steer, but a bigger trailer holds more cargo.

The truck's top speed is 40 miles per hour, and there are two forward gears and one reverse.

The game's graphics are nothing spectacular, but they are commendably clear. The colours used are mainly black, green and yellow. There's no music, and hardly any sound effects either, but even so the game feels quite pleasant and you can happily keep playing it for a long time. The program comes with a smallish poster and a small window sticker.

1990 SyksyBeethoven, Mozart, Strauss, Wagner. The harmonic monsters created by these monsters of days gone by did not die, but are now threatening the world of rock'n roll. Which, considering where said music is heading these days, isn't the least bit worrying. A noggin by the name of Jumpin' Jack Son (don't ask) is the rock world's only hope.

The game works simply. JJS bounces around on a grid of squares, some of which change colour when he bounces on them. JJS has to turn the squares all the same colour, whereupon he gets a record, which has to be carried to the record player of the same colour. When that happens, a new instrument joins the tune playing at the time. Once the players are full, JJS can move on to the next world.

Livening up the game are bonus items that appear every now and then, and, to suit the theme, the enemies consist of instruments fit for performing so-called 'classical' music. You can get a password for skipping the early levels, but only if you pull off a brain-straining bonus round.

Gallic craftsmanship oozes from every nook and cranny. The amusing graphics are crowned by Rolling Stones-influenced music, which sounds almost as good even on the ST as on the Amiga. And so it should, since without the thump of the music JJJ would lose most of its charm.

Jumpin' Jack Son is a fun, playable and original game that doesn't rehash the old cliches. There's recommendation enough right there.

1987Enemies have invaded Jupiter and planted bombs in 30 different rooms. They can only be eliminated by going through all 30 rooms and collecting the bombs. JumpMan has been chosen for this mission. The player's task is to help JumpMan get past the enemy robots, dragons, flying men, bullets, flying saucers and other adversaries.

In the game you can choose your starting point, the difficulty level and the speed. There are five options for difficulty and eight for speed. After you've chosen the difficulty level, the computer asks for the number of players.

During the game, the computer always loads a new level from disk when the player reaches it. You can also choose RANDOMIZER as the difficulty level, in which case the next level is drawn at random from the 30 available. Otherwise the levels go in order from the chosen starting point. Once you've collected all the bombs on one level, you move on to the next one and the computer loads again. Luckily the loading time isn't long, otherwise you wouldn't have the patience to play the game.

JumpMan's graphics leave room for improvement; the sound effects suit the game. Then again, they could have been improved too. The choice of colours couldn't have been better. Interest in the game is boosted by the number of levels and by the fact that JumpMan saves the high scores to disk. The high score table is a good way to follow how your results are coming along.

JumpMan is also available in a cassette version.