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1993-09-09
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Just in case you want an unbiased opinion on F1`s products here are all the
magazine reviews that have been printed to date, word for word.
Typed by Steve.
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FORTRESS
Disk, F1007
Price £3.99
*AGA ONLY* AMIGA ACTION, May 94
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Apparently based on the the classic Gods games of yesteryear, Fortress is a
sort of arcade/strategy affair which hails back to the glory days of
Mega-lo-mania. The whole world is laid out before you on the screen, with
places of interest indicated so that you don`t get too confused. The aim of
the game is to build your armies and enter battle to take control of enemy
castles and eventually, if you are good enough, the whole world.
Battle sequences form a major part of the gameplay, and the 64 colour
graphics and 170k of run-time sound effects make Fortress a game which is a
marvel to behold. As long as you have the 2 meg machine necessary to play
it.
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Karate Master
Disk F1010
Price £3.99 AMIGA ACTION, MAY 94
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The majority of beat`em-ups arepretty far fetched to say the least, what
with unbelievably deformed characters performing acrobatic feats which their
bulky frames would never allow them to do in reality. So. it makes a change
to see a beat` em-up which is described by it`s publishers as a serious
karate sim with all the speed and variety of moves and excitment of the real
sport.
A two player option allows you and a friend to takecharge of a pyjama clad
warrior each, and then it`s battle time. Fifteen moves are accesible
altogether, including somersaults, roundhouse kicks and jumping spin kicks.
And when you learn that this is coupled with increasing enemy intelligence
over 99 level, ten fighting speeds and a sub game every two level, you should
be impressed. Personally I feel that Karate Master is a long way from
recreating the "Excitement of the real sport", but it`s fairly good stuff
nontheless and I quite like it.
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Through The Red Door
Disk F1013
Price £3.99 AMIGA FORMAT, MAY 94
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Europress` Amos may not have proved to be the answer to every would-be
programmer`s dream but it certainly proved it`s worth as a tool for
generating educational software.
Even Europress` own range of "Fun School" products were written entirely in
Amos. Not surprisingly, Amos is responsible for this collection of four very
simple educational programs aimed at children between three and five years of
age. Featuring bright and colourful graphics and cheerful sound effects,
Through the Red Door is another great PD eduactional pack.
The disk contains five educational "mini programs" which are accessed by
"ringing" the appropriate door bell when the program`s main screen appears.
The first program is "Colours" in which you have to help Simon and Sarah to
choose the colours of objects in the playroom, the countryside and the
seaside. Next up is "numbers" which sees you helping Sarah to find the
missing animals in the shop, garden and bedroom (Sheep in your bedroom? I`m
starting to worry about this...). Finally we have the Clothes and Letters,
two equally jolly educational games along the same lines as the first two but
concentrating on different skills.
Through the Red Door certainly isn`t up to the same standards as professional
educational software such as Europress` Fun School series bit it`s an
enjoyable and well designed disk nonetheless. If you need a disk that will
keep the kids quiet for a few hours then this may be the answer.
Rated 78%
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CRICKET CRAZY
Disk F1002 AMIGA POWER APRIL 94
£3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Cricket is dull. Excruciattingly dull. Even the crowds at the matches take
along newspapers,knitting or portable T.Vs (so they can watch real sports
like football) to relieve the tedium. It makes Chess tournaments look like
terminator 2. So I have to admit, I wasn`t exactly relishing the thought of
reviewing this game. The promise of a choice of fast, meduim or spin bowlers
the ability to bat six different ways, the chance to choose which team to
play out of seven international sides and the opportunity to organise my
fielders somehow failed to set my pulse racing. But perhaps I`m being unfair
And a first glance at the graphics didn`t do much to change my opinion.
"3D action" it said in the blurb. Well, it ain`t no VR experience youll be
unsurprised to hear. You get a perspective shot of the batter at the fold
and the ball flying towards him, but that`s about it. Apart from that the
graphics are functional at best. But it ain`t all bad if you can excuse the
dire graphics, there are lot`s that`s impressive about the game. It`s
certainly comprehensive, with just about every aspect of the game covered in
some way. You can bat in different ways, control all your fielders, alter
teams, change batting orders, decide on which bowler to put on and do other
crickety-type things. The controls are awkward at first, but logical-like
with most one-on-one beat-`em-ups you just need to get the hang of the
system. It`s certainly not a great game, but despite the dissapointing
visuals, in terms of gameplay it`s nearly as good as the commercial cricket
sims you`ll find.
Verdict: I`ll resist the temptation to say, :It`s just not Cricket, old boy"
because, er, it is.
RATING * * * (3 out of 5)
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Blackboard V2.0
Disk F1006 AMIGA SHOPPER MAY 94
£4.99 (2 disks) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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The Amiga`s graphical power has been well harnessed by packages such as
ADpro and ImageFX. However, these tools are quite expensive if you are only
going to be using them on a casual basis. Blackboard attempts to fill that
gap in the Amiga graphics market. It tries to provide some of the functions
of Adpro ans so on for £4.99.
So what do you get for your fiver? The program has a surprising number of
features. For example, it has MORPHING,WARPING,BULGING,PIXELATE,EMBOSS,
COLOUR TO GREYSCALE,EDGE ENHANCE,INVERSE AND QUANTISE. If you are a
programmer, you can even add your own modules. From the view point of an AGA
machine owner you also get access to near 24-bit quality graphic manipulation
-Hurrah!
The interface is quite intuitive as well. All of the programs functions are
accessible from the buttons on the main screen. You can adjust the image`s
contrast, brightness and alter it`s RGB values by moving the appropriate
sliders. This is useful for correcting the colour balance and increasing the
quality of scanned images. Several display modes are also supported. To
change modes you can click on the number of colours you want between 2
colours and Ham-8, you can also specify whether or not the screen will be
Hires and/or interlaced and whether the rendered image will be dithered or
not.
The operators are contained in a scrollable window. You can scroll up and
down the list, then simply press run to execute them. As mentioned before,
there is a large range of operations. They range from simple effects such as
PIXELLATION and GREYSCALE CONVERSION right through to more complicated
manipulations like WARPING and MORPHING. The more complicated functions such
as MORPHING and WARPING pictures bring up editing windows with preview images
You can then manipulate the nodes in a similar way to CINEMORPH or MORPH PLUS
without many of the options available, such as group selection and manipulate
nodes, but there are enough functions to produce good effects.
Another good feature is the addition of a limited editor. You can use it to
make adjustments to pictures in a similar manner to a paint package.
You need to select an area of an image to edit and then, presented with an
enlarged view of the area, you can choose from eight brush sizes and scroll
around the screen. There are also different paint modes, such as blend and
smooth.
Blackboard V2.0 also sports a feature that has only just been added to Adpro
2.5, a composite load. You can use this function to load an image behind or
in front of, an existing image. You can input a value for transparency, and
thereby alter how much one picture shows through the other. You can also
scale, crop and squeeze your image.
Squeeze operates in a similar way to sheer in most paint packages.
Overall Blackboard V2.0 is a great improvement over the first version, which
was heavily bugged and extremely slow. This version also has a couple of
minor bugs and it is still not as fast as currently available commercial
packages, but what do you expect for less than £5? This program should
definitely be on your software shelf if you are into graphics, but don`t
feel like shelling out vast sums of money.
Program Rating 90%
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