***** - 2000AD

**** - Toxic!

*** - The Beano

** - Tom And Jerry Monthly

* - Computer And Video Games

OCEAN BLUE

Yes folks, Ocean are just a little bit down in the dumps at not having had any games at the top of the charts for a good few months now, although there's a very good reason for that in that they haven't actually released anything very much in the last few months. They're all set to put that right in the lucrative autumn-winter months though, with a veritable tidal wave of products. Best bet for Christmas No. 1 could well be The Simpsons, the cartoon licence that's already available to purchasers of the 1 Meg Amiga Carton Classics pack, but will be out for the normal machines shortly. Then there's Wizkid, the long-awaited follow-up to Wizball, which is looking even more bizarre than the slightly surreal original. Movie conversion fans (are there still any out there after Nightbreed, Total Recall and Navy Seals?) will be simply dying to rush out and buy Hudson Hawk, a licence featuring Bruce Willis And His Incredible Receding Hairline in a platformy adventure that looks a cut above the production-line stuff that the Manchester mob have been churning out recently, while 3D fans will lap up Robocop 3, a stunning-looking game with a real feel for the original film, as well as some pretty incredible (if a bit on the slow side at the moment) animation of a huge Robocop character. Finally on the cinematic side, there's the almost-finished Terminator 2, which goes back in the direction of Batman in being a mix of pretty respectable driving and fighting sub-games. All of these games are well under way, and most of them are looking pretty good, so it looks safe to tentatively say that Ocean are on the way back after a lean period (both in quality and quantity terms) which was beginning to worry even their staunchest fans. About time too, that's what I say.

LOT. TRB. CHLNGE.

Gremlin's sequel to the much-acclaimed (and rightly so) Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge loses a word from its title but gains lots of new features, including a three-player option (via an extra machine), a more varied selection of cars to drive (ie two instead of one), and most strikingly, a whole slew of weather conditions to drive through, from snow and rain to the incredibly impressive fog sequence. While there's quite a while to go yet before the finished thing is available, it's already looking excellent, with gameplay that's if anything even better than the original (how rarely we get to see that these days). For fans of high-speed rollercoaster driving thrills (me included), this could well be THE release of the autumn.

HERE IT COMES AGAIN

This week: FALLING AND LAUGHING

Since Miner 2049er more years ago than I care to remember, people have bought platforms-and-ladders games. In fact, there was once a time when every other game released would be yet another attempt at a Manic Miner clone, a habit which persisted right on into the first couple of years of 16-bit dominance and reached a peak recently with Switchblade 2. Still, all those years of imitation and tribute should have left software houses with a rich seam to plunder for the ever-growing re-release market. Let's take a look at a few...

IMPOSSAMOLE (GBH, £7.99 on 16-bits, £3.99 on 8-bits)

One of the most enduring characters in platform gaming history is Monty Mole. Appearing first in an eponymous game which only stood out from Manic Miner et al by having an Arthur Scargill sprite at the end (which got the game onto News At Ten at the time, would you believe?), Monty survived through a series of sequels of varying quality before arriving for a triumphant comeback in the hands of Core Design, celebrated programmers of the enormous 16-bit platform hits Rick Dangerous and Rick Dangerous 2. How could such a magnificent meeting of, er, minds possibly fail? Easy. By producing a game as completely rotten as this one. Impossamole featured Monty in an il-judged superhero guise, and combined all the worst features of the Rick games with a beat-'em-up element so dire and out-of-place that Monty almost made it onto News At Ten again as armies of outraged game lovers besieged Gremlin with stones and petrol bombs in protest at the sullying of their beloved character. The only bits of Impossamole which weren't maddeningly crap were the bits which were too boring to get worked up about, and the game crashed deservedly into the gutter. Now, shame-faced, Gremlin are trying to palm it off again at a price which is closer to, but still considerably above, it's true value. Don't be fooled.

*

BIONIC COMMANDO (Kixx, £7.99 on 16-bits, £4.99 on 8-bit compilations)

CapCom's corking coin-op climbing classic (sorry) wasn't one of the most widely-seen arcade games ever, but that didn't worry US Gold as they set out to bring it to the less-than-gasping-in-anticipation gamesplaying public. Mind you, when they did, the finished product brought more than a few plaudits their way, and deservedly so, because it was one of the more successful coin-op-to-8-bit conversions ever, maintaining all the playability of the original while being mindful of the limitations of the host machines. All the good work went out of the window, though, when flushed with this success USG decided to carry on and bring the game to 16-bitters too. The 'limitations of the machine' concept went flying as the programmers introduced an absurd juddery push-scrolling system and in the process made the game almost entirely unplayable. Great music wasn't enough to save it, and I can only put the good reviews it still managed to get down to drugs, bribery, or both. For £5 with two other CapCom games, 8-bit owners can get themselves a real bargain here, but Amiga and ST punters would be well advised not to touch this with a 30-foot long bargepole dipped in Dettol and covered in condoms.

8-bit versions ****, 16-bit versions *

STRYX (Sizzlers, £7.99 on 16-bits only)

To be fair to Psygnosis (for 'tis they who are responsible for this latest addition to the re-release label clan), this isn't just a platforms-and-ladders game. I've included it anyway, though, because the platform action which makes up the first and biggest part of it is so unbelievably appalling that very few people will ever bother to progress as far as the more shoot-'em-uppy sections which the game also features. Your anonymous little sprite trudges aimlessly around some identikit scenery, taking the odd potshot at big but lifeless enemies with his ineffectual little gun, and it took me about as long to get utterly bored with it as it does for Jimmy Hill to annoy a Scotsman. Really, from a major-league outfit like Psygnosis, you'd think professional pride in some of their truly great games would prevent them blackening their good name with terminally terrible tommyrot like this, but it would seem not to be the case. Releases like this are a great excuse to start saving up for Christmas.

*

BEG, BORROW AND BURN (in that order)

JIMMY WHITE'S WHIRLWIND SNOOKER (Virgin)

Hitting the shops in a matter of seconds, Archer MacLean's first major product since the legendary IK+ is also one of the best games by anyone since the aforementioned beat-'em-up wowed the world all those years ago (can it really have been five years?). Not only does it play a game of snooker to rival the great Mr. White himself, but JWWS boasts some of the slickest and most impressive presentation in the history of the 16-bits. All of Archer's games are programmed with tender loving care, but the zooming, swooping 3D and little hidden gags concealed in here make this the game he'll be putting at the top of his CV from now on. Stunning.

THE EXECUTIONER (Hawk)

Thrust is one of the all-time classics of computer gaming, so it's perhaps surprising that it hasn't spawned more imitators. This version combines the traditional tense precision gameplay with a tasteless and superficial torture sequence and a largely unnecessary strategy element, but it may be that the Thrust gameplay itself is enough for some people. Mind you, it's a shame that in this case even that's been spoiled to some extent by the lack of keyboard controls, but don't dismiss The Executioner until you've had a look, at least.

WILD WHEELS (Ocean)

3D soccer-style games have an unhappy history on the 16-bits (Street Hockey and Stormball being just a couple of the worse efforts), and Wild Wheels isn't the game to change any of that. Dull graphics, unhelpful and confusing views, and gameplay thinner than Karen Carpenter drag this game right down, and while it IS slightly more playable than most of the flops which have preceded it, that still makes it about as playable as a piano with the lid nailed down. Strictly for those with more pound notes than braincells.

SARAKON (Leisure Genius, ST, Amiga and PC)

Shanghai seems to be the in thing right now. Every week brings a new PD version out of the woodwork, Activision's official sequel is well on the way and due soon, and now Leisure Genius (through Virgin) have come up with this neat little variant. Sarakon presents you with a screen full of stacked tiles of various designs, which you have to clear from the screen by removing like pairs. So far so, um, exactly the same, but in Sarakon the difference is that the two tiles you remove have to be not only matching and individually moveable, but also connected by an invisible line with no more than two corners in it (er...), which makes this rather more of a brainteaser, especially as it comes complete with some fairly stringent time limits.

It's the easiest thing in the world to actually play, but clearing more than a few levels will test the keenest of eyes, the calmest of natures, and the quickest of reactions. If there's a quibble, it's that on the later levels some of the different tile patterns are actually disturbingly similar, but you soon get to recognise the different types at a glance, leaving you with no excuse when you fail embarrasingly to clear a level yet again. Sarakon also features a nifty little bonus game which breaks up the action nicely without being intrusive or overlong, and adds a little more value to what is already a great game. While you're waiting for Shanghai II, snap this one up.

****

PLAYING TIPS

SHADOW DANCER (US Gold, ST and Amiga)

During play simply pause, type 'GIVE ME INFINITES' (or if that doesn't work, 'GIVE ME INFINITY'), then press Return to continue the game with infinite lives.

DINOSAUR CORNER

No Hatstand this week, irrelevance fans, but rest assured your favourite column of tangential trivia will be back in seven days' time. For a change though, this week I'll be taking a not-so-retrospective look at a machine you may have thought was dead and buried.

Do you have a guilty secret? Are you scared to let your friends look on top of your wardrobe? Do you always stop your mum from cleaning underneath your bed, lest she might stumble across...the Acorn Electron? The BBC Micro's baby brother sold many thousands of units in the heyday of the 8-bits, but now it's confined to the dumper of history alongside the Elan, Jupiter Ace, Sord M5, Dragon 32 and all the rest. Or is it? Surprisingly, no. Anyone who's played Audiogenic's Exile (touted by our sister magazines Amiga Power and Commodore Format as 'the future of arcade adventures') might be more than a bit shocked to discover that Electron owners beat them to it several months ago. Then quite stunned to learn that Elk fans can also buy Infogrames' incredible Sim City, and not a little taken aback on hearing that Pipe Mania, Last Ninja 2, Klax and many more popular recent hits are also available on this venerable machine. Mainly responsible is veteran software house Superior Software, who have licensed and programmed the Acorn versions of these and other games.

It seems a shame that so few people will have heard of these excellent conversions, so if you've got an old Electron gathering dust in the attic, why not fish it out and surprise yourself?