Personal Computer Games


Rider

Author: WD
Publisher: Virgin Games
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #3

Rider

Players of Rider will be taken for a ride in more ways than one. It is based on the premise that, as a British agent, your mission is to find the location of mines on the roads of a country the UK is about to invade.

The first ride is a parachute one. You're dropped into the country above a line of motorbikes provided by the Resistance.

By manoeuvring left and right as you descend, you must land on a bike, different coloured bikes being worth different points. Once on a bike, it's off down the mined road, avoiding the mines as long as possible.

Rider

The game ends when you either explode on a mine, or crash into a bollard. There's a lot of bollards to this game, starting with a ridiculous scoring system.

Landing on a bike gets anywhere from 19 to 900-odd points. Landing on a red bike when red bikes are worth only 19 points means a brilliant ride score far less than crashing a good bike immediately.

Another thing is that the location of mines and bollards is the same every time, and soon becomes familiar. In programming terms, the RANDOMISE function is screamed for.

Rider

Rider is brought to you by the same programming team that did Yomp. Like that game, Rider has a military flavour, and one of its two stages is remarkably like Horace Goes Skiing - swinging left and right to avoid obstacles.

This is a widely used theme, so it's probably coincidental that the best parts of Yomp and Rider are available with more charm and smoothness on Horace's Holiday.

However, to be fair, Rider offers seven speed levels and a score table for up to five players, which Horace doesn't.

Perhaps these will go down well at the barracks.

WD

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