Personal Computer News


Godzilla and the Martians

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Jim Ballard
Publisher: Temptation
Machine: Spectrum 16K

 
Published in Personal Computer News #050

Godzilla Kong

Godzilla Kong

The Martians have been causing trouble for us Earthlings for years now. Here they are again, this time threatening to destroy the molecular structure of Earth's atmosphere. For some reason they have a Fay Wray stand-in trapped at the top of a building site and Temptation Software obviously believes King Kong has had his day so in a stroke of brilliant originality it has substituted Godzilla.

Objectives

The originality ends here. It's the same old story of rescuing the damsel in distress. You have to get to the top of the building avoiding the Martians and their death traps.

Godzilla And The Martians

One difference between this and the standard 'Kong' is that you only have a limited time to effect the rescue. The oxygen level is shown at the top of the screen as a horizontal bar and if it runs out it's curtains for you, the lady and the rest of the civilised world as we know it.

In Play

Beneath the extremely attractive and luxurious packaging lies a bundle of surprises, most of them unpleasant.

Godzilla And The Martians

The building site is a typical snakes and ladders operation with you moving from side to side and ascending the convenient ladders, jumping Martians and death traps en route.

Once at the top, you rescue the damsel as though by magic. However, her death wish reasserts itself and before you know it she's back at the top and you must risk life, limb and terminal boredom once more.

Godzilla is obviously resting on his laurels in this one as the old star of the silver screen lends little more than the weight of his name to the proceedings.

Godzilla And The Martians

The graphics are slow and jerky which is hardly surprising as the entire program is written in Basic. Sensible use of the cursor keys is made pointless by the poor animation which halts twice a second to accept a keypress. This also results in your having little accurate control over your character.

The only good point, and it's purely incidental, is that because the whole thing is in Basic you can examine the listing and perhaps learn something from the exercise.

Verdict

It would be pointless to list all the program's faults, almost as boring as playing the game. The days are long passed when arcade games were acceptable in Basic and you can find better in many magazine listings.

You'd probably get more fun from editing this than from playing it.

Jim BallardRoger Howarth

Other Reviews Of Godzilla And The Martians For The Spectrum 16K


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Godzilla And The Martians (Temptation)
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