You have decided to replace your current spacecraft with a new, state-of-the-art one - the Foourd T-Bird. You go to the nearest dealer and ask for a test drive - but you have taken a wrong turning somewhere and ended up in the heat of battle against some nasty aliens! Four levels await you in this space shoot-'em-up. The action is viewed in perspective, with the waves of aliens coming out of the screen towards you. If you shoot all of the aliens in a wave, you can collect a pod which gives you a power-up, or you can ignore it and select another power-up the next time you collect a pod. The graphics are quite good and the scrolling is fast, but there is no music and hardly any sound effects. Overall, it's a fairly average shoot-'em-up.

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Technician Ted
(Hewson, 1984)

Ted starts his shift in the chip factory at 8:30am, and has to finish 21 tasks before he clocks off again at 5:00pm - but the tasks must be completed in a certain order, and before a certain time is reached. The 'tasks' involve pressing one or two flashing buttons in a room in the right order; actually reaching them is another matter altogether. This is a very old platform game and it really shows, with its primitive graphics and simple sound effects. Bizarrely, this actually makes it a bit appealing, but unfortunately, it's really difficult to complete any of the tasks.

See also: Costa Capers.

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You're a police cop in the 21st century, and you must force your way through the ranks by arresting and killing criminals. Each level has two parts - you have to drive to the building and arrive on time, and then seek the criminal before he leaves. If you obey the orders you're given, you can collect power-ups for your car. The game is OK - the graphics are reasonable (check out the digitised pictures of the criminals on the bottom of the screen!), as are the sound effects, but there's not a lot of variety in the game, and the part where you drive to the building does get tedious.

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Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
(Imageworks, 1990)

The Foot Clan have kidnapped the Turtles' friend, April O'Neil, and their mentor, Splinter, and the four Turtles - Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Donatello - have to rescue both of them by fighting monsters in the sewers and exploring buildings. You can change which Turtle you control at any time. The graphics are colourful and are actually rather impressive, but there are very few sound effects and they're rubbish, anyway. The game is also too easy; many of the sewers have pizzas for the turtles to eat, and there's another pizza waiting for them each time they enter that sewer. It's still worth a few goes, though.

See also: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin-Op.

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Cowabunga, dudes! This game is radical, as the Turtles would say! As the title suggests, this is a port of the great arcade game by Konami, and you'll be surprised how near to the original it is! The basic plot has no surprises; as any of the Turtles (or any two, as this game has one of the best two-player modes the CPC has ever seen) you must walk the corridors, streets and sewers and rescue your master Splinter and your friend April O'Neil from the clutches of Shredder, beating up his henchmen along the way. Bebop, Rocksteady, Krang... all the old favourites are here! The graphics are great and colourful, the difficulty level is perfect and the two-player mode is brilliant. The sound could be better, but even so this is an absolute blinder of a game.

See also: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

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10

Take three guesses as to what sort of game this might be. Yes, it's strip poker! Actually, this game has much better graphics than the other strip poker offerings on the CPC (and how do I know that?). As with all other strip poker games, when the girl loses all her money, she takes off an item of clothing and you get to see a picture of her. As I've already said, the graphics are very good indeed, and a soothing bit of music on the title screen sets the atmosphere well. However, I'm no good at any type of poker, anyway - and why are only 32 cards used by both players instead of 52?

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The hyperspatial wireways have been invaded by aliens, and it's your job to eliminate them all - not an easy task when there are 99 of them! You control a zapper which moves along the rim at one end of each wireway, while the aliens appear at the other end and move towards you. You must merrily unleash a hail of bullets at them, trying to prevent any of them reaching your end of the wireway. If you feel overwhelmed, you can use a super zapper, but you only have one of these on each level. This game was a classic in the arcades, and it has been converted very well, with great vector graphics, marvellous sound effects, and addictive gameplay. It's excellent!

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9

This is Loriciel's second tennis game for the CPC, and it's a pretty good one as well. Although you can't play in any tournaments, the game allows you to customise the abilities of both yourself and your opponent in several areas - namely service, forehand, backhand and volleys. You can also choose whether to play on a cement, clay or grass court. The game uses a split-screen technique which shows the view of the court from both ends, which is very useful in two-player mode, where both players have a clear view of their own end of the court. Although the graphics lack colour - and the colour schemes that are used have not been chosen well - the animation of the players is excellent, and after a few practice sessions, it's a very playable game as well.

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10th Frame
(US Gold, 1986)

There aren't many ten-pin bowling simulations around for the CPC, but this is one of them, and it's really rather average. Up to eight players can take part in either open or league bowling, and there are three skill levels - kids, amateur and pro. First you align your player, and then use a cursor to aim your shot. The animations of the bowler are impressive, but the colour scheme is garish, the sound effects are dreadful, and getting a strike seems to be difficult even on the kids skill level.

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6

A robot, T1000, has been sent back in time to terminate a young boy called John Connor, but some humans have sent another robot, T101 (that's you) to protect him. The game has seven levels which rotate around three styles of gameplay - beat-'em-ups (levels 1, 4 and 7), driving from an overhead view (levels 2 and 6), and puzzles where you must slide tiles to create a picture (levels 3 and 5). Thankfully the puzzles are only bonus levels, and it isn't necessary to complete the puzzles in order to go to the next level. It's a big game with marvellous graphics - check out T1000's face on the fifth level - but the gameplay is definitely also there.

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