Crash
1st March 1984
Supersnails
Despite a story about Doctor van Winkelhoff who has genetically engineered snails imported from West Africa into a breed of Supersnails who leave super glue trails behind them, and are now trapped in his laboratory trying to escape, this game turns out to be a 'Light Cycle' grid type game made famous by the movie Tron.
The aim of the game is to trap your opponent and kill him or her off by forcing him into a wall, your trail or his own trail. If you succeed in this, a hole opens up in the wall and allows you to escape. There are four directional controls for your snail, and in common with other games like it, hitting reverse of the direction in which you are currently travelling is instant death.
Comments
Control keys: player one, Q/A up/down, Z/X left/right: player two, P/L up/down, M/SYM SHIFT left/right
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: very responsive
Colour: sparse!
Graphics: extremely simple but very fast
Sound: continuous but poor
Skill levels: 9 speeds
Features: 1 or 2 players against each other or the computer
Comment 1
Comment 2
'This game has the most simple graphics I have ever seen - just white lines on a blue ground. It's simple but it is highly addictive. '
Comment 3
'If you buy games as much for their colour and graphics (as anything else) then you may as well forget Supersnails. If, on the other hand, you enjoy a fast, utterly single-minded game, then this is about the best version around. The lines move extremely smoothly (only pixels after all) and I think I 'm right in saying that this is the only 8-directional version, which opens up the game's tactics quite a bit.'
