***** - Gerry Sadowitz

**** - Denis Leary

*** - Bruce Morton

** - Jimmy Tarbuck

* - Andrew 'Dice' Clay

A NEW SAM GAME!

If they all jumped up and down in happiness at the same time, there probably still wouldn't be enough Sam Coupe owners to jolt the skin off a rice pudding, but those there are will doubtless be ecstatic to discover that Broderbund's wonderful Prince Of Persia is mere moments away from release on their machine. The almost-completed version seen looks extremely spiffy, and it might just breathe a little bit of life into the Sam market, which is currently dying on its feet due to software starvation. If there's any justice at all in the world, this game will sell enough to make some other software houses bring out the odd release or two, so if you're a Sam owner you know what to do.

THREE-MINUTE HERO
Following on from the recent news of their egg-like hero Dizzy's huge success on the 8-bits (100,000 sales of Treasure Island Dizzy on Spectrum alone), Code Masters have announced plans for a 16-bit Dizzy compilation. The five-game set will include rewrites of several of the hard-boiled hero's 8-bit triumphs, along with a brand new Diz epic as yet awaiting a title. The pack should hit the streets in November at around £19.95, clearing the way for a serious attempt at the Christmas No. 1 slot.

'OH NO'

Please, tell me it's not true. It can't be, can it? Tell me it was all just a horrible dream, that I'm going to wake up any minute now and laugh it off, albeit in a slightly nervous and unsettled manner. I mean, surely Alternative Software haven't REALLY just acquired the licence to produce an 'Allo Allo' computer game, for release on all major formats around September this year? It doesn't bear thinking about, does it? No, I'm sure it's all just a malicious rumour, put around by some mad scientist or someone like that. It must be. I hope...

PLAYING TIP

PP HAMMER (Demonware, Amiga, ST and C64)

To use these Amiga level codes, you'll have to enter your name as 'HAMMER'. Catchy, aren't they?

1 - BEVDESRR

2 - UDICORAJ

3 - JCBBAJWI

4 - UAVBCHAI

5 - AWHATGBH

6 - TVDWVFTG

7 - ITTWJDSG

8 - TSJVSCGF

9 - ARCUFBUF

10 - TIWVGWDE

15 - ICFJJJBB

20 - SSVJECFV

25 - DFDGRTUB

30 - RVJBTFHH

35 - CICBGWVE

40 - RBHGJIGB

45 - BRAEEBIV

50 - JEFHRSDS

HERE IT COMES AGAIN

There are releases. Then there are re-releases. Then there are half-arsed attempts at squeezing more cash out of punters smart enough not to buy manky old rubbish the first time out, but not quite smart enough to resist a 'bargain' at the second time of asking. You need to find out which is which. Luckily, I'm just the chap who can tell you...

This week: SHOOT-'EM-UPS

SUPER GRID RUNNER (Action 16)

Amiga and ST, £7.99

This Jeff Minter game follows much the same path as all other Jeff Minter games - loads of speed, loads of zapping, loads of camels and loads of Pink Floyd logos. Unsurprisingly enough, it's a sequel to his 10-year-old 8-bit Centipede-style blaster, and takes a very similar format, but it's extremely slickly done, with beautiful presentation and the kind of addictive blasting action that went out of fashion years ago. Needless to say, it's excellent fun, and the kind of game that you'll never tire of loading up when you fancy a bit of a pixel-slaughtering session.

****

R-TYPE (The Hit Squad)

All formats, £7.99 for 16-bits and £3.99 for 8-bits)

The classic Irem coin-op was a conversion that many pundits said was completely impossible on the 8-bits, and asking a lot of even the Amiga and ST. Activision proved them all wrong with a set of conversions of variable quality, from the slightly simplified but very playable ST version and the less-simplified-but-not-so-accurate Amiga one, to the absolutely amazing Spectrum copy. The Speccy was pushed beyond its limits, with huge graphics bursting with non-clashing colours, and a game which replicated the arcade original perfectly in almost every way. All versions (with the possible exception of the C64) are well worth getting, but any Spectrum owner who doesn't have this game in his software collection, doesn't HAVE a software collection.

**** (Spectrum *****)

XENON II (Mirror Image)

Amiga and ST, £10.99

Ah. The King's New Clothes. Critics reached for new superlatives on seeing this eagerly-awaited follow-up to the game that launched the Bitmap Brothers on an unsuspecting world, but perhaps it may have served them all well to look beyond the fabulous music and the lovely graphics, where they'd have found a vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up of the most bog-standard nature imaginable. Waves of bog-standard aliens sloped down the bog-standard screen in bog-standard patterns, stopped only by the player's bog-standard ship, which could have any of a million impressive-looking extra weapons bolted on to it in a bold attempt to hide the complete lack of imaginative features in the bog-standard gameplay. By all means blow 11 quid on this if you want to impress your friends with your Amiga's processing power (the ST version doesn't have the glorious in-game music, and so loses half the game's appeal is lost immediately), but you'd still get more gameplay if you bought a copy of Vogue and a Bomb The Bass 12-inch with the money instead.

**

BEG, BORROW AND BURN

BEG

HUNTER (Activision)

Coming from the people who brought you Beast Busters, you might expect this epic of 3D exploration and rabbit-shooting to be a bit average. Luckily though, it's utterly wonderful, and assuming that it's finally in the shops (it's been finished for ages), you really do want to be getting out there and buying it sharpish.

BORROW

PROFLIGHT (Hi Soft)

Coming from the people who brought you, um, lots of really great serious utility software, you might expect this flight sim to be a bit on the serious side. And it is. So serious, in fact, that there's NOTHING TO SHOOT IN IT AT ALL. If you fancy a pure flying experience it's the program for you, but game fans beware.

BURN

RENEGADE LEGION INTERCEPTOR (SSI/US Gold)

Coming from the people who brought you Eye Of The Beholder, you might expect this wargame to be a bit tasty. Actually, it tastes like month-old milk in a heatwave. Loads of background detail and high-tech gubbins, but almost no game at all. 

GAME REVIEW

RBI TWO BASEBALL

Domark

'Hold on', I hear you cry, 'RBI Two? What happened to RBI One, then?' Well, it was released yonks ago on the Nintendo, that's what (and bizarrely, RBI Three is coming soon on the Sega), but it wasn't until the sequel was out that someone thought of bringing it to the Amiga. It's a baseball game (so no surprises there) in the mould of the veteran classic Hardball, but smartened up a bit with the addition of sampled speech, tons of background info, an in-stadium scoreboard with dramatic animated displays for just about every occurrence in the game, and lots of other nice presentation tweaks. Which would all be to no avail if the game was a duffer, but luckily it isn't. Mind you, it's not exactly a revolutionary success either. It uses much the same style and control system as every baseball game before it, relying more or less solely on timing to make the difference between a strike and a home run. Fielding is also, as usual, a complete pain in the bum, and you're likely to spend quite a while watching the opposition clocking up the runs while your players play 'catch' with each other until you get the hang of it. Still, these gripes disappear with a bit of practice (fielding, in particular, becomes so second-nature you wonder why all baseball games don't do it this way), and what you're left with is a beautifully-presented, if slightly unremarkable sports sim that would be a perfectly reasonable buy if it wasn't for the marginally silly price tag. £30 is just too much for an essentially simple game like this (even if you do get a 'free' baseball cap in the package), and unless Domark bring it down to a more normal level, I can't say that this is very good value for your money at all.

***

REVIEW

TURRICAN 2 (Rainbow Arts)

Amstrad, £9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

This game was released on the 16-bits quite some time ago to considerable critical acclaim, though there were several people who voiced complaints about its similarity to the first Turrican (well, there was me, anyway). Now Rainbow Arts have finally finished cramming all the 1500-odd screens of platform blasting action into the Amstrad, and the results are pretty stunning. The graphics would defy the belief of anyone who was around in the earlier days of the Amstrad, being packed with colour without any loss of detail or blockiness (indeed, they're not that far short off the 16-bit versions), and the sound is solid and jarring throughout, but it's the playability that really grabs. The vast levels are packed with things to do, aliens to massacre and secret bonuses to discover, and when you get deeper into the game it suddenly changes into an R-Type-style shoot-'em-up, knocking out the old moan that Turrican was just too samey. Turrican 2 is a game that seems more at home on the 8-bit machine than it ever did on the Amiga and ST, and while it's probably not (as some Amstrad veterans are claiming) the best CPC game ever, it's almost certainly the best shoot-'em-up the old machine's likely to see. A magnificent technical achievement which is, for once, also a great game.

****

HATSTAND CORNER

Rainbird's epic of Arctic exploration and strategic manoeuverings Midwinter was a major hit in Britain and the U.S. a year or so ago, but some people in the industry have expressed a degree of surprise that it wasn't more successful in Europe, where this kind of mind-stretching monster of character interaction and endless traipsing around usually goes down well. I can now reveal that the main reason was that the word 'Midwinter' sounds uncannily similar to an obscure Bavarian slang word for a homosexual prostitute, and Rainbird decided that in the interests of sensitivity it would be better to rename the game. Unfortunately, while they tried to think of a new title, the European public got fed up waiting and the game eventually bombed disastrously.