Just in case you want an unbiased opinion on F1`s products here are all the magazine reviews that have been printed to date, word for word. Typed by Steve. --------------- FORTRESS Disk, F1007 Price £3.99 *AGA ONLY* AMIGA ACTION, May 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Apparently based on the the classic Gods games of yesteryear, Fortress is a sort of arcade/strategy affair which hails back to the glory days of Mega-lo-mania. The whole world is laid out before you on the screen, with places of interest indicated so that you don`t get too confused. The aim of the game is to build your armies and enter battle to take control of enemy castles and eventually, if you are good enough, the whole world. Battle sequences form a major part of the gameplay, and the 64 colour graphics and 170k of run-time sound effects make Fortress a game which is a marvel to behold. As long as you have the 2 meg machine necessary to play it. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Karate Master Disk F1010 Price £3.99 AMIGA ACTION, MAY 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The majority of beat`em-ups arepretty far fetched to say the least, what with unbelievably deformed characters performing acrobatic feats which their bulky frames would never allow them to do in reality. So. it makes a change to see a beat` em-up which is described by it`s publishers as a serious karate sim with all the speed and variety of moves and excitment of the real sport. A two player option allows you and a friend to takecharge of a pyjama clad warrior each, and then it`s battle time. Fifteen moves are accesible altogether, including somersaults, roundhouse kicks and jumping spin kicks. And when you learn that this is coupled with increasing enemy intelligence over 99 level, ten fighting speeds and a sub game every two level, you should be impressed. Personally I feel that Karate Master is a long way from recreating the "Excitement of the real sport", but it`s fairly good stuff nontheless and I quite like it. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Through The Red Door Disk F1013 Price £3.99 AMIGA FORMAT, MAY 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Europress` Amos may not have proved to be the answer to every would-be programmer`s dream but it certainly proved it`s worth as a tool for generating educational software. Even Europress` own range of "Fun School" products were written entirely in Amos. Not surprisingly, Amos is responsible for this collection of four very simple educational programs aimed at children between three and five years of age. Featuring bright and colourful graphics and cheerful sound effects, Through the Red Door is another great PD eduactional pack. The disk contains five educational "mini programs" which are accessed by "ringing" the appropriate door bell when the program`s main screen appears. The first program is "Colours" in which you have to help Simon and Sarah to choose the colours of objects in the playroom, the countryside and the seaside. Next up is "numbers" which sees you helping Sarah to find the missing animals in the shop, garden and bedroom (Sheep in your bedroom? I`m starting to worry about this...). Finally we have the Clothes and Letters, two equally jolly educational games along the same lines as the first two but concentrating on different skills. Through the Red Door certainly isn`t up to the same standards as professional educational software such as Europress` Fun School series bit it`s an enjoyable and well designed disk nonetheless. If you need a disk that will keep the kids quiet for a few hours then this may be the answer. Rated 78% """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" CRICKET CRAZY Disk F1002 AMIGA POWER APRIL 94 £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ Cricket is dull. Excruciattingly dull. Even the crowds at the matches take along newspapers,knitting or portable T.Vs (so they can watch real sports like football) to relieve the tedium. It makes Chess tournaments look like terminator 2. So I have to admit, I wasn`t exactly relishing the thought of reviewing this game. The promise of a choice of fast, meduim or spin bowlers the ability to bat six different ways, the chance to choose which team to play out of seven international sides and the opportunity to organise my fielders somehow failed to set my pulse racing. But perhaps I`m being unfair And a first glance at the graphics didn`t do much to change my opinion. "3D action" it said in the blurb. Well, it ain`t no VR experience youll be unsurprised to hear. You get a perspective shot of the batter at the fold and the ball flying towards him, but that`s about it. Apart from that the graphics are functional at best. But it ain`t all bad if you can excuse the dire graphics, there are lot`s that`s impressive about the game. It`s certainly comprehensive, with just about every aspect of the game covered in some way. You can bat in different ways, control all your fielders, alter teams, change batting orders, decide on which bowler to put on and do other crickety-type things. The controls are awkward at first, but logical-like with most one-on-one beat-`em-ups you just need to get the hang of the system. It`s certainly not a great game, but despite the dissapointing visuals, in terms of gameplay it`s nearly as good as the commercial cricket sims you`ll find. Verdict: I`ll resist the temptation to say, :It`s just not Cricket, old boy" because, er, it is. RATING * * * (3 out of 5) """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Blackboard V2.0 Disk F1006 AMIGA SHOPPER MAY 94 £4.99 (2 disks) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ --------------- The Amiga`s graphical power has been well harnessed by packages such as ADpro and ImageFX. However, these tools are quite expensive if you are only going to be using them on a casual basis. Blackboard attempts to fill that gap in the Amiga graphics market. It tries to provide some of the functions of Adpro ans so on for £4.99. So what do you get for your fiver? The program has a surprising number of features. For example, it has MORPHING,WARPING,BULGING,PIXELATE,EMBOSS, COLOUR TO GREYSCALE,EDGE ENHANCE,INVERSE AND QUANTISE. If you are a programmer, you can even add your own modules. From the view point of an AGA machine owner you also get access to near 24-bit quality graphic manipulation -Hurrah! The interface is quite intuitive as well. All of the programs functions are accessible from the buttons on the main screen. You can adjust the image`s contrast, brightness and alter it`s RGB values by moving the appropriate sliders. This is useful for correcting the colour balance and increasing the quality of scanned images. Several display modes are also supported. To change modes you can click on the number of colours you want between 2 colours and Ham-8, you can also specify whether or not the screen will be Hires and/or interlaced and whether the rendered image will be dithered or not. The operators are contained in a scrollable window. You can scroll up and down the list, then simply press run to execute them. As mentioned before, there is a large range of operations. They range from simple effects such as PIXELLATION and GREYSCALE CONVERSION right through to more complicated manipulations like WARPING and MORPHING. The more complicated functions such as MORPHING and WARPING pictures bring up editing windows with preview images You can then manipulate the nodes in a similar way to CINEMORPH or MORPH PLUS without many of the options available, such as group selection and manipulate nodes, but there are enough functions to produce good effects. Another good feature is the addition of a limited editor. You can use it to make adjustments to pictures in a similar manner to a paint package. You need to select an area of an image to edit and then, presented with an enlarged view of the area, you can choose from eight brush sizes and scroll around the screen. There are also different paint modes, such as blend and smooth. Blackboard V2.0 also sports a feature that has only just been added to Adpro 2.5, a composite load. You can use this function to load an image behind or in front of, an existing image. You can input a value for transparency, and thereby alter how much one picture shows through the other. You can also scale, crop and squeeze your image. Squeeze operates in a similar way to sheer in most paint packages. Overall Blackboard V2.0 is a great improvement over the first version, which was heavily bugged and extremely slow. This version also has a couple of minor bugs and it is still not as fast as currently available commercial packages, but what do you expect for less than £5? This program should definitely be on your software shelf if you are into graphics, but don`t feel like shelling out vast sums of money. Program Rating 90% """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""