Game

Phoenix Software Systems and later Persona

Kassoft of ESI

Andrzej Mielcarek

Dyadic is a compilation of two puzzle games; Craft and Snakemania.

In Craft, your aim is to connect all the sections of wire from the grid presented to you. You can rotate each individual block in units of 90 degrees, or shift the whole row horizontally.

In Snakemania, you must collect each of the dots in the maze, being careful not to trap yourself by your tail which grows longer with the more you eat.

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Puzzle games!! Arrghh!! But don’t fear, SAM owner. Don’t throw out your SAM out of the window to the disbelieving crowds below. For this duel compilation is in fact (dare I say it!) original! Well, one of them is and the other is QUITE original, never the less. This compilation has been out and about for absolutely ages and ages, but is back again in the public eye - and how! The first thing to strike you is the “slow loading” system, which I was guarenteed by David Ledbury to be reliable (but ending up putting a HUGE bug in Craft). Craft is the first of the two game pack, and simply presents you with 80 levels of twisted circuit tiles, which you must rearrange into a complete circuit, and speed you off to the next level. This is all done in a time limit, though. The game is written by ESI (yeah!!). From what I have seen so far (until that reeeaallllyyy nasty bug came up in Craft) the game is certainly presentable! The graphics are more than functional (though what else can you do with tiles?) and the music is quite nice, too. The difficulty curve is that so you can learn from your mistakes, and keep this “vital” information all ready for the next level.

The other game on this compilation is the completely original one of the pack, entitled Snakemania. Basically, the game is based on the golden oldie, Snake. Snake, if you can remember that far back, was set on a green field. You were controlling a snake, eating mushrooms and consequently, getting more and more longer. Meaning that your body was becoming a hazard, not just the four walls which surrounded the field.

Persona

Kaz of ESI

Ziutek of ESI

A game based on the venerable arcade classic, Pengo. Your aim is to move the three green boxes into a line, without being caught by the violent blob creatures which lurk around every corner.

Phoenix Software Systems

Andrew Collier, Ian Collier

Roger Hartley, Andrew Collier

Syncytium was a compilation of games and utilities by Andrew Collier, with some contributions by Ian Collier. Many of the programs were previously unreleased, others had been featured in places such as Fred magazine (but of the ones that did, some were enhanced versions).

Highlights include Pipetris, a GamesMaster game based on the “falling block” bonus round of Pipe Mania (which actually was missing from the official Sam version of Pipe Mania); On The Tiles, a BASIC puzzle game; and Ian’s Play command, a Sam implementation of the 128k Spectrum’s Play command (including about an hour of demonstration music from a variety of PD sources).

The compilation sold literally some copies.

Public Domain

David Gommeren

Rob Mies

One of the Sam’s earliest quality PD games, this version of Tetris by David Gommeren (aka Lord Insanity, previously known for writing demos on the ZX Spectrum) was distributed on Fred issue 3. It is largely because of this program that Fred was the first disk magazine to receive rave reviews in the newsstand magazines.

Released: 26 July 1990.

Fred Publishing

Balor Knight

Brian McConnell

The year is 2991. The earth’s energy resources have slowly dwindled into nothingness. Man has been looking to deep space for the answer… And now, in a distance galaxy, a new crystal, ‘Dyzonium’, has been discovered. Scientist believe it to be a great source of energy. A piece the size of an old 23rd century moonbus will power a major city for a month! But there is just one problem… This galaxy is inhabited by nasty mutants from the 25th century intergalactic war. They hate visitors!
This is why the people have hired you, Dr Zyzedd, the most notorious mercenary this side of Xzonia! Your mission, then, is to visit the 10 zones of this galaxy, collect all the Dyzonium crystals, and warp on to the next zone. On your travels look out for weapon power ups scattered about. Collecting them will improve your chances of survival.
Yours is the mission … only you can succeed!

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Hooray! Rejoice in the streets and celebrate as… it’s ANOTHER Fred Publishing title! Three cheers for Colin! Dyzonium has been written by Balor Knight. If that name rings a bell somewhere, he was also responsible for Astroball on the SAM and Spectrum. The plot, as always, is remarkably ridiculous. It goes along the lines of “Earth’s energy resources are exhausted, so you have to go out and get the energy-rich crystals of Xzreyadia (you play Dr Zyzedd, or something) watching out for the 25th time bandit invaders of Xqiarhdfr (or Llandudno, or even Xzonia). I don’t know! Why couldn’t they call the bloke in the spaceship “Bob” and the baddies of “Planet X” or something? It’s hard to believe people get paid thousands to write this stuff!

Anyway, to cut a long plotline short, Dyzonium is your average 8 way scrolly shoot ‘em up affair. Most scrolly shooters on the Coupe normally have a moving starfield and sprites as backgrounds, as it is incredibly difficult to scroll backgrounds like in the many arcade games around. You control a spaceship which has to collect as many crystals, and zap out of the level, as possible. Obviously, the aliens from Xqiarhdfr are out to get you, as well as protect these crystals with all their might. This is where your laser guns come in handy. These double fire and move in the direction you move in. You can destroy most aliens with these, but others must be manoveuvred around to get to the crystals. Icons replenish energy as well as firepower, and you can also use smart bombs to nuke entire portions of the screen.

Fred Publishing

Graham Burtenshaw (including room layouts by Graham Goring)

Tom Kincaid

Prevent an invasion of earth by finding and collecting 365 alien eggs among an extensive 3D landscape.

Revelation and later Persona

David Gommeren

Martijn van Spanje (Cover art: Darrren Blackburn)

Rob Mies

An arkanoid-styled game. Fast, smooth and staggeringly difficult, with lots of power-ups and other features. 150 levels plus bonus screens.

Best played with using the Mouse Interface.

Your Sinclair [review](http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/sambatznballs.htm), courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Crash review, courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Fred Publishing

Mat of ESI

Mat and Ziutek of ESI

Ziutek of ESI

Basically Pac Man, though of course we’re not supposed to admit that. 100 mazes with dots, ghosts and power pills; later on, one-way walls (which look the same as normal walls) appear which makes navigating the maze very much harder.

Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Well, I bought Bulgulators at the last show, mainly because I like PacMan and also because of the extra features it boasts.

For the benefit of complete arse-faces (like myself), I’ll explain the idea of PacMan. :)

In the original PacMan, you played the part of a small yellow tennis ball with a slit for a mouth, and two black eyes (not as in, smack! Ouch, I’ve got a black eye.). On each of the numerous and repetitive levels you had to negotiate a maze containing four ghosts intent on eating you.

Whilst doing this you had to eat all of the dots littering the maze, and perhaps eating the Power Pills, these gave you the power to eat the ghosts for a while, until it wore off and the ghosts returned from their “blue” frightened state, whereupon the ghost that you thought you had time to eat would turn round and kill you.

At the side of the screen there was a tunnel which you could enter and it would warp you to the other side of the screen, the ghosts could not follow you down this and so it proved a useful escape route.

Also, from time to time, small, food-orientated, bonuses would appear in the middle of the screen to tempt you and increase your score.

One other thing, the PacMan of the arcades had the occasional “cartoon” between levels. When I say “cartoon” I refer to a bit of mindless chasing about the screen rendered in poxy little graphics. (And I must say that The Bulgulators has captured the complete crapness of this event in side-splitting perfection).

Revelation Software (Malevolent Design)

Matt Round

Matt Round

TomKin

No hidden treasure, no kidnapped relatives and no mad-scientist bad-guy with a silly name. Just a couple of kids having fun…

T’n’T plays a bit like a modernised version of Bomb Jack, with colourful graphics, power-ups, speed and polish. What makes this game really shine, though, is the variety in the levels; rather than just being a slightly varied arrangement of platforms and targets, almost every level has some unique feature about it. For example, one level is half underwater, in another you’re zooming around on a rocket pack. In one level you can’t stop jumping, in another you’re stuck to the floor firing bullets upwards.

Almost certainly the best game ever written using GamesMaster.

Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

T’n’T stands for Ted ‘n’ Tam, not Trinitromethylbenzene as I had expected, and it’s a Bombjack clone. Well, I hate to use the word clone, as it expands upon Bombjack and adds many diverse features not found in the original, but the fact is the central gameplay has been ripped mercilessly from the heart of the arcade classic, leaving it to bleed in an unpleasant carpet-staining puddle of red.

For people who have were kidnapped by aliens in 1985 and only returned recently the idea of Bombjack was to leap about platforms all over the screen collecting bombs and avoiding enemies spewed from invisible portals about the screen. Once they had all been collected, it was time for the next screen, albeit pretty indistinguishable from the previous one.

In T’n’T the difference is that the bombs have been replaced by little Smilies, which you detonate by flying into, and enemies do not appear on the level, but start already in place. And there are a lot less of the enemies, but the game still remains difficult, thanks to the high degree of intelligence given to the little buggers that ensures that they are either:

1. Just above you when you jump.
   
2. Just below you when you land, or…
   
3. Hovering by the last Smily on the board, just as your final seconds tick away.

Every two or so levels, there is a chance to gain a life, by flying up to a heart bonus as it escapes off of the top of the screen. This is very easy, and since the changes in the levels design alters only in it’s colour, it reeks of an attempt to pad out the game. A load of normal levels without the fancy backgrounds would have been better I feel.

Revelation, A scorpion production - later relased by Persona

Pakrik Rak, Milan Matousek

Frantisek Fuka

If puzzle games are your cup of tea then Hexagonia will give your brain a good bashing! There are 70 levels of atomic mayhem to solve. Your task is to move the atoms into the correct position to create a molecule. It sounds easy - but I assure you it isn’t!

Each level has cunningly placed walls dotted around it and you move the atoms using a pointer. When you move one it zooms across the screen until it hits a wall. Depending on the type of wall it will either stop dead in its tracks, bounce back again or cause the wall to slowly crumble away. Just to make things more difficult there are also invisible walls in later levels and time is never on your side!

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Crash review, courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

YIPPEE! This is the game to buy if you want to see my lovely artwork on the front cover of the game! It should be out now, so go out and buy it-because it’s fab! Now onto the review…

In this game, you have to join atoms together to make compounds, which you can see in full by pressing ENTER. You then have to place these pieces to form that structure. If any of you have actually done GCSE Chemistry, and have played around with those plastic models, it’s just like that! You control a hand, which zooms around the screen. You then have to ‘pull’ pieces together. One problem is that they can only move in 4 directions, on that axis! Adding to the problems, there are bouncers which give you your pieces back, blocks which an only be hit a certain number of times before disintegrating, and even invisible dangers! There are also double bonds, so you chemists will love this, and won’t have to revert back to the INFO screen!!

The graphics are pretty good, if a little Spectrumy (though the game is coming out on the Speccy soon!), but the actual music which accompanies the title and info screens is nothing short of fantastic! It’s done by the guys at FUXOFT (Yes, from the SCPDSA demo!!) and it really is a tune to toe tap to!