Firebird
48K Cassette
£1.99 1 Player
Joystick
Firebird are more noted for their budget software
on other computers, namely the Spectrash and Crummydore 64 than on
the Atari. They first entered the Atari market with CHIMERA - a
brilliant game based loosely on Ultimate's `Alien 8' and one of the
best of the 'recent' Atari releases - and COLLAPSE is their next
Atari effort to hit the highstreet shops, retailing at an incredible
£1.99.
COLLAPSE is a simple game in the arcade mould. You
are presented with a grid-screen made up of grey sticks and bridges.
You must guide Zen the bear around the screen, changing all the grey
sticks to blue, before using his magic to set a 'Rotix' into action
to make all the sticks collapse on top of one another. Once all the
sticks have been cleared you advance onto a new screen. There are 96
different screens in all.
A couple of cruising aliens - no selfrespecting
arcade game would be the same without it's quota of aliens - hinder
you at every turn, but you can keep them at bay with a liberal dose
of 'pepper dust'. Extra pepper dust is available from all good
supermarkets sorry, I mean at random intervals throughout the game.
Oh, and there's a timer too. Extra time units are gained by
collecting the occasional diamond. Bonus points are awarded for
collapsing the matrix in one go, but this is no mean feat. And
that's about all there is to it. Like I said, simple but addictive
to the point of being annoying! The graphics are distinctly
Spectrumish and the game characters have jumped straight out of Jet
Set Willy (oh no, not that game again!) but at least Firebird are
trying and that's more than can be said for certain others.
More Firebird games are planned. At this standard
and price they are not to be missed.
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