Previous Next

You're Falcon, a Time Agent on the track of a renegade Time Lord who is screwing up history like there's no tomorrow. In fact, if he succeeds there won't be any, you won't be reading this review and you'll probably be a pool of protozoic slime or something. Possibly more exciting...

Your time machine is called Falcon's Wing, with a friendly on-board computer - CAIN - which mistakenly thinks it has a sense of humour. Its databanks contain vital information about past time zones and their inhabitants and historical objects. Accessing this data will tell you whether any artefact from one era has been plonked in another by the wicked renegade.

It's your mission to visit three disrupted time zones, locate the anachronistic object in each, kill off a few natives, and return the bits and bobs to their rightful times.

Well, it's by no means an original plot, but it has bags of potential and would make a pretty good adventure, not least because it's based on the Falcon multiple-choice adventure series by Smith and Thomson. The sort of books which involve more page-turning than a London telephone directory but transfer easily to computers.

Curiously, however, Virgin has opted for an altogether different approach, stringing together a lot of knackered arcade scenarios stuffed with archaic jetpack riders, bubbles and furry creatures. Aware that this just isn't going to cut much ice in 1987, the programmers have saddled the game with a time limit so unbelievably miniscule that it expires before you've even finished reading the on-screen instructions. Ten minutes is all you've got.

There are seven time zones in all, ranging from the distant past of Jurassic Earth to the Ringworld of AD3033. These are described by CAIN in feeble imitation of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide. Reading this is time-consuming and before you can say 'sod this for a game of soldiers', the clock has ticked away to zero and history has been destroyed by radiation or some such.

So, next time you play, skip all the jolly prose and simply scan the menus searching for irregularities, like a cloud of Radiation 9, from the 1997 post-holocaust world of London, suddenly appearing in the alien planet of Dyskra in 1241. Quickly switch to Timewarp mode and off you go, the screen juddering madly as the years flash past.

Exiting Falcon's Wing, which immediately blends in with the background, you materialise as a suspiciously-familiar jet-packing spaceman. The background scenery is quite pretty - pyramids and pillars for ancient Egypt, rubble and St. Paul's for AP London, and so on - but there's no time for sight-seeing.

All sorts of meanies are floating around with obvious evil intent, but don't be too trigger-happy with your laser (or, as Virgin irritatingly insist on calling it, a 'lazer'), because some creatures will only start attacking after you've fired the first shot. Look out, too, for 'POW' and '?' symbols randomly appearing. The first giving you short-lived immunity, the second temporarily immobilising the enemy.

If you catch a glimpse of the renegade Time Lord himself, looking like a refugee from Ghostbusters, stay well clear; he can't be killed and only drains your energy.

Supposing you find the displaced artefact, pick it up with the space bar, and head back to your camouflaged time machine. Dying will get you there quicker, as you're automatically transported to it for resuscitation, but this is not a brilliant tactic as your meagre time allocation is promptly halved in punishment.

Once on board, warp back pronto to the time zone where the object originated, dump it, and then visit the next scene of the renegade's meddling. And time ticks away inexorably, as they say in the novels.

No, it's not easy, and I've never yet managed to recover more than one artefact. But neither is it much fun. The presentation of the hi-tech CAIN and the scenery graphics are quite slick, but sound effects are limited, and none of this is able to disguise the dated and tired arcade sequences.