The Edge
£7.95
A quick glance at this game and you immediately think of it as a Gyroscope/Spindizzy/Kirel clone. Well, aren't you the little games expert, then! Actually, you're wrong. It happens to be a similar style, but in no way is it an the same nesting box at all, petal.
You are, predictably enough, Bobby Bearing, a spherical (no ball gags, puh-leez) droid, charged with retrieving his buddies. Through some painful twist of plot, all your chums are scattered around tho 3D viewpoint maze, and it's up to you to shove them along from behind (Ooo!) until they're safely back in the recess from whence they came.
As you can probably picture, shoving a smooth metal ball along with another smooth metal ball isn't the easiest task in the world. Yup, like all the best games it's easy to learn, but **$%!! hard to play. To make it not just annoying but plain intolerable, there are a host of hazards to contend with. Evil black droids lurk in cubby holes to bounce you, magnets and switches divert you and activate lifts out of turn. And worst of all, platforms pound some intersecting corridors like steam hammers - you have to time your passage very carefully indeed if you don't want to get squashed flat.
The graphics on this game are brilliant - they delight the viewer, and entertain as much on their own as the gameplay itself. Bobby's movements are very realistic, and his mobility and inertia, considering he's a fictional droid, are fascinating to watch. In fact it's so nice to look at that you spend most of the first hour just watching what the program can do - blow playing it!
Just when you think you've seen 'em all, something rolls around the corner and taps you on the leg and trills 'Hi, I'm a new and totally original game called Bobby Bearing. Buy Me!'
The Edge
Marble Madness
£7.95
So you thought Spin Dizzy was the best Marble Madness game you were going to get? Well, hold on to your hats, this is better. All you had to do in Spin Dizzy was determine how to get through the various rooms and pick up objects. This game adds a whole new dimension to that.
Trapped somewhere in the 240 screens are five little cousins of Bobby, the hero bearing. You guide Bobby in his quest to bring home the bearings. To do so you must negotiate various hazards such as falling, being squashed or mugged by the mutant bearings which inhabit curvispace.
Curvispace is a new innovation in this type of game - indeed in any type of arcade game. The game includes the usual slopes and edges you must avoid but also has curved areas involving momentum, gravity and gradient, along with all the other problems.
Just getting round the maze is tricky but your problems have scarcely started. Once you have located one of the bearings you must guide it back home. That is done by nudging another bearing with Bobby. Then the screens, which presented only a small hazard to Bobby on his own, become impossible. That gives the game incredible depth. The only way you will have a chance of getting anywhere is to have an intimate knowledge of the map and the puzzles presented by each room. Only then will you feel confident that you know the safest route home wherever you find a fellow bearing.
It is always tempting to say, whenever a game of this calibre is released, that surely it is as far as they can take the Spectrum - until the next blockbuster is released. Without doubt this game is the state-of-the-art in Spectrum games - graphically superb and a rattling good game to boot.
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB