A Spectrum double-header is today's assault on my 555 game backlog. I'm still playing at least one a day, every day, on Covid-19 lockdown...
Another day, another Crash Magazine cover tape I’ve never played. I don’t even know where they all came from; I was a ‘Your Sinclair’ guy back in the day.
First up is 'Xeno', is a kind of futuresports cocktail comprising two parts Air Hockey, one part Frisbee, and a dash of Subbuteo (look it up) shaken until smooth and served over ice.
Along with the usual ‘pokes’ and a demo of ‘Potsworth & Co’, this tape had two games that were once ‘full price releases’ - meaning that in the mid to late eighties they would have cost a tenner each; top dollar for Spectrum games at that time.
I think by 1992, when Crash stuck this cassette to their magazine, other publications were getting low on material and had begun plumbing the depths of self published titles and music editing software. It’s quite refreshing to find a cover tape from the nineties that is devoid of all that tat.
In honour of this (and the fact I find it difficult to find much to say about these older games) I decided to dedicate this blog entry to the whole tape...
But then the ‘Potsworth & Co’ demo wouldn’t load so it’s just the two full games I’m afraid - I’m actually a bit disappointed because it genuinely looks pretty decent. Never mind. Onwards.
First up is 'Xeno', is a kind of futuresports cocktail comprising two parts Air Hockey, one part Frisbee, and a dash of Subbuteo (look it up) shaken until smooth and served over ice.
Air hockey is the most obvious inspiration as the principle game object is a ‘puck’; a flat disc that has to be shoved into the opponents goal using your own circular slider. But then the Frisbee element comes into it as you basically aim your own piece and slide it towards the puck - it can go anywhere over the whole vaguely diamond-shaped playing field and you can even throw yourself into the opposition player, bouncing them away from their planned route.
And the Subbuteo element? That’s the real master stroke.
For the uninitiated, Subbuteo was a kind of table football (Soccer) game that involved tiny footballers whose feet were stuck to a large hemispherical base. These players formed up as teams of 11 and competitors flicked them at an oversized football to try and knock it into the opponents goal. The thing that made the game work, and also the rule that I didn’t realise until many years after I last saw a Subbuteo set, was that it was a turn based game.
By bringing that element to Xeno, it turns the game from a mayhem of panic and own goals (I lost 19 - Nil in my first match against the CPU) into a slightly less frantic but much more tactical affair.
Sorry to throw in yet another simile, but when you get the hang of Xeno it’s a little like Rocket League, particularly when it comes to making the decision to keep chasing the puck or make a direct dash backwards to protect your goal. There’s also a similar satisfaction when a speculative punt up field turns into a sensational long range goal.
All this is presented very nicely too. Sound effects do the job (I’m playing 48k, I don’t know if 128 is any different) and, like most of the best looking Spectrum games, it embraces the monochrome and makes it work. There are a couple of extra colours in the crowd, but this is a game that relies on the smoothness of it’s animation to create a slick impression, and it really, really works.
Xeno - Successfully turns an air hockey hybrid into a surprisingly entertainingly futuresport, definitely worth a play.
The other game on the tape is 'Eliminator' which comes from one of the eighties' best software houses: Hewson.
This one put me immediately in mind of a game I played the last time I did a blog.
On that occasion I played every single game available on MAME and wrote about the hidden gems I found in A-to-Z fashion. A quick scroll through my old posts tells me the game was called Thunder Ceptor - but as that is obscure now as it was in 2015 when I wrote about it, there’s little point in making that comparison.
The reason Eliminator put me in mind of Thunder Ceptor, was that both are ‘into-the-screen’ shooters that appear to take place on roads, despite your vehicle clearly being some kind of spacecraft.
There’s a bit of a dearth of this kind of thing on the Spectrum and, if the amount of game-breaking bugs I’ve read about while looking into Eliminator is anything to go by, it’s easy to see why.
I didn’t encounter any myself but I only played a few levels, and my time was curtailed by my own failures rather than those of the game.
As you’d expect if you have any experience of Hewson products, this is a very polished game. The 3D effects for both the road and the enemies are great, with the levels in particular benefitting from the addition of some nice undulating terrain. There are plenty of on-course obstacles to be avoided when you’re not blasting enemy craft, too, and there’s even a neat multi-level power-up system that makes you choose between more ammunition or a new toy.
Eliminator was originally released in 1988, but even today it’s a game you would easily peg as originally being a ‘full price’ product from the level of polish alone. I’ve played some games during the writing of this blog that made me question my memory of what the Spectrum was capable of, but Eliminator is certainly not one of them. It looks, sounds, and plays great.
Eliminator - Apparently it’s a bit broken, but it’s still better than a lot of other games out there. (and a quick Google will find fixed ‘TAP’ images)
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