Judging by the amount of prime time television devoted to
darts, it must be one of the most popular sports around - at
least with the armchair athlete brigade. Me, I prefer to get up
and have a bash rather than sit and watch, so it was with
some enthusiasm that I tackled Blue Ribbon's latest budget
release, titled simply, Darts.
The loading screen is plain, but I'm not grumbling as there
is nothing more infuriating than waiting for a 20k title screen
to load before you can get into the game itself.
After this comes a short program containing instructions
and, as this is essentially the same as supplied on the
cassette insert, it isn't strictly necessary. This program then
loads the main game.
First up comes a simple menu and you can choose from
three different types of game, all played on the dart board.
The first is 501 - the game so popular on television.
Both players enter their names followed by the score they
wish to start on - there is no need to start on 501, and you
can start from any score up to 1001. All games are two player
and I was disappointed that there's no option to play against
the micro as it's not always possible to find a partner.
Each player takes it in turn to throw his three darts and his
score for that throw is subtracted from his total. The object is
to get your score down low enough so that you can throw a
double which will zero your total before your opponent manages
to do the same.
The screen displays a large dartboard with running totals
down each side for both players. When it is your turn to throw
you use the Z, X, * and ? to try to position your erratically
moving dart as best you can. Holding down the spacebar
releases it.
The second game is Round the Board, involving thowing a
dart into each number up to 20, followed by the outer then
the inner bull. You have the option of making it harder by
specifying that the doubles or trebles only must be hit. As
before, on-screen scoring keeps track of your progress.
The third game - my favourite - is cricket. Each player
takes it in turn to throw as usual, but this time one is batting
and the other bowling. The batting player tries to score as
many as possible and each throw is added to the last.
The bowling player tries to score an outer or an inner bull.
The former counts as one wicket, while the latter counts as
three.
The innings is over when 10 or more wickets have been
taken and the players then swap over batting and bowling.
The winner is the one with the most number of runs.
The graphics are simple, with a board shown head on with
the darts as crosses. The throwing action is again simply
executed with a randomly moving dart which you can control
to some degree by four keys for up, down, left and right. The
spacebar throws the dart - it just becomes fixed at its current
position and stops moving. There's no sound to speak of. just
a few notes played when you win the game.
For a budget game it's OK, but nothing to write home
about. I found it quite interesting at first, but it soon became
tedious, despite the three different games.
1st October 1988
