Zogging Hell!!!

The start of the Amstrad games page. Like the Spectrum page, this really is only the beginning. Just reviews at the moment with screenshots on the way next month.

Feud

Mastertronic 1987? - Programmed by Bulldog Software (J. and S. Pickford)

One of my favourite 8bit games, and this had to must have on the Amstrad. Played on a green screen this looks almost identical to the Atari 8bit version (which I found quite amusing), so you really need a colour screen to see the difference. The play area is larger than the Atari version though. The graphics aren't exactly pushing the Amstrad to its limits, but they're pleasant enough. Other than that though the gameplay is exactly the same as in the other versions on different formats, with the same mixture of running about collecting herbs and making spells to bash your annoying brother Leonoric. Again in this version, your character feels a tad sluggish, but this never seems to detract from what is without doubt a great game. The only question mark perhaps is over the longevity, once you know the map and know where to get all the herbs, then it becomes fairly straightfoward to win.

Zogging Hell Rating: 9/10

Extras

Link to Spectrum map and tips (should be good for this version too)

Atari 8bit version

Football Manager

Addictive 1984 - Designed by Kevin Toms (whose hairy head and goatyfied face appear on the cover.. cheesey!)

Alright by todays standards it's a crap managment game admittedly, but there's something about this game I found quite addictive. The management section is pretty awful, you can buy and sell players and alter your team formation and that's about it. Similarly the match replays look awful, though to their credit, unlike some of their contemporaries they aren't completely predictable in the move outcome stakes. Obviously the player names are all out of date, and I did chuckle when my team fielded out Bryan Robson and Peter Shilton. Other bad things are the random player stats at the beginning of the season thing. Basically you start in what was the old fourth division and through the course of the season you build up a good team of players. Then the next season all the good players stats you had get randomised, so you usually end up with some fairly rubbish players. So right back to square one. Highly annoying. While this is presumably to simulate a dip in form, I can't really see how a lot of really good players become really average over the course of a summer break (perhaps they played for England! ;-) ). Strangely enough though I couldn't stop playing, the game seems to be almost as addictive as gambling, as you try to squeeze into the promotion slots or win the FA cup. You can save your progress, which is heplful as it took me all night to get to the second division. So bad but for some strange reason good!

Zogging Hell Rating: 8/10

Ghost Hunters

Codemasters 19?? - Programmed by Philip and Andrew Oliver, Music by Jon-Paul Eldridge

Looks ok for an early Codemasters game but plays absolutely awfully. It's kind of an adventure quest game, where the hero, the cheesely named Hunk Studbuckle, has to rescue his brother from Nightmare Mansion. Sadly the nightmare here is the control system. In one player mode it is a real pain up the arse to get Hunk to do.. well anything really. Moving about is ok, but to shot requires you to hold down the fire button and move a gun sight about the place. Tricky when your dealing with multiple regenerating monsters, which re-appear almost as soon as you shoot them. There's a two player mode, which admittedly I haven't tried, which allows one person to control the movement and the other the gun. This might make the game slightly more playable, but for a one player experience I wouldn't bother.

Zogging Hell Rating: 4/10

Grand Prix Simulator

Codemasters 19?? - Programmed by Philip and Andrew Oliver, Graphics by James Wilson, Music by Jon-Paul Eldridge, Design and Artwork by Nigel Fletcher (Packing?)

Super sprint clone, the gimic here being reasonably pretty graphics and some samples (who would have thought it, that Z80 must be screaming!). Otherwise everything else is from Super Sprint. You race round the tracks, trying to win the race obviously sports fans, avoiding a few hazards such as oil and picking up the odd bonus. Ok in one player mode, though better with a friend, as the game quickly becomes a bit stale playing against the computer. Control is ok, though pretty nasty if you have to use the keyboard. As far as racing games go there are better on the Amstrad, this is one for fans of the style more than anything else.

Zogging Hell Rating: 7/10

Steel Eagle

Players Premium 1990 - Programmed by ?

Horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up. Reeks of R-Type influence, even down to the early level design. It's pretty good though, the scrolling is fairly smooth and it plays pretty well. There's the usual plot of lone fighter pilots taking on alien empires and so on, but this is the normal 'remember the patterns and shoot like hell' game that these always play. This is by far the best one I've played on the CPC so far, but then it dates from 1990, and even the 16bit computers were starting to show their age at this point, so it damn well should be!

Zogging Hell Rating: 8/10

Way of the Exploding Fist

Beam Software/Mastertronic/Melbourne House 1986 - Programmed by ?

Pretty good Karate game, with some reasonably good graphics and the usual style of gameplay for this sort of beat 'em up. There's a typical array of kicks punches and blocks and anyone who has ever played Streetfighter 2 will be fairly at home here. There are some bizzarre choices for mapping moves onto the joystick though. A forward somersault is performed by pressing up and away from your opponent, which entirely the opposite direction you would expect. Most counter intuitive. Anyway, the idea of the game is to progress until you become a tenth 'dan', presumably some sort of prepostorous title that would take twenty years to aquire in real life. This is done by playing a series of opponents and taking them down in a series of best of three fights. It's all fairly enjoyable in the short term and the two player makes it even more so, however as with most karate based games, things become somewhat repetetive after a while.

Zogging Hell Rating 7/10