Go!
£8.99
Reviewer: Sean Kelly
"Ryo Ken Oh's gone and done it now, hasn't he?" "What do you mean? What's he done?" "Well he's swiped all the children from the local village, and someone's got to rescue them! Who else is going to play computer games otherwise? Go on, off you jolly well go." "Oh, alright then. But where to?"
S'easy, Capcom will show you where, cos you start Tiger Road just outside the place where the kidnapped children are held and being thrust straight into the action, you find yourself up against hordes of sword waving guards as you try to reach the entrance. Once inside, you'll be met by a number of large guards who need several well aimed hits to dispatch them. Alternatively you can avoid them by leaping from one level to another, up and down the three levels in this section.
Should you survive this lot, the evil Ryo Ken Oh will not give up. He'll send his minions to chuck loads of barrels at you instead. You'll have barrels rolling at you from both directions, which can be jumped over or hit. But if they hit you, then your energy will begin to decrease alarmingly. Oh no! Wrestling a sort of lion is next, followed by a bit of vertical scrolling as you attempt to climb a wall whilst being attacked by giant flies. Buzzz! And watch out for the sword waving, spear chucking guards, and the dodgy stepping stones which are a bit tricky to master.
Phew, there's lots to look out for and when you begin the game, all you have to defend yourself is a big axe. But don't despair, as you travel, large urns will be encountered, and three hits on the urn will reveal the contents, invariably one of three weapons; a big stick, another axe and a sort of yo-yo with spikes on, which has the largest reach and the most potent hitting power of the three.
Tiger Road is good but unfortunately suffers from one fairly common complaint. Addictive games in the arcade are fairly commonplace, and to make them stand out, loads of sound and brilliant graphics are added. When they are converted to the Speccy, however, attempts to include the graphics almost invariably lead to a loss of addictiveness. So while Tiger Road graphics do add to the game overall, horizontally scrolling, leaping and bashing games have been done much better before, and quite a while ago at that.
I don't think this will keep the average arcade addict going for more than an afternoon or two.
Time to catch up with our 2 favourite barg hunters, JON PILLAR and RICH PELLEY, as we fix on our helmets and drop down deep...
BARGAIN BASEMENT
Kixx
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley
If you walked into a Chinese take-away and asked for a Ryu-Ken Oh, then you'd probably get a reply something like "Eh?" (or the nearest equivalent in Chinese). You see, Ryu Ken Oh has in fact kidnapped all the children from the 'local' village, leaving you, Lee Wong, to go and get them back.
The thing's basically a continuous left to right scrolling hack-'em-up - to tell you the truth it would be a lot better if it wasn't so crap. It's not the graphics or anything - they're quite adequate enough (though the scrolling's a bit jerkily) - it's just that there's not enough to do despite its variety. Firstly you have to make your way into the building where the children are being held by jumping about and slashing all the baddies - far too easy because you can just jump over everybody and avoid any fighting whatsoever. Then it's inside - more dashing about left to right (and also a bit of up and down levels too) slashing more people, including these big geezers who pick you up and throw you about, but who can be killed far too easily. Other bits include jumping over barrels, wrestling a lion and avoiding killer bees. Quite a variety as I've said but there's a distinct lack of action as almost all fighting can be avoided, and when you do fight, you can just do one move all the time to win. One for the bin.
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