Previous Next

Telly Heroes is Jonathan Cauldwell's latest production for his favourite 8-bit micro, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It puts you in charge of running a newly formed sixth terrestrial television channel, called TV6, and on a real shoe-string budget with just 60,000. The game begins with a phone call and a wish of luck from Mary Frighthouse, who will watch your schedule closely for any inappropriate content (especially shown before the watershed of 9pm) and promptly put in a complaint to the regulators if she feels you've broken any rules. If the more liberal regulator agrees, then you will be fined for each illegal act.

Before you get as far as offending Ms Frighthouse, though, there's the serious business of procurement (or buying) and commissioning programmes, and arranging the weekly schedule.

This is all done through an old-fashioned type-in menu system. You may notice that they're parodies of popular TV series available to purchase, such as One Foot In The Gravy, Prats Win Prizes, and my particular favourite Starsky & Crotch. Each has a price and a rating, from Utter Tripe through to Excellent, with the cost usually reflecting the quality. Typically, each series is purchased for six weeks at a time, after which it may take a while for it to be put back on the market.

You may commission your own programmes, from children's TV, to quiz shows, soaps and even shows of a more mature or serious nature. On a tight budget, do you go for quantity over quality? Oddly, this doesn't always have much bearing on your eventual rating figures, and there are some shows with poor ratings that achieve a prestigious Doncaster Academy Film and Television Arts award, in the process gaining more viewers and advertising revenue, should you own a DAFTA-winning series.

Once you've procured or commissioned your shows, it's then time to arrange your daily schedule for the week, which leads to an anomaly: it seems that Jonathan has chosen a weekly rather than a daily schedule. No religious-themed programmes for Sunday evenings, if you were so inclined. You can add a full or basic teletext service, (or not at all), as well as a website; both will cost, but the first two options will bring in regular revenue on the provision that your ratings are good enough elsewhere. Your website might be vulnerable to attack from mysterious Chinese hackers - something that can be prevented for a small fee. And any series that you've commissioned can be put on DVD, securing a long-term revenue stream.

Your viewing figures are affected by the schedule and certain categories of programmes achieve higher audiences at different times of the day. Thoughtful scheduling will allow you to maximise your channel's potential, and therefore help advertising and DVD sales in the process. Make enough money and you can put in a serious bid to buy the rights to show highlights of the national football league. Other surprises appear along the way, and there's some humour, which at first can make you laugh out loud but soon becomes repetitive.

Telly Heroes is very much in the vein of Codemasters' love-it-or-hate-it classic Rockstar Ate My Hamster. I feel that it can be a little dull at times: and one feature I would have like to have seen is to allow you to commission and build up a programmes profile, which could then be sold on the open market, with DAFTA winners netting a small fortune. Unfortunately, this feature was excluded to add more random events throughout the game. It would certainly have made proceedings a whole lot more interesting, as the game logic seemed quite simple, and I found it hard to lose the game even if I slipped in an adult show - like Boobstation - before the watershed. This is very much a love-it-or-loath-it affair. If you're a square-eyed TV addict, you'll find it easier to get the jokes and probably enjoy what strategy there is. I personally find too much is left out that could have beefed up the gameplay and made it a more interesting production.

A solid but somewhat lacking management simulator with some interesting features and a smattering of humour here and there.