Game Of The Month

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Say what? A budget game for Game Of The Month? What's going on here? Well, how about a well crafted, compulsive, entertaining little game that deserves much more than its budget status suggests? Welcome aboard, Joe Blade II.

The game, a sequel (believe it or not to Joe Blade) is the kind of game that owners of other computers take for granted. You know - intriguing premise, interesting graphics, fun gameplay and so on. The tragedy of the Beeb world is that games like this are extremely rare and, outside the shoot-'em-up or arcade adventure, the 'normal' computer game seems never to appear for our machine. Of course, the occasional one slips through - I'm thinking perhaps of Knightlore, Fortress (Perhaps even of Barbarian) - but they're certainly unusual.

This game, however even as a quick and unsubtle sequel is great fun to play and converter Wayne Dobson (from originator - for C64 or Spectrum or whatever - Colin Swinbourne) is to be congratulated.

Have you seen the original? If not, then it involved a graphically large hero exploring a complex and killing lots of baddies. Fun graphics, fun gameplay. The new version is out on the streets - vicious punks abound and the hero has to kill them all and rescue ordinary citizens who have ventured onto the streets, foolishly. Kick the louts in the head and save the day is the order of play.

Interestingly, as in the first game, there are various sub-games which break up the action - you have to put sequences of numbers in order against the clock.

It's perhaps curious why this should be picked as the game to look out for this month - there's nothing stunning about it, maybe it will be forgotten in six months. The main reason is that - it's good to see a software house breaking new ground for the Beeb (as much as I love them, I sometimes like that I'll scream if I see one more 'mega-large arcade adventure') at a good price. Would that games like this were a regular occurrence, instead of an occasional treat.

And, curiosly, this was slipped onto the market with no advance hype and you'll probably have to look very hard to see any advertising anywhere. But do seek it (or the prequel) out.

Dave Reeder