ZX Spectrum - Winners! (Compilation)

Sinclair Spectrum

Winners!

One thing SORELY missed about the 8-bit days is the compilation pack. It was a win-win situation for everybody. On the part of the software house, it meant that they could get yet more sales of some of their not-quite-so-brand-new games (after the initial rush of buying the game when it first came out had subsided), and on the part of Joe Public they got several games for the price of about 1 and a half. It was a no-brainer.

Of course, software houses weren't daft. Many compilations consisted of a couple of good games bundled in with a couple of crap ones, but on occasion there were some real gems out there. Of course, on occasion software houses tried to sell compilations of simply terrible games to try and make some money out of them. You know, value in quantity and all that.

The first compilation I got my hands on was "Winners", and it was a typical mix of good and crap. So what joys await, then?

Blasteroids

Things get off to a bright start with a game I convinced myself was going to be crap, but actually turned out pretty good. It's an Asteroids clone (you could have guessed that) with knobs on. But it's fast, frantic, and very very challenging, even on the "easier" paths. It's an arcade conversion, but regrettably I've never played that version. Just like all Asteroids-type games, you are surrounded by hurtling pieces of rock, which, when shot, break into smaller pieces, which, when shot, break into smaller still pieces, and you get the idea. Purple asteroids contain Energy Crystals, the sooner you collect these the more energy they restore. Some asteroids expand and then simply freeze when shot, and occasionally a nasty alien ship will start to open fire on you. Once the level is clear, fly to the warp to escape, and choose your next sector. After clearing enough sectors, you have to face Mukor, a green tentacled alien, whose tentacles you must destroy to defeat him.

Your ship can be transformed into 3 different forms, a light, nippy effort with little firepower, a big heavy beast of a ship with additional armour, or a mid-size ship with the best firepower. Playing with 2 players allows you to "dock" your ships together, if one of you is the nippy thing, and the other is the beast, giving you one ship with a rotatable gun turret.

There's a host of power-ups on offer too... from the usual shields, extra fire power and invisibility, to the "Ripstar", which causes your ship to fire rapidly while spinning around.

Colliding with enemies or asteroids is never a good idea, each hit reduces your shields if you have any available, or causes major loss to your energy banks. These are depleted just anyway by using your thrusters... so you have to keep on top of the energy crystals.

Fast, challenging, enjoyable. Nice one.

Impossible Mission II

Now, THIS is a gem. And, I'm very happy to say, one I managed to complete. I was determined to do it, and when you play this game you'll see why.

The evil Elvin Atombender, foiled in the first game, is out for revenge. Exactly what that entails, I'm not sure, but by the sound of his name, it probably involves Atomic death around the world on a grand scale. You play the part of an athletic (and very well animated) spy, wandering about the nooks and crannies of Elvin's tower block. Unfortunately, many deadly robots are also rambling around, attempting to stop you.

To progress to the next tower, you must collect 3 numbers for the passcode to open the elevator, these are located inside various objects inside the main rooms in the towers, along with a couple of other useful tools. These can be activated from the computer terminals and include such delights as bombs, a snooze button for the robots (some are still deadly on contact though) and extra time.

So, you collect these numbers to try and crack the code to progress, however that's not all... to actually reach Elvin's lair and defeat him entirely, you need to also collect a song. Snippets of the song are stored in safes, 1 in each tower. There's 8 towers, but only 6 snippets, so 2 are duplicates and must be recorded over. You can't just search a safe though, you need a time bomb to blow them open first. Things are never straightforward in the life of a spy.

The rooms can be quite tight and hard to navigate, especially when the only jump you can do is a forward somersault, and the various robots will do their best to foil you. Some drop mines, some try to push you off platforms to your death, but the most common one is the one that looks like a cat with laser beam eyes, which is also highly electrified, thus deadly to the touch. Others are less lethal but very annoying, and will ride lift platforms to make life harder for you, or perhaps

All in all, this is a HARD game, and will give you a lot of satisfaction if you manage to crack it. The crown jewel of this collection and no mistake.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom

You may remember I reviewed the arcade version a little while back... and told you how great it was.

But by the bloody hell, US Gold, or Paragon, what the hell were you playing at with the conversion??!? Even with the Spectrum's limitations, this could've... SHOULD'VE been a much better conversion than it ended up.

Well, I did say there had to be a couple of duffers in there, right?

The graphics are half-decent enough, sure, but why lose nearly half the available screen with that piggin' status bar and colourful border?

The sound is awful, the framerate is awful, the collision detection makes the game borderline unplayable. But hey, you've had 2 top quality titles, it'd be greedy to expect a third, right?

Just to top it off, I recently discovered that there is in fact an INTENDED GAME-BREAKING BUG in the game's code. Once you reach level 4, you're stuck as the level doesn't appear to have an exit... however, in the code itself, the game doesn't even bother checking to see if you've reached the exit on level 4, so this was clearly done with intent.

LED Storm

Oh, hold on. Now we're talking. LED apparently stands for "Lazer Enhanced Destruction", but I don't remember seeing many lasers in this game. In fact, I don't recall seeing many Storms, or for that matter, much destruction. Oh, wait, there is some of that.

There's also a lot of mighty fast futuristic cars, smooth scrolling and nasty jumps. So ignore the title, it's crap. Instead concentrate on a mightily addictive game, if a little frustrating.

I don't know what the plot is, but it's irrelevant anyway. Basically you're in some kind of race, with limited fuel, and you must race to the end of each course as fast as you can. You must avoid, or jump on, opposing cars, there's one particularly nasty computer-controlled car that does its best to stop you. There's also "Frogs", which cling to the back of your car and slow you down, flicking your car left and right will shake them off. The roads aren't great, with massive gaps in places, so you'll have to jump them, and occasionally collect either fuel, temporary shields or points to try to prolong your progress.

Alright, it's a bit quiet on the roads, clearly they thought sound might be asking too much, but it doesn't matter. Impossible Mission II has so little sound they needn't have bothered, and that works, so why shouldn't this?

OK, so I never got past the "Big Cave Tunnel" level. But I tried and tried and tried, which must say something for the quality of this game. It's the speed more than anything, and even if you can only clear the first 3 levels like what I could, they're nice long, challenging levels, and fun to play.

Thunder Blade

I like to do my research when I'm writing reviews. Apparently all the still images used in the arcade version of Thunder Blade, were taken directly from the film "Blue Thunder", which Sega may never have actually acquired the rights to base a game on... I'm sure Sega did things all legally and above board, after all, they were definitely one of the best forces in Arcade Games throughout the 80s and 90s. But take a look at the image below:

Anyway, I digress.

Thunder Blade was Sega's helicopter-based version of After Burner. That is, it was a shoot 'em-up, mainly played in 3D (but with 2D sections too), often delving into what can only be described as "Bullet Hell". That said, it was a decent enough game, often available in sit-down hydraulic cabs and featuring oversize joysticks.

Which is where everything goes wrong for the Spectrum version. You see, you need to be able to adjust your height and move left and right... as well as accelerate and slow down. Unfortunately, having a single joystick makes this a bit of a challenge to implement. Obvious answer? Define a couple of keys on the keyboard to take care of either the height or the speed. Actual answer? How about to speed up, you have to hold down the fire button and move the joystick up and down?

So, while you're accelerating, you can't shoot back at the enemy, OR change your height; The agility of your futuristic chopper gunship has just been slashed... As have the odds of you reaching the end of level 1. Sorry, but they ruined the game with this decision.

Having said that, the slowdown rate when there's enemies on screen doesn't help either. Shame, really, as the graphics are really quite good, this game could have been pretty special, unfortunately the cumbersome and ineffective controls just spoilt the whole thing.



Winners... don't use drugs. Oh, wait, sorry, that was William S Sessions' famous words appearing on practically every 90's arcade game ever. Winners... on the Spectrum, at least, was a decent compilation. Taking 3 hit games and 2 duffers for the price of 1 and a half full-price Spectrum Games, it really was a no-brainer. Oh, yes.

Yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing and all, so how about you just check out Impy Mish II, LED Storm and Blasteroids, and leave the rest to fester? Saying that, Impy Mish and Blasteroids are freely available on World Of Spectrum, LED Storm currently sits as "Distribution Denied" as Capcom do not allow the free distribution of their copyright... but I'm sure with a bit of hunting you'll find a copy on Ebay.

ZX Spectrum - Lightgun Action Pack

ZX Spectrum

The Spectrum Light Gun Action Pack

Operation Wolf

Bullseye

Missile Ground Zero

Robot Attack

Solar Invasion

Rookie

The Spectrum Light Gun was an interesting device. Shaped like a weapon that would have looked good on Blake's 7, it was actually quite spiffy as far as light guns went... at least back then, anyway.

Allow me to reminisce for a minute. It's Christmas 1989. I've received my beloved Spectrum. Fairly late to the party, it's a +2A model, and with it comes the  light gun and 6 games. Yes, if you're a regular reader (don't think I have any of those, but it'd be nice), I've told some of this story before, but allow me to bore you further.

The six games are actually all pretty good, really. And all fairly varied, as much as Light Gun Games can be at least. Sure, a few of them might have been subject of some scathing reviews, but what you have to bear in mind is that when these were reviewed at the time, the term "value for money" probably resulted in a great reduction of the scores. This I cannot argue with, when the price of the pack (a princely £30 or so at the time) is taken into account, compared to other compilations such as, for example, Konami Arcade Collection (10 games) or Winners! (5 games) or The Biz (4 games but 3 of them were Your Sinclair Megagames), which usually retailed at around £15... I think you see where I'm coming from.

Anyway, enough yarbling, onto the games.

First up was always going to be the "flagship" arcade conversion, Operation Wolf. Unfortunately, I've already reviewed it, so rather than a feeble copy and paste, I'm simply going to link to that review (which rather handily covers the original arcade game too). So click here and off you go.

Next up was Bullseye. You know Bullseye, staple of Sunday evening TV in the 80s, before Gladiators came along of course. Anyway, based on the hit quiz show (which has had something of a resurgence on Challenge TV in recent years), the gun takes care of the dart throwing (or arrows as they seem to be referred to), but you have to have the keyboard in reach to be able to type your answers quick enough. There doesn't seem to be a massive variety of questions, ones about John Frieda's girlfriend (Lulu) and The Venerable Bede seem to repeat themselves with alarming regularity.

Overall, I personally found this game to be the weak link in the whole package. The targeting sometimes seems way off, you can barely move the gun, fire all 3 darts, and 1 of them will find it's way to the far edge of the screen while the others rest firmly in the treble 20. Because it's not a fast action game, there's no issue with slow-down from firing too much, but still, it remains relatively unexciting compared to the rest.

Next up is Missile Ground Zero. Think "Missile Command", but rather than a trackball and slow missiles, you can target instantly with the gun and shoot at the tiny little things that fall from the sky threatening your cities. Each shot is shown as an explosion on screen, and whilst the white flashes may affect those with photo-sensitive conditions, the action doesn't slow down, and is fast and frantic.

Better still, the game features some of the best music of ALL TIME on the Spectrum. And! AND! AND!! It takes about 45 seconds to load from tape. (Memory fading, but it seemed that way, I know it didn't take long). Sure, it's repetitive and it's basic, but by the hell it's a blast of fun, and for such a quick load, I probably played this game more than any other.

From there, we go to Robot Attack, now this one is a little bit disappointing. Made by the same folks and featuring the same music as Missile Ground Zero (which is a highlight), the game itself is a little bit poor in comparison. Robots walk along the platforms, you have to shoot them a number of times according to what colour they are. Some robots are indestructable, some will collapse when shot, get repaired and come back a different colour. If a robot reaches a crate, they build part of a "Mega-Robot", which, if completed, will spell game over for the human race. Or something. There's power-ups with varying effects, but to be honest, you'll probably play this a couple of times and have had enough by that point.

The final two games in the package are real gems, and more than make up for any disappointment you might have felt by Robot Attack and Bullseye. Which is better? Erm... I couldn't really choose.

First up then, is Solar Invasion. Massive aliens are attacking our Solar System, these massive aliens release little baby aliens that will evolve before your very eyes, eventually becoming equally massive aliens. The object is simple enough... destroy them all before they destroy the human race.

You basically drift around space a bit, aided by a radar to help you find the alien scum, as well as ammo pickups and smart bombs. Shooting the little arrows at the top and bottom of the status panel will rotate your direction accordingly, and, as with all the best simplistic concepts, that is pretty much all you need to know. By the time you reach the last few levels, you'll see just how quickly the aliens evolve, be prepared for some fast and frantic shooting to stand any chance whatsoever of completing the game. I never quite made it.

Rookie is a target shooting game, and a mighty fine one at that. It tests your reactions and accuracy, pitting you against the clock to reach the required score on each level. The action takes place over a number of screens (I think it's about 20, I can't remember), on each one a number of targets will begin to appear, as each one does a number appears on them, beginning at 100 and counting down to 0. Shoot the target too early you'll get no points. The quicker you shoot from the moment 100 is displayed, the more points you get. Ammo is limited, so you can't go crazy.

Fortunately, once the last target has appeared, you'll start getting bonus ammo signs in the corner of the screen. If you have enough time to stock up, you can hang around and shoot these for an extra 10 bullets each time, or you can shoot the arrows to proceed to the next screen, where there will be more targets.

Guess what? ONCE AGAIN, simple concept, simple fun. It works brilliantly and the game caused great competition between me and my family. Which is where this game gets my ultimate seal of approval.

My sister was actually quite good at this game, but she could never put her name in the high score table. Why not? Because as soon as she typed in her name, it replaced it with "Hi there, Smudge Face!" We never understood why. Anyway, the mystery is solved, I emailed a chap called "Equinox" who had a page on Spectrum "Easter Eggs", and told him about that particular incident. Within 24 hours, he'd gone through the game's code and found several other things you could type in on the high score table... only to be replaced by something else. Who "Lynn" is, although the code seems to reveal her surname may be "Fairclough", remains a mystery. But thank you, Peter Gough, for the amusement you provided me and my sister.

Oh, if you want to see the rest of the hidden easter eggs in this game, the page has disappeared from the internet, luckily the World Of Spectrum website has archived it for your pleasure, and you can find it right here. (Warning, this page does contain a few naughty words. You know, like tit, shit and... erm... probably some others.)

(The above review was written with much love to Smudge-Face)

The Best in Copy Protection

The Best in Copy Protection

Y'know, I remember the good old days. When games were nice and cheap and no-one really copied them. Well, they did, of course, but not in the same way they are now. Y'see, one of the most valid arguments pro-piracy (and believe me, I'm NOT pro-piracy, I just agree with this particular train of thought that games are too expensive, and that encourages piracy) is that each copied game is not REALLY a lost sale, it's a sale the developer was never going to have, and instead they get free word-of-mouth advertising if their game is really good. It's a weak argument, sure, but it's one that makes me think, "The Pirates have a point".

Anyway, my point of view is that if a product is worth buying, and I can afford it, I'll support it. I've done it with Shareware, and had no complaints about doing it. So, if a developer comes up with something novel or interesting to frustrate pirates, then I'm all for it.

Back in the day, the simplest forms of Copy Protection were a case of "Look up the first word on line x of page y". It wasn't much, but it was enough. Obviously the photocopier helped to circumvent that particular form of protection, although in those days a photocopier wasn't quite so easy for Joe Public to find. Things developed over the years... Who can forget Lenslok? Then Code Wheels were introduced (games like Zool and Monkey Island probably most famously), and code books printed on paper designed to be impossible to photocopy (e.g. Worms)

But as things progress, things get more sophisticated. Games became able to detect themselves whether they had been been pirated, or even at risk of being pirated, and refused to run... or perhaps even stranger effects.

Let's also not forget that anti-piracy methods also introduced us to the first PC Virus, the Pakistani Brain virus. Designed to protect a heart-monitoring program from piracy, (or rather track it) it soon spread to the UK and US. It didn't actually do any damage, thankfully, but still people rang the programmers asking for their computers to be "vaccinated" in their thousands.

So here are my favourite anti-piracy or copy protection schemes, and some of them I'd actually really like to see in action.

Code Sheet - Jet Set Willy (Spectrum), Worms (Amiga)
The code sheet was nothing more than a list of numbers (or in JSW's case, Colours), an entry from which would be required on loading the game. Simple, quick and downright straightforward to circumvent by copying the code sheet. Worms made life harder by printing it black-on-black so that you couldn't very well photocopy it, but a dab hand at Excel could copy it within an hour or so.

It's pretty obvious how this works... The game requests the code from Column A, Row X, you look it up and type it in. JSW provides you with a key to the colours and what numbers they represent, which is nice.

Not much more can be said about this. It's as basic as it gets.


Code Wheels - e.g. Zool, Monkey Island (Amiga)
Designed to be overly complicated to copy, Code Wheels were actually a pretty simple concept. The game will show you a picture or something, made of two distinct halves. Take your code wheel, turn it to make that picture. Then read the code from the indicated window. Tap it in, and joy! Your game runs. Get it wrong, and you'll probably get another chance. Get it wrong again and the game will probably reset itself. Annoying, huh? And since the windows are all over the place, it's not so straightforward to calculate their positions. Genius! Oh, did I mention the black-on-black writing used for Zool? Impossible to read! Wahey! At least it was impossible to photocopy.

Actually, not everyone had the foresight to use black-on-black, Lucasarts' code wheels for the Monkey Island games, for instance. 15 Photocopies is all you need. Not something that would put off the serious pirate.

Again, though, this wasn't going to STOP piracy, just discourage it slightly. Anyone with patience could actually copy the numbers in a spreadsheet, if they were that determined to copy a game.



Lenslok - OCP Art Studio (Spectrum)
Ah, one of those things that always gets the little "TM" after its name. I might change my name to Fishsta(TM). Ahem.

Anyway, I remember my mum deciding it would be a good idea to get me a mouse and Art Program for the Spectrum. And you know what, it wasn't bad. But it introduced me to what was probably the best copy protection system I'd ever seen. No, really.

You ask any Retro-head about Lenslok, and they'll tell you what a stupid, crap, unreliable system it was. I personally never had a problem with it, and I found it GENIUS. Take a look in this box here, and you'll notice the red thing. That's the Lenslok "lens".

So, you load your game/art software up, and then you are presented with the first stage of the protection... measuring your lenslok. No, really. You hold the thing up to the screen (fully unfolded) against a large letter "H", and using a couple of keys on the keyboard, adjust the width of it until it matches the length of your Lenslok. Press Enter to move onto the next stage, the "dry run test" stage.

Now you fold the Lenslok so that it resembles a map-reading magnifier. Hold it against the screen, centered on the middle of the "H". The plastic bit in the middle acts like a prism, distorting your view of that portion of the screen. If you look at the screen without the Lenslok, you'll just see a garbled mess, the distorted view through the Lenslok actually makes sense of it, and you should be able to read 2 letters, at this point they should be "O" and "K". Once you're happy with that, keep the Lenslok in place and press enter. Two new letters appear, type them in, and off you go.

So, what were the problems? Well, the idea of measuring your lenslok on the screen was so that the size of your TV or monitor wasn't a problem, but with the limited resolution of home computers, sometimes it was. And, of course, constantly bending plastic back and forth will eventually break it, even if that's what it was designed to do.

It sounds as though I was lucky, really.


Modern day In-Built Copy/Crack detection - Having fun with the Pirates!
Now for my FAVOURITE part. You've done what you can to stop piracy, and it still happens. It always will. It's never going to stop. So make it a game itself, then. Mess with the pirates heads, annoy them, frustrate them, do whatever you can to delay "Day Zero" hacked versions appearing.

It's been going on for a while. Just ask anyone who knows their stuff about Spyro or Earthbound. These used multi-layered protection which worked so that the game would detect unauthorised copies at several points, and cause undesirable operation throughout the game. The game lets you know right away that it knows it's copied (Spyro actually tells you outright, "I'm sorry, Spyro, but you seem to be playing a hacked version of this game..." it really couldn't be any clearer) but crackers persisted and EVENTUALLY beat all the layers, which would include surprises like more and tougher enemies, settings changes and even the famous "crash and delete your savegames" trick.

I could go into great detail about all these, but they've been written about elsewhere and a quick search on Google will find you plenty of in-depth information. But I take great delight in those measures that leave pirates confused as to whether it's a problem with the game or deliberate protection by the developers. Very quickly, here are some of my favourites that I've recently heard about:

Michael Jackson: The Experience (DS)
What could be worse than a generic dancing game cashing in on Michael Jackson's awesome music and dancing skills? How about getting into a game to be treated to the sound of the Vuvuzela over the soundtrack? Yeah, that'll put the pirates off, more than replacing all songs with DJ Otis' "Hey Baby!"

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC)
But... but... I am BATMAN. I cannot have my abilities taken away, surely? If you're a pirate, yes, you'll lose the ability to Bat Glide. Since there's parts of the game where you HAVE to glide to survive, you'll only get so far before you hit a brick wall. And the best bit? Someone posted on a forum about the problem they were having, only to be told outright, "It's not a bug in the program code, it's a bug in YOUR moral code". Awesome.

ARMA2 (PC)
This one I'd really like to see. Apparently, a new technology called "FADE" was introduced, which basically SLOWLY broke the game. It started messing with the camera, and lowering your weapon's accuracy and power, until eventually they were as useless as pea-shooters. And finally, you get a message, "Original Discs don't FADE". It sounds pretty cool.

Serious Sam 3: BFE (PC)
I have to take my hat off to this one, this is brilliance. And again, this is one I want to EXPERIENCE. The game plays as normal... for about 30 seconds. Just after you collect your first gun, you run into what is now known as the "DRM Scorpion".

This guy looks mean, and is armed with tough claws and twin machine guns. He's fast, too, about 5 times as fast as you. Basically, there's no escape from him, so maybe you should face him head on and kill him before he kills you...

Nope, that doesn't seem to work. Maybe a game of cat and mouse, in and out of cover, get as many hits in as you can?

Maybe you should stop wasting your time, pirate. The DRM Scorpion is immortal. He will persist in chasing you until he kills you. Although apparently you can get through the first couple of levels, the difficulty curve isn't just steep, it's vertical.

Don't worry, though. Even the best gameplayers will get stuck when the second protection system kicks in... all of a sudden you'll look up to the sky and start spinning on the spot. Meanwhile, any bad guys in the area will take this oppurtunity to kill you.

Is that the last of the protection systems? Maybe... maybe not. But the Scorpion alone sounds too awesome to miss. The regrettable thing is that it's tempting for even a non-pirate to pirate the game just to see it. This must be one of the rare occasions where the pirates get more content than the people who hand their money over for a legitimate copy. Maybe not such a wise move?

Arcade & Spectrum - Operation Wolf

Arcade & Spectrum
Operation Wolf

Operation Wolf is one of the most well-known and iconic arcade games of all time. Basically, the game is pretty much a movie conversion of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando, only without the funny quips and one-liners.

The first thing anyone notices about Operation Wolf is the cabinet, and the rather prominent full-size Uzi sub-machine gun mounted on the front. If there's one thing above all else the game's going to be remembered for, it'll be that. Due to being relatively short in stature, I left it quite late to play the machine, as I wasn't tall enough to play the game comfortably. I'm not a dwarf by any stretch of the imagination, but a comfortable shooting stance just wasn't possible until I was in my teens, due to the fact that the gun wasn't "loose" and on a wire like most other gun games.

Fortunately by this time I'd played the game on the Spectrum many many times... thanks to getting the Light Gun version with the computer.

OK, so the premise then, is basically exactly what I said... Commando. One man versus an entire army, trying to rescue the hostage(s).

It's a side-scrolling shooting gallery, each soldier usually only takes one hit to die, although a couple will lie injured for a second and then leap up and attack again. Most are armed with guns, and will either run on screen or parachute down, or pop up from behind scenery. Some will hurl knives or grenades at you which can be shot away. Or, depending on the scenery, you may have to face tanks, or gunboats. By far the most deadly enemy are the helicopters, whose gunfire certainly has the most detrimental effect on your physical strength.

There's other things to be shot, too, windows are always good, but watch out for birds and pigs, they might even drop ammunition for you... for some reason. Alternatively you might just find useful pickups on the floor... such as drinks to replenish your strength, dynamite to act as a "Smart Bomb", or even the "Free ammo" machine gun, which is basically a few seconds of rapid fire without any need to reload.

In fact, this is one thing I've always liked about Operation Wolf over other games. Your ammo comes in magazines of around 30 bullets, a surprisingly accurate representation in days of "infinite clips" in both movies and games, but here you will actually have to stop firing whilst you change clip! So it’s worth keeping an eye on how many bullets are in your current clip, and if there’s only a couple, may as well fire those off just to enforce a quick reload.

There’s 6 scenes overall (5 in the Spectrum Lightgun version), and they do actually follow on and have their own plot… disrupt the enemy communications to stop them calling for help, get information from the enemy, rest up at the village, get yourself some fresh ammunition, raid the concentration camp and rescue the hostages, then bundle them onto a plane at the airport and escape. Easy, huh?

Taito were onto something here, and as usual it’s the little “touches” that make it such a great game. From the off, if you watch the game in “Insert Coin” mode, you see a short intro of Roy Jones (that’s you, by the way) preparing himself by strapping his rocket grenades to himself, sheathing his knife and tying his boots, but then there’s the equivalent of Sonic The Hedgehog’s “SEGAAAAA” moment when the cabinet tells you, “Operation Initiated!” And who can forget the Game Over sequence… the screen fades to white, and you are told in no uncertain terms that you’ve sustained a lethal injury. And then they apologise!

The other nice touch is the abundance of endings. Whilst you’re aiming to reach the “Splended! You are a real pro.” message (and yes, they do spell “Splendid” like that. My spell checker is going mad here… wait until I cover the “Eleminated” on Operation Thunderbolt!) and you will eventually see the “Lethal Injury” screen… try dying without any ammo left… or even completing the game with all hostages dead.

And then there’s the music. It’s superb, yet very understated. You’re likely to not even notice, especially on the real machine.

Luckily, the music made it over to the Spectrum Light Gun version very faithfully. Unfortunately the static graphics (like the Lethal Injury screen) didn’t. Neither did the Jungle Level.

But, apart from a little slowdown while firing, the Spectrum version is an excellent translation, and the lightgun worked pretty well too.

Whilst I’m sure there were other home conversions that were technically superior, I’m not aware of any other versions supporting a light gun. I could be wrong. But, as unlikely as it is that you’ll find a working arcade cabinet in the wild, don’t worry about settling for the Spectrum version… it’s pretty damn good and just as exciting.