| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ BRAINSTORM (c) FIREBIRD/SILVERBIRD ★ |
Amstrad Computer User |
PETE Cooke programmed the highly-acclaimed arcade adventure Tau Ceti and its sequel Academy. He's popped up again on the Firebird Silver Range budget label, collaborating with James Baird to produce Brainstorm. The game is played on a grid composed of coloured squares. You control three coloured lines, yellow, light blue and white, which are moved about by an arrow. After clicking an appropriate icon you connect the line to any point on the grid by moving the arrow over that point and pressing Fire. But the line is finite length; if you force it to be drawn to a distant point on the grid , part of the line which you drew earlier will be erased. The purpose of all this line shifting is to try and trap a ball which is bouncing around the screen. The subtle feature is that different coloured squares do different things when the ball passes over them. Red squares increase your score by one, purple ones decrease your score by one, green ones cause the ball to jump randomly to other parts of the grid. You start each screen with 100 points, and have 400 time units to play with. You don't necessarily have to trap the ball, but the condition for moving on to the next level is that, when your time runs out, you have more points at the end of the level you are on than you gained on the previous level. If this condition is not satisfied, the game ends. The key to success is trapping the ball at the correct time on red squares and then using the Bonus icon. When Bonus is selected you are prevented from drawing any more lines, so you can't accidentally set the ball free. There are 26 screens and a host of options. You can use keyboard, joystick or mouse to control the lines, and you can start on any of five different screens. There are three skill levels. In increasing order of difficulty, you have three lines to trap one ball, then you have two lines, and finally you have three lines to trap two balls. The colours are rather loud and the graphics are simple and blocky. But they are adequate, and you are too riveted to the screen to worry about detail like that. The omnipresent pointer moves very quickly andsmoothly without a trace of flicker. Although it's initially a little confusing and difficult to get to grips with, controlling the lines soon becomes second nature. Brainstorm is a good budget title. ACU #8808
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Page créée en 175 millisecondes et consultée 2585 fois L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko. |
