The Slime Rats are the coolest skateboarding gang in town, although I don't know why they call themselves the Slime Rats – the name doesn't sound very cool to me! To join the gang, you must tackle a series of courses, collecting eight flags in each. The graphics are appalling, there's no sound effects (although you have to listen to some irritating tunes before and after each course), and the gameplay is just as bad. The scrolling between screens is annoying and the collision detection is suspect as well. Maybe it's not quite as bad as it sounds, but it could have been a lot better.

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Tom Essex woke up one morning and found that all of his super powers had now disappeared, and he was no longer Superkid – but he continues his mission to clear the streets of criminals. Armed with his skateboard and catapult, Tom has to skate around six stages and collect nine banknotes on each one, while avoiding the muggers or firing at them. Contact with the muggers loses energy, and if you lose too much, the game is over. After completing a stage, there is a bonus stage which allows you to collect more points. The music is very good, and the graphics are OK as well, and Tom zooms around each stage at some speed. However, the muggers are hard to avoid and appear randomly on each screen, and progressing to subsequent stages is more a matter of luck than skill.

See also: Superkid, Superkid in Space.

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The Evil Sorcerer has captured several beautiful women, and your mission is to rescue them and defeat the Sorcerer, who adopts various disguises throughout the eight levels of this platform game. One Eye (and Red Dog if two people are playing) must board pirate ships, explore a variety of lands, kill a lot of the Sorcerer's henchmen, and collect lots of treasure in the process. Sword fighting techniques will not take long to master, although finding the right methods for dealing with some of the tougher henchmen will be a bit more tricky. The graphics are colourful, although the music doesn't fit in well with the pirate theme – and if you only have 64K of memory, you will only hear silence! Overall, this is a fairly satisfactory game, although the scrolling is very jerky, and the controls are slightly awkward.

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Skweek
(Loriciels, 1989)

Many years ago, Skweek's planet was contaminated with a blue skweekicide by aliens. Now you're going to change all 99 continents back to their original colour – pink! Each level consists of a board of tiles, and there are all sorts of hazards – monsters, arrow tiles, ice, and crumbling tiles are just some of them, but there are also a large range of bonuses. The graphics are extremely cute, and Skweek is so small and furry! There are two tunes to select, but they're rather too cute for my liking. You can switch them off, though. All in all, this game is so amazingly excellent that there's no way you can't like it.

See also: Super Skweek, The Tiny Skweeks.

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10

A legend tells that four people will one day bring peace to the kingdom of Belda. That day has come, and you control this group of people. The game is based on Qix (hence its name), where you must draw lines in order to fill in parts of the screen; when you fill at least 75% of the screen, you can go to the next level. To make this more difficult, there are a few monsters; a green mask which moves unpredictably and very quickly around the screen, and one or more other enemies which move along the lines that you have drawn. There are also apples which give you more time, and potions which make you behave in strange ways. The graphics are very good and the game is well presented, but the presence of the green mask makes it frustratingly difficult.

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Slap Fight
(Imagine, 1987)

This is a bog-standard shoot-'em-up in which you are flying above the surface of the planet Orac and shooting aliens. Some of them leave gold stars behind which you can pick up, and collecting them allows you to select from a list of power-ups, which you can decide to make use of at any time. The graphics are pretty good when you consider that this is just another space shoot-'em-up, and the music is good as well. It's just that the enemy bullets are often too small to see, and if you lose a life, it's really difficult to recover from losing all your power-ups too.

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6

This is a simple game set in the future, where two balls – one blue and one red – try to fire another ball over their opponent's goal, which is represented by a square. The game can be played with a friend or against the computer, and you can change the computer's expertise, as well as a number of other settings. The ball is magnetic, and if you're nearby, you can attract it towards you. Once you have the ball, you then aim and release it. While the concept is very simple, it will take time to master, as controlling your ball is tricky due to a lack of friction. Not everyone will like it, but I thought it was reasonably good, although the graphics during the game are rather blocky and the scrolling is slow.

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7

In this brilliant Dizzy clone from Codemasters, you play the part of a trainee wizard named Slightly, and must rescue the lovely princess who has been snatched away by an angry, sunburnt dragon. Unfortunately, poor Slightly is stuck in his master's castle, and must first find his way out. Codemasters add a nice little variation to the gameplay here, as to progress Slightly must learn spells by finding both the spell and a related object (for example, a hearing spell and a megaphone). These are pretty fun, especially later spells which turn the poor guy into a bird and a fish. The graphics are good and little Slightly is cute and well animated, the music is unbelievably catchy, and the game's difficulty is perfect. This game is great in all ways, except for one thing; I found it a bit too short.

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9

It's late on Friday night, and Slug is sitting with his girlfriend, watching the horror film Emperor Hades Meets the Yak-Faced Melboids from East London Part 37 (Revisited) (sounds like an interesting film to me!), when his girlfriend is suddenly taken away by a mechanical arm, to another world. As Slug, you have to collect five hearts on each of the levels, which consist of four moving platforms with holes allowing you to fall down to and jump up to higher and lower platforms. There is the usual array of monsters to shoot with your TNT slime as well. Beneath the silly plot lies an extremely basic arcade game. The graphics are quite good, and there are some nice animated cartoons every three levels, but it's dull and repetitive and won't hold your attention for long.

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4

Playing the role of a James Bond-inspired secret agent, your mission is to stop a terrorist organisation called the Council for World Domination at all costs. After receiving the briefing, you are taken by air to the location where the action begins. Jumping out of the 'plane, you freefall to the landing zone. Several bad guys join your position and try to take you out. A successful landing leads to eight scolling levels which include such scenes as construction sites, factories, underwater action and a motorbike chase. Visually, the game is very detailed and colourful with almost smooth scrolling. There's no in-game sound, but a tune plays on the options screen. Overall, Sly Spy: Secret Agent is a fun shoot-'em-up, if a little repetitive.

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