***** - Parachute

**** - Fishpaste

*** - Bonnie Langford

** - Kangaroo

* - Twelve

...IN A VERY REAL SENSE

It's been a funny old week for me, game fans. First I came across two practically identical platform games (Blues Brothers and Hudson Hawk - see review elsewhere on these very pages), then what should crop up but Magic Twins, US Gold's latest CapCom coin-op licence? (So bloody what? - reader's voice). 'So bloody what?' I hear you cry, but the odd thing about Mega Twins is...Video Kid. (Sorry? - reader's voice). Yes, Gremlin's new scrolling shoot-'em-up Video Kid also hove into view very recently, and the similarities between the two are distinctly unsettling. Imagine my complete lack of surprise, then, to find out that the two games are being programmed by the very same team, Twilight. While in truth the two games are quite different (Vid Kid being a shoot-'em-up, while Mega Twins is more platform-orientated in style), it still seems a rather unfortunate coincidence that they're both going to hit the streets at more or less the same time. Doubtless USG and Gremlin know what they're doing, but it looks to me like someone's going to suffer...

 ...AND MORE MEGA TWINS

That's right, gland fans, the second Elvira game is well and truly on the way, but our well-endowed heroine won't be mucking around with any of that yawny old adventuring rubbish this time around. Elvira The Arcade Game is a scrolling platforms and ladders thing with a Shadow Of The Beast-esque look to it, and it doesn't look too terrible at all at the moment (although a bit of animation wouldn't hurt). MicroValue (for 'tis they who are responsible) promise the game won't contain anything that might upset your granny, so there go half the potential sales right away...

GAME REVIEW

Sky High Stuntman (Code Masters, Amiga and ST, £7.99)

SWIV, eh? Don't you just love it? Code Masters certainly do, which is probably why they've released this touching tribute to Storm's impossibly violent and totally classic shoot-'em-up epic. Missing instructions forbid me from telling you what it's all got to do with stuntmen, but the game is basically a straight clone of it's illustrious forebear, with the same detailed graphics, frenetic action and solid sound effects. Even the power-up system is the same, with your arc of bullets expanding as you progress and death bringing about a downgrading of power rather than a complete loss, as is so often the case in these games. It's tough enough to challenge SWIV veterans, and enormously playable (if none too demanding in the brainpower stakes), you might even say it's everything a budget game should be. And if you don't, I will. 'Sky High Stuntman is everything a budget game should be.' See? ****

TRASHED AND BURNED

What's smouldering in the NCE asbestos bin this week. Two things, as it happens...

ZONE WARRIOR (Electronic Arts, Amiga and ST, £25.99)

This is a strange one. There's nothing strange about Zone Warrior itself, it's a staggeringly dreadful platform shoot-'em-up which I can only assume the normally-impeccable Electronic Arts have released as some kind of sick joke. Pitiful graphics, useless sound, and the most tedious and repetitive gameplay since, ooh, Pong or something, go together to make up a painful disgrace to humanity the like of which hasn't been seen since Bryan Adams got to No.1. No, what's strange about Zone Warrior is that a 'pair' of Other Computer Magazines (and remember, this is Deja Vu week in NCE) have somehow managed to twist themselves into enough of a knot to award it 92%. Legal considerations prevent me from suggesting that anyone's tongue has been in places where it shouldn't be, but really, something funny's going on. If a single reader writes to me and honestly suggests that Zone Warrior is deserving of anything less than utter contempt, I'll take it all back, but I can't see it happening. Honest differences of opinion are one thing, but some people just can't be trusted.

Hudson Hawk (Ocean, Amiga and ST, £25.99, 8-bits some other price)

Yikes. Deja vu vibes in the area, or what? After last week's Blues Brothers review, you can imagine my surprise when someone gave me another copy of it to review. At least, that's what I thought it was, until a closer look revealed it to be, in fact, Hudson Hawk, Ocean's latest misguided attempt at turning a crap movie into an interesting computer game. Amazingly though, it's NOT another lots-of-little-sub-games -flimsily-based-on-bits-of-the-movie-which-are-all-crap-and- add-together- to-make-nothing-very-much-at-all effort.

This time, respected programming team Special FX have decided to take one genre and stick to it, with the result that Hudson Hawk has a more coherent feel to it than almost anything Ocean have released all year. What you get is 15-odd levels (with various sub-levels within those) of straightforward no-nonsense cartoon platform action, all of which bear more than a passing resemblance to Titus' aforementioned Blues Brothers licence. Sadly though, the comparison between the two isn't a flattering one for Hudson. While both games are loaded with character, Hudson Hawk falls down in one crucial area - playability.

For reasons best known to themselves, Special FX have lumbered the poor thing with one of the most unfriendly control systems I've been tormented by in a long time. Your hero leaps around in an unhelpful diagonal manner when you try to make him jump, but worse is the movement. Old Hawk's got more inertia than a ten-ton juggernaut on a greasy ski-slope - he takes an age to get moving properly and even longer to skid to a stop, and in a precision- movement platform game like this one (with loads of lengthy levels and no password system), it's a misjudgement that almost wrecks the whole thing. That it doesn't is a testament to Special FX's skill in other areas of the game, but if they hadn't hamstrung themselves like this Hudson Hawk could have been brilliant. As it is, it's the best movie licence game from Ocean since Batman, but the excellence of the strikingly similar Blues Brothers is likely to overshadow it completely. ***

PLAYING TIP

CARRIER COMMAND (Mirror Image/ Realtime)

If the other week's complex and involving tips seemed like a bit too much trouble for you, why not try this alternative tactic? It's very simple, just find the enemy carrier right at the start of the game, launch all your Mantas and Walruses at it with weapons bristling from every mounting, and crash them into it once they've fired everything. The Omega will blow into a million little tiny polygon pieces, and the game's yours!

COMPETITION CORNER

A top software prize goes to whoever writes in and tells me the source of this devastating piece of impartial and reasoned criticism from a review in a current issue of Amother Computer Mag, well known for its 'editorial integrity'...

'The first thing we should get out of the way is that Ninja 2 (the bad game) was released by Activision, Ninja 3 (the good) game is being released by System 3 so it's going to be good.'

Love ya, Deborah.