Previous Next

Over the past few months, Firebird and Rainbird have been releasing games designed to push the Atari ST and Amiga just that bit further than the hordes of shoot-'em-ups currently infesting the software shelves.

Carrier Command, Starglider II and Virus are three good examples. Now we have Whirligig, the first 16-bit product to come from 8-bit innovator Mike Singleton. Any game that boasts a staggering four billion levels and more than 100 billion aliens is likely to attract a lot of attention, and sure enough Whirligig has done that.

Cast as a courageous starfighter pilot of the future, you are set the surreal quest of travelling around a huge universe (the Whirligig) to collect five perfect solids - cube, dodecahedron, and so on.

To describe the way in which Whirligig works is not easy. It's similar to Virus insofar as you control the ship using the mouse with controls for pitch, yaw, roll and thrust. Anyone who's played Virus before will know that this isn't the easiest control method to get used to. An awful lot of screaming about the universe completely out of control will be endured before you learn how to master your ship. Here, however, the similarity with Virus ends. Where Virus was a strategic shoot em up, Whirligig is more of an arcade adventure.

At the outset of the game, you find yourself in Eigenspace (Level One). A quick push on the stick thrusts your ship forward through space, which scrolls in all directions while you stay central. Each Eigenspace is littered with all manner of objects, both friendly and not-so-friendly. Depots are the most useful as flying closely past one replenishes your ship's supplies, fuel, missiles or chaff. There are three types of depot, one for each commodity.

Missiles are launched by pressing the left mouse button and are used to destroy aliens and other such threats to mission completion. Once fired a missile locks on to and destroys the nearest object on the screen. Trigger maniacs must beware, though. Firing a while there's nothing else on the screen causes it to lock on to your ship and destroy you!

Chaff is a more defensive alternative. Although its speed and manoeuvrability is much greater, and its targetting system is far more accurate, chaff operates on a priority system. This means it always looks for the greatest threat to your ship and destroys it before anything else.

Fuel is probably the most important commodity on board your ship. When it runs out you lose control of the ship, which results in you invariably crashing.

Travelling from Eigenspace to Eigenspace is achieved by passing through portals known as Stargates which resemble spinning wheels. By passing slowly through the gates you can travel to one of the other 3,999,999,999 Eigenspaces.

The five perfect solids are each contained in special Eigenspaces called Perfectspaces. When you come across one, either by accident or due to careful planning, you can collect the solid by flying within its 'attractor field' which places it in tow. Drag it back through a Stargate and you've got it. Capture all five and you've won the game.

Whirligig is one of those games that promises the earth but fails to deliver. Unlike Virus, and indeed similar games, Whirligig has well defined graphics but cannot animate them smoothly enough to give any impression of speed or exhilaration while in flight. There's a stirring tune played throughout, although it doesn't seem suited to this style of game, and it does tend to irritate a little too often.

Fortunately, you can turn it off, leaving the weak spot effects, which, like the music, fail to generate a suitable atmosphere. And atmosphere is something Whirligig so desperately needs. It's an unfortunate piece of software where gameplay is concerned, in that it successfully falls between two stools.

There are no real problems to solve, and the shoot-'em-up action is far from enthralling, being slow and at worst, fiddly. Which means that all there's left to do is explore the four billion samey levels. Not much fun. It's a shame Whirligig has turned out this way, when it could so easily have been something a bit special had it a clear direction. It just goes to show: bigger doesn't necessarily mean better

This version is virtually identical to its Amiga counterpart, apart from the tune, which is still unsuitable but at least it sounds reasonable. Gameplay is exactly the same, and and subsequently so are the faults.