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AMSTAR&CPC

Amstrad Action

★ Ce texte vous est présenté dans sa version originale ★   ★ This text is presented to you in its original version ★   ★ Este texto se presenta en su versión original ★   ★ Dieser Text wird in seiner Originalfassung präsentiert ★  Is this the most powerful lightgun in the world? We put the Virgin/Mastertronic £34.95 Magnum to the test At last we've got our grubby (but nonetheless exclusive) little pinkies on the brand new CPC lightgun from Virgin/Mastertronic, due in the shops any moment now. It's been a long time coming, but the question is: has it been worth the wail? The black vacuum formed plastic gun -appropriately enough a lightweight at less than half a pound - is a mere foot long (300cms in new money) and comes with 48" of wire. This may sound ungenerous, but of course since you plug into your keyboard you can sit as far away from your monitor as that will allow - though to be frank the practical maximum firing distance is no more than a yard. (Apologies to all readers not brought up on Imperial measures: ask the nearest parent or teacher, or failing that try a friendly adult.) It's fair to say that the Magnum does not give an impression of durability, though that's as true of the majority of joysticks also. The edge connector plugs into the external port of your keyboard. And then you load up. It's as simple as that: there is no separate controlling software needed, and no technical knowledge is required. What is required, however, is software to run it oil As you'll appreciate you cant simply start firing at your old copy of Operation Wolf or whatever and expect it to make any differ ence. That's why you cant buy the gun on its own. The six games bundled with it are Missile Ground Zero, Rookie, Solar Invasion, Robot Attack, Bullseye and Operation Wolf (see the box "The score so tar: 5 - 1" on the light). Electric gimmickry What's the difference between the Magnum and a joystick? What are its advantages? How does it work? Well, for one thing the lightgun can be pointed at any point on the screen all the time. Moving a joystick means that the aiming point, the 'point of animation," has to move through the intervening points. Under the flimsy casing of the Magnum there's a fair bit of electronic gimmickry. At the front is a lens which focuses the light for the gun onto a light cell. The signal is 'cleaned' somewhat and sent down to the CPC edge connector (there is no through connector: 464 owners wont be able to use disk lightgun software). Similar hardware connects the trigger (actually a switch) to the computer. The trigger is a letdown: it needs to be repeatedly pulled in order to give a continuous stream of fire. It can't have been that difficult to fit an autofire button, can it? (Expect to see an AA hardware project for the lightgun before too long - is that mysterious enough. Steve? I think so, Pal - I certainly don't understand it cd.) Stand and deliver The message to the software houses who had pledged their support for the Magnum light gun must be: stand and deliver! The gun, no matter how technically superb it may be. is worse than useless if there are no decent opportunities to snatch it out of your shoulder holster and get popping things. Only Bullseye and Op Wolf manage to steer clear of the trap so common to new games hardware. And Bullseye is a dreadfully tame version of the dull Jim "Magic magic fine great super" Bowen quiz-game-with-darts. Its abundantly clear that the function of these games is purely and simply to justify the existence of the Magnum rather than to exploit its strengths. With the honorable exception of yon-know- what all they do is prove that your £35 was spent on something that actually works. The purpose of the lightgun should be to enhance a game concept and not be one. Instead of games being adapted merely because they can take advantage of the technology, programmers should be aware of its existence and use it accordingly. Instead of, "Hey, this clapped out old dog of a game could get a new lease of life if we adapt it for the lightgun,' software project managers must take the line that, 'Wow! We've got a brilliant concept for a game here. And it will be even better if we can take advantage of what the lightgun can do!" It will require a considered and concerted effort on the part of those in software houses to make use full of it. From their point of view it is an ideal opportunity once again to flog off software (modified to suit the Magnum) long since left for dead. That's exactly what's happened with Bullseye. This new device requires long term support from software houses if it is to be more than a temporary toy. The score so far: 5-1 There are six games bundled with the Magnum: Missile Ground Zero, Rookie, Solar Invasion, Robot Attack, Bullseye and Operation Wolf. Robot Attack is just a matter of shooting small droids as they attempt to build a larger and more deadly parent. Here the gun performs as little more than a cork-firing airgun at the local fete, the robots becoming the plastic ducks everybody loves to waste. Fun for a few minutes, but hardly the technological breakthrough we've been waiting for. Solar Invasion fits the bill as the standard asteroids game with every form of alien life floating briskly across the screen and into your gun sights. Again it is little more than a tame demonstration of the hghtgun's function and falls well short of the required mark to be called a game. Rookie is a straight out riflerange simulator with authentic sounds and small plate targets you blast to qualify for the next round of target practice. Missile Ground Zero takes you to one of those ever so familiar 'last sur viving bases' where you save the world by shooting anything that threatens the base. In all four games your supply of ammunition is limited in an attempt to stop you just going crazy and peppering the scrccn. The remaining two games are the only one to have seen the light (pardon the pun) of day before. The dreadful Bowen-inspired (if that the word, which it ain't) Bullseye deserves to have been allowed rest in peace (AA7, 34%), and its resurrection is hardly welcome. That leaves just one game : Operation Wolf, without doubt tne star of the collection. A superb game, it scored an extremely healthy 89% (AA40; Mike Wong poked it in AA43). If you have played it - in the arcades or at home you'll know exactly why it's been attracting all the attention. It's a very fast-moving horizontally scrolling all-action, do-or-die (usually the latter) shooting game with thousands of soldiers doing their best to prevent you rescuing the hostages. Helicopters, patrol boats, machine guns, grenades and turkeys - this one's got everything! Op Wolf provoked a resurgence in the agu old debate about violence ill computer games, and may even ultimately be responsible for the notorious correspondence in A A featuring one Mr Wm A. A. Smith of Windsor. Its a brilliant conversion in 'cursor' mode with the potential to become the first CPC "authentic arcade' game - complete right down to the sore trigger finger! And it's in a completely different league from the other dreadful old makeweights in zhe collection. For a start, of course, it helps to have a superb game to begin with. But more than lhat, the lightgun brings back to the CPC version something that the arcade game had all along. There is, after all, something artificial about a joystick as a gun, since its origins are obviously as a steering device. Now, with the Magnum, you feel that 0 p Wolf has come home. It was always an addictive. just-one-more-go game: now it's an aadicitve, just-one-more-go game that foels right. The only problem is that impacts arent registered, so when you're missing you dont exactly know whether you're shooting left, right, high or low. Suffice to say. however, that Op Wolf was up and loaded within 30 seconds of its arrival, after which the silence in the office was broken only by the pinging of the game Is it or isn't it? Op Wolf apart, though, will the light gun make enough difference to warrant forking out £35 lor a couple of hundred grams of plastic and wires? The gun offers a variety of gameplay additions to the state of play in current CPC software. It moves as fast as you do and does not rely on microswitches to tell it where the shot has landed, so the rate of fire is improved, as is the number of different directions you may shoot in the same brief moment. The sense of involvement is greater because (despite the complex moral argumem, neither side of which is completely convincing) it js fun to actually hold a gun and shoot your CPC. Most importantly though it gives writers of software the opportunity to use any of three methods of control - joystick, keys or lightgun - for the best and most exciting games. It is conceivable that a combination of two could operate simultaneously. What about all three together for seriously heavy gameplay such as that in Gunship? The future of the lightgun depends solely on programmers finding innovative ways of implementing its use. Operation Wolf clones wont keep the anyone happy forever. Good shoot'em ups need not only fast paced action but a little more control of their fate. The Magnum may be used, say, in con nection with a joystick to remove the static nature it so readily suggests. If this is the case then gaming on the CPC may never be quite the same again If it isn't, wo may yet be left with the world's most expensive item for stirring tea. AA

CPCrulez[Content Management System] v8.7-desktop/c Page créée en 637 millisecondes et consultée 4975 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.