1st April 1986
The Core
ZX Computing brings you a sneak preview of the latest game from A 'n F
A 'n F Software who will be eternally remembered for their all-time Speccy classic, Chuckie Egg (my hi-score is about 750,000. Can anyone beat that?), ran into financial problems a while back and went out of business. But, before they went out of business, they were working on a new game called The Core, and now that the A 'n F name has been bought by Argus Press Software, The Core is about to be released.
Core Blimey
The Core is an arcade adventure which also incorporates a number of icons that allow you to perform a variety of actions. The game is set in the future when mankind has spread out across the stars, using hollowed out asteroids as colony ships.
In their travels, the human colonies have discovered evidence of a number of intelligent races that have been wiped out by some unknown alien threat, and the game begings just after one of the human colony ships has also been attacked and its inhabitants destroyed. During the two-day battle the ship's computer recorded everything that occurred and has stored information that will enable mankind to defeat the aliens.
A last distress signal went out and was received by the game's hero. This character had been named Asteroid Andy during the deveopment of the game, but as everyone at APS hated that name, it's going to be changed. Anyway, Andy-as-was arrives on the asteroid and must locate the computer's memory bank which has been split into nine sections and hidden in various locations.
The asteroid is huge, with over a thousand locations and a number of teleport stations linking certain areas, and as well as locating the memory banks, you'll have to take on a number of aliens with their robot guards and solve a number of problems in order to reach the deepest levels of the asteroid. Before you can defend yourself from the aliens you'll have to find a gun, and also locate a number of batteries that will be needed to power all your equipment.
Up to this point, The Core is a fairly standard arcade adventure in a similar style to games like Nodes Of Yesod and Robot Messiah with large, smoothly animated graphics (I particularly liked the way your figure kneels down to pick up objects). But the addition of the icons allows you to perform actions other than just moving left/right and fire.
There is a Help icon which, just as in a text adventure, can be asked for hints in tricky spots (and just as in adventures hardly ever tells you what you want to know), and an 'actions' menu that allows you to Pick Up, Drop, Use objects and fire a gun.
There is also a Save Game option (which can only be used when you've found a cassette hidden in one of the caves), and three windows which display the objects you are carrying, the number of batteries you have, and the sections of memory bank that you have found.
When you first teleport into the asteroid you arrive in the mining levels which are relatively simple to get through, but as you go deeper the problems become harder and the aliens deadlier. In the time that I spent playing, I didn't even manage to find a gun, so I kept getting killed before I managed to get anywhere. I did manage to find a mysterious scrap of paper and a box of some sort that I couldn't find a purpose for, but with over a thousand locations in the game I've still got about seven hundred and fifty to go, so I'll just have to wait until we're given a final production copy of the game to review.
