A racing game set in the future featuring advanced hover bikes. The race starts with you lined up with your opponents. As soon as the countdown has finished, off they blast into the distance while you slowly build up your speed. Sadly, this game is just too difficult. You struggle to control the hover bike correctly and the slow frame rate mixed with the small play area makes for a very boring game.

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Rating: 3/10

You are a test pilot working for the Space Rider Jet Pack Company, and have been sent to a planet to test their latest jet pack, and also collect 99 nuggets containing important minerals while you're there. Of course, the caverns and mines in which you'll find these nuggets are filled with hazards and aliens which will drain your energy, which is represented by an oscillating wave of coloured bars at the bottom of the screen – neat. However, the game is rather mediocre. The graphics and sound effects are poor and the jet pack is difficult to control; it's practically impossible to stay still, which makes shooting the aliens a frustrating task. It also lacks originality.

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Rating: 5/10

The Space Smugglers are a highly organised group of dangerous assassins, and you have just been chosen to rid the galaxy of them. On the screen are three teleporters, and aliens appear at random. Some of them are harmless, but others are dangerous and will show you their weapon after a few seconds. You can only shoot an alien when they have drawn their weapon, so you will need quick reflexes to survive! When you have shot the required number of aliens (shown at the top of the screen), you are taken to the next level. This game can only be played using MHT's own Gunstick, and it's actually fairly unexciting. It takes ages to complete a level, and of course, the next level is the same, except that you may need to shoot even more aliens. The graphics and animation are absolutely wonderful, but that's of little consolation.

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Rating: 5/10

An earthquake has struck and has damaged the pipes that cool a nuclear reactor. It's time to call in the local plumber to mend the pipes. This is a platform game consisting of only one screen, and as leaks continually appear, you have to adjust the joints with your spanner to stop the leaks. To make life more difficult, the screen gradually fills with water, although you can go underwater to fix leaks. Other things to watch out for are mutated rats and falling debris. The graphics and sound effects aren't particularly good, as would be expected from a game that was released in the very early days of the CPC, and despite the inclusion of five difficulty levels, there's not much to make you want to play the game again after a few goes.

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Watch a YouTube video of this game by: Xyphoe.

Rating: 5/10

Race against 19 other riders around ten tracks in your super-powered motorcycle, capable of reaching 250mph! There are three difficulty levels – novice, champion and pro – and you can practice each track before you go racing over two, four or six laps. The first thing you'll notice once you start racing is that the graphics are very blocky indeed! However, this doesn't necessarily mean that this is a bad game; in fact, it is quite fast, although one annoying aspect is that all of the riders unerringly remain in the centre of the road, and it is relatively easy to crash into them unintentionally. Despite this problem, this is still a fairly decent game overall.

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Watch a YouTube video of this game by: ChinnyVision.

Rating: 7/10

A vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up whose only difference from every other game like it is its speed. There's nothing original in the game at all, but the aliens whizz across the screen like bullets. Fortunately you don't lose a life on contact with them; your energy decreases instead, and when it runs out, you lose one of your three lives. Your shield is also fully restored at the start of each level, which is annoying if it runs out just before you shoot the last alien! The game isn't that hard, but every level is the same, except for a little picture somewhere on the screen. The sound effects are sparse and the music on the title screen really hurts the ears.

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Watch a YouTube video of this game by: ChinnyVision.

Rating: 5/10

Gimbal the wizard has managed to mess up his spells again and has trapped himself, as well as you and several other people in a castle! You have to release Gimbal and return everyone to the correct zones in the castle. Lots of objects are scattered over seven floors, and while many of them are useful, a lot of them are not. You'll also need to interact with the characters, make sure they eat and drink, keep them happy, and get them to help you. This is the second of four games featuring Magic Knight, and it's rather good, too, although the style of the game is very different from Finders Keepers. The graphics aren't that good, although the music isn't bad.

See also: Finders Keepers, Knight Tyme, Stormbringer.

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Rating: 8/10

The fifth Dizzy adventure is also by far the largest – in fact, it's too large! Dizzy has been looking at Theo the wizard's spell book and has managed to send the Yolkfolk somewhere else, so now he has to send them all back again. There are a large amount of extra features in this game which make it better than the other Dizzy adventures – for instance, Dizzy can hurt himself if he falls too far – but that is outweighed by the sheer size of the game. It's far too much to sit through in one go, and the bit where you have to collect rocks each time you want to go down the wind shaft is extremely wearisome. The tune quickly becomes annoying, too.

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

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Watch a YouTube video of this game by: GameHammer Classic Gaming.

Rating: 7/10

The final instalment of Infocom's Enchanter trilogy sees you as the master of the Circle of Enchanters, but now magic itself is failing, and spells just aren't working properly any more. The journey involves collecting white cubes that are central to the use of magic, and you'll soon find that they have some very special properties indeed... The author, Dave Lebling, said that it "was intended to be a nasty, vicious and cruel, hard game and it succeeded in that." You rely on spells a lot more than the previous two adventures, and many of the puzzles are extremely difficult. Infocom meant this to be their toughest ever adventure, and I can agree with that. However, it's probably too tough for most people, and I didn't like it as much as some of their other adventures.

See also: Enchanter, Sorcerer.

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Rating: 7/10

Sphaira

(Ubi Soft, 1989)

You are an archaeologist who is looking for a lost civilisation which lies underneath the Atlantic Ocean. After entering some magic caves in a remote part of Peru, you emerge somewhere else, and your quest begins... This is an adventure which uses icons to select actions, instead of requiring you to enter them. A lot of puzzles rely on you knowing a magic word; you will need to use them either as passwords or when casting spells (and if you want to know one, ask for help at the cottage and the big tree). The graphics are fairly good, but the game relies too much on magic words, and there are very few objects to pick up and make use of. The procedure used for casting spells is also annoying and unnecessarily complicated.

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Rating: 7/10