METROCROSS 

 US Gold 

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 T his is an interesting game! It's taken from the arcade game of the same name, which I had great fun with earlier this year. The main idea is to run through several screens against the clock, which may sound easy, but believe me, guv, it isn't. For one thing, there's almost no possible way to miss all the obstacles, as these take up more of each screen than the track. There are black squares to slow you down, hurdles to dodge or jump, gigantic coke cans that roll towards you, and various dodgy squares - if you stand on these they either open up and swallow you or spring up, catapulting you into the air. And there are the rats! These pesky rodents speed towards you, latch onto you and slow you down. The only way to shake them off is to jump, or move from left to right rapidly.

Of course, you're not stuck out there with no help at all. You have no gun, or indeed weapon of any kind, but there are various helpful items scattered about the place for you to use. These include small coke cans which give you weird powers if you jump on them, or extra points if you just kick them. If you jump on the blue ones the time stops for two seconds, while the green cans double your speed. However all you Speccy players can disregard this totally useless piece of information, 'cos all the cans in the Speccy version are drawn in black and white, so it's a case of pot luck as to what you'll get when you jump on them.

Other helpful things are the springboard and the skateboard. The springboard does exactly what it says - catapults you further into the screen, while the skateboard lets you skate through black squares without losing speed. One warning, though - after hitting any nasties you lose all your extra powers, and don't jump on a skateboard, or you'll lose that as well.

The graphics are well animated, especially when your little man is beetling along on his skateboard. One major gripe, though is that after the end of the game, the hi score and command screens pass in the blink of an eye, so you can't see how well you did, and you can't change any of the functions. The game seems hard, but after a couple of goes you'll get into it, I promise. It looks like US Gold has realised just what you can do with a Speccy and is putting the knowledge to really good use!

Reviewed by

Tony Lee

in

YOUR SINCLAIR - ISSUE 20 - AUG 87