Crazy Cars II
(Titus, 1989)

You're in a Ferrari F40 and are trying to smash a racket which is being run by some corrupt policemen. You have to race your car around four American states - Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico - and reach several destinations within the time limit. The police are on the loose, though! This game is much better than the original Crazy Cars, with excellent graphics and great doppler effects when you're approaching police cars. There's also some really groovy digitised music to listen to on the title screen! The noise of your engine is OK, too, and it's a nice game with a lot of map-reading required. As for the cartridge version, the only differences in the graphics are that the sky looks nicer, and the instrument panel is brown instead of grey - although the map is built into the game and can be accessed at any time.

See also: Crazy Cars.

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8

I loved playing crazy golf when I was young, but this version of the game is staggeringly bad. It's written in BASIC for a start, and each of the 18 holes is drawn entirely using lines. It looks extremely ugly and amateurish, and even more so thanks to the horrible colour schemes that are used. Aiming the ball is a bit difficult, and achieving par or under will take a lot of practice - and no doubt a lot of frustration as well. However, the game is so awful that most players will play one round and switch off. The fact that it was released very early in the CPC's life is no excuse for such an abysmal game.

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Do you remember those funfair stalls where you have to shoot at various targets and win prizes depending on how many points you score? This offering consists of five target shooting games - Jungle Adventure, Junior Hunter, Magic Balloons, Smoker Nightmare, and Special Police. Each game has its own slightly different set of rules, and if you run out of time or bullets, the game is over. Although you can play the game with a joystick, it is more fun if you use Loriciel's Westphaser lightgun, for which the game is designed. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, but if you only have a joystick, it's a little bit too easy and becomes uninteresting in the long term.

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6

The English cricket team are on their way to a Caribbean island to play a cricket match against the island's team. However, although the players don't know it, there is another important reason why the match is being played. The island is rich in a natural resource called guano, and the British government wants to grab some of it. But the problems for the team begin when their 'plane is hijacked, and things only get worse... This is a text adventure in two parts. In the first part, you must find the team's hotel and prepare for the match, while in the second part, you play the match - which is quite a strange experience considering it's all done in the style of a text adventure! The game has been written using GAC, but the parser's limited abilities once again make this a frustrating adventure to play.

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5

As a new recruit to the Chicago police force, you've been assigned the task of clearing the city of gangsters. On each of the eight levels, you must shoot the gangsters while avoiding the civilians, for which points will be deducted. The graphics are pretty simple and so are the sound effects, and it is one of the easiest games I've ever played - I really did complete it on my first go! Still, if you're after a quick blast, you could do worse than this one.

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La Crypte des Maudits
(Lankhor, 1991)

After stealing the magical book of spells in La Secte Noire, the Black Sect has returned to terrorise the population. They are gathering in a nearby crypt, and you have ventured into it, to annihilate this evil sect once and for all. Will you succeed? The crypt is filled with passages blocked by grilles, doors and chests to be opened, and lots of buttons to be pressed and levers to be pulled, and the secret rooms that come with performing these actions. As with nearly all of Lankhor's other games on the CPC, this is a text adventure, and the graphics are beautifully drawn, capturing the sinister atmosphere of the crypt perfectly. The parser is rather limited, but this isn't too much of a problem.

See also: La Secte Noire.

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Bentley the bear is exploring a castle and must collect all the gems from each room in the castle. Among some of the bizarre monsters to be encountered are marbles which home in on Bentley, tree spirits which Bentley can temporarily disable by jumping over them, centipedes which eat gems slowly, and witches. Both the graphics and sound effects are absolutely terrible, and Bentley seems to have his legs stuck together! This was originally released as a limited edition game, but it sold so poorly that it was re-released a few years later - and it's not surprising to see why when you see how it plays. It's a distinctly average game, although it's not really bad.

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6

The treasures of the Yolkfolk have been stolen from the Temple of Zeffar, and Dizzy has to retrieve them to avoid a curse falling on the kingdom - and so begins Dizzy's last adventure on the CPC. This game is quite different from Dizzy's other adventures. It's divided into four parts, and there are passwords from them so that you don't have to replay parts that you have already completed - a very welcome addition. What is most noticeable, however, is that the graphics are in the high-colour, low-resolution mode instead of the normal four-colour mode that has been used in all of Dizzy's other adventures on the CPC, and I actually like the new graphics. On the other hand, most of the puzzles are easy to solve, and the conversation with other characters is often banal.

See also: Bubble Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy Down the Rapids, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fantasy World Dizzy, Fast Food, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.

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7

Noughts and crosses is brought into three dimensions as you play either a friend or the computer to be the first to line up four tiles in a row. Of course, as well as stopping your opponent making lines on one level, you've also got to keep an eye on them making lines that cross all four levels, if you see what I mean. However, this is easier said than done when you're playing the computer - maybe the human brain just isn't capable of visualising the lines in 3D. It's probably better to play with a friend, although the controls are awkward; you have to press fire quickly twice to place a tile, and it often doesn't work.

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5

A portal of evil has fallen on Sherwood, and it's up to Friar Tuck to go to the castle and destroy the portal. The game involves lots of exploring and killing various creatures and humans, whilst working out which weapon to use. There are also some objects to collect, but you'll have to find out what they're used for. Despite the game being in the four-colour, high-resolution mode, the graphics are extremely blocky, and the sound effects are equally awful - yet for some reason, it's still not all that bad a game; it's just that getting through the swamp is extremely hard.

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