| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ ROLAND IN TIME (c) AMSOFT ★ |
BIGK | Personal Computer News |
If you've looked through Amsoft's lists recently, you may have wondered how any software house could churn out the whole series of Roland games in such a short time. Amsoft hit on the clever idea of marketing a lot of different games featuring small human characters (or in one case a flea) under the one house character. This latest game is written by Gem Software, authors of Oh! Mummy and Spannerman. The title suggests a time trip, and in fact there are ten time zones, each of which may be entered independently, so you don't have to complete one screen before starting the next. Each screen shows a well-detailed scene depicting some pseudo-historical characters and enough crystals in various awkward locations to test the best of arcade adventurers. The sole purpose of the game is to collect these, and if the crystal counter is anything to go by, there are over a thousand! When you start playing the game it is probably a good idea to visit as many of the locations as possible, before working out a strategy for collecting gems. Each of the ten main screens has several subsidiary ones. I've come across 34 in the course of play and haven't got near to visiting them all. There are only three controls to the game, left, right and jump, but then it's nearly all a question of timing, anyway. There are some crystals that can only be reached from one direction and only carried off in another, and Roland will cover some pretty bizarre territory. A list of the ten starting titles may give a feel of the imagination used: Down At Dollis Brook, The Roman Fort, Njorl's Dragon-boat, Seen My Ballista? Jenny Goes Spinning, Missile Silo No. 47, After The Holocaust, Heli-Hunter Station, West of Dome 9, The End Of Time. The sheer variety of sprites takes some beating; everything from express trains to sarcophagi, pterodactyls to port cullises. This is a true arcade adventure, in that you are ofler caught unawares by sections ol crumbling ground and limited in where you may go by unseen barriers. In one or two places you have to overstep any vi si ble support in order to make a particularly long jump. On the occasions when I failed to make it, I felt justifiably cheated in losingone of my ten lives. When entering a new screen, be prepared for some meany attacking you immediately; only on the starting screens can you assume your entry point is safe. The sound effects are adequate, although several members of my family (myself included) got rather irritated by the repeated rendition of: 'I Love To Go Awandering', which provides an unstoppable background to the game. Overall, though, this is an excellent game, varied and imaginative with excellent use of graphics and at last showing something of the full potential ofthe CPC464. It will keep most people (apart from those who write into games mags to boast of completing Sabre Wulf in under 30 seconds) entertained for many hours. Simon Williams, PCN
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Page créée en 285 millisecondes et consultée 6944 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. |
