The AMIGAMER Issue #5 August '88 By Ross Deeley 38 Napier Rd Havelock North New Zealand Phone (070) 775-959 The AmiGamer is published by Ross Deeley. It may be distributed by Amiga user groups and clubs provided it is distributed whole including this notice. COPYRIGHT (C) 1988 "The AmiGamer" is the un-registered unofficial trademark of Ross Deeley and anyone else using it will be cursed by random chip-memory errors. SO MOTE IT BE. Games mentioned here are all available off-the-shelf at: Data Stream, 29 Carlyle St., P.O. Box 87, Napier. Phone (070) 356-195 Prices Quoted are Data Stream List price (inc GST) Better Dead Than Alien (Electra $69.99) This is a shoot-em-up in the classic style, with your ship at the bottom of the screen and a formation of aliens above you, dropping bombs and swooping down to attack you. You control your ship with your choice of mouse, joystick or keyboard. You can also choose a 2 player game with both players on the screen at the same time. There are 25 different levels with each level comprising 3 sections. The first two sections of each level are formations of 6 columns each of 4 aliens and the third section is either a large super-alien, or a meteor storm. Each level has a password, so that you can start the game on any level that you have previously reached. You only have one ship but it has a number of shields (it starts off with 3) These shields also store energy for the laser and rapid firing can deplete the shield so that it will be destroyed by one hit. Occasionally one of the aliens will start pulsing bright green and if you shoot it it will drop a power capsule that you can catch. This will either add to your shields or give you one of a number of enhancements (eg rapid-fire, double-ship, scattered shots etc) these enhancements are only effective for a short time (usually until the end of the current wave) so make the most of them. If the last alien in a wave is flashing then that enhancement will be carried over into the next wave. The sound is generally good with about 58K of sampled sounds in iff format. You get an "ouch" if you get hit and applause when you get a high score, plus the usual explosions. The game is protected but it can be copied onto a hard disk. When run it will ask you to insert the original disk to check the protection. This is an excellent shoot-em-up that is easy to start with and gets progressively harder on higher levels. I recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of game. Buggy Boy (Elite $79.99) requires joystick. This is a conversion of the coin-op Speed-Buggy. You drive a hotted-up dune buggy (controlled by a joystick in the usual way with the fire button toggling between low and high gear) over an obstacle course that features such hazards as rocks, lamposts, narrow bridges and tunnels. The game ends when you run out of time, or when you finish the course. There are 5 different courses to choose from, and high scores are recorded (but not saved to disk) for each track. Points are gained by passing over flags and through gates. If you get the colored flags in the right order you get bonus points. Some of the gates are labelled "Time" and going through these gives you a few seconds extra. Hitting a log will cause your buggy to jump into the air and can be used to avoid some of the obstacles. You can also use small rocks to put you up on two wheels so you can squeeze through narrow gaps. If you try to turn to sharply while on two whells you will fall over and crash. Like many car racing games crashes do not cause permanent damage, they just cost you a few seconds time while you get going again. The game has one or to bugs that cause it to freeze up. This appears to occur when you hit the edge of a bridge while on two wheels. Like many arcade conversions this game is very easy to get into and is very addictive. Empire (Interstel/EA $93.99) I was going to say that this was the strategy game of the month, but its authors have already subtitled it "Wargame of the Century". Hyperboles aside this is a very powerful and complex strategic game. There can be two or three players, any of which can be controlled by computer. There is even a play-by-mail option. (The game data file is saved with a password and then passed on to the next player; this could be done via modem, but it is not a real-time interactive modem game). The game is not copy- protected (enter a word from the comprehensive 70 page manual at the start) and there are instructions to install the game on a hard disk. Once installed it takes up about 500K. Of course it can be run from a copy of the original disk. It will multi-task, taking about 170K of chip memory on my machine. I did not check fast memory usage but it could not have been more than 300k as it runs on a 512k machine. The object of the game is to conquer an entire planet, which is represented in the game by a grid of 100h by 60v squares. There are a number of "worlds" provided but you can also design your own with a map editor. Each square can be sea, land or a city and it is the capture and control of the cities that is the key to the game. Each city is a production center and can produce armies, fighter aircraft or ships. There are 6 types of ships: Troop transports, destroyers, submarines, cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers. This game makes good use of mouse and menus (with keyboard equivalents). However it is still a complex game so it is wise to read the manual before starting the game. I don't know whether this is the "Wargame of the Century", (there are still 12 years for a better game to be produced) but it is the best strategic game that I have played on any machine. Wargame fanatics should have a look at this game. Tip for Larn players Unlike other adventures, Larn will only save one game at a time. The saved game is automatically reloaded and the file deleted the next time you play the game. To avoid this you can copy the file to another disk or drawer. The file is called larn12.0.sav and has no icon. You will have to use diskman, browser or the CLI to copy it. If there are a number of people using the same disk make a different drawer for each player and copy the saved game to the Larn: disk before playing (and back to that player's drawer after saving the game)