Your Sinclair


Moving Target
By Players Premier
Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #90

Moving Target

It must be awfully hard finding politically correct villains for Speccy games. The plot to Moving Target runs as follows. 'The evil drugs duke of Colombia must die.'' There you are. A healthily dastardly villain everybody can hiss without fear of offending anyone but Colombian drugs barons who aren't the sort of readers were aiming for anyway, thankyouverymuch.

Moving Target is surprisingly good. It's a zap game in the grand old tradition of running around a flip-screen maze, finding keys to open doors, shooting guards and planting bombs. (Very Dan Dare-ish, actually.) It overcomes some pretty tough handicaps to emerge smiling and worthy of a good couple of hours play now and then.

The first of these handicaps are the graphics. They are, to use that splendid YS-ism, crap, with some very odd animation of some very odd sprites. The deadly guard dogs are the worst offenders - they sort of sit there looking like carved lard, then suddenly breakdance over to bite your legs off. (Vicious tykes too - takes most of a clip of ammo to finish them off.) At least there are some nice 'n' chunky 128K sound effects.

Moving Target

So, apart from looking awful and trickily playing about with difficulty levels (you can't fire on the run, which gives the enemy ample time to surround you), Moving Target is a barrel of laughs. From the snazzy effect of just seeing the muzzle flash of your gun rather than having the bullets fly across the screen to the ratings table that starts at 'Rookie' and improves as you go along (er, to 'Second Rate' in my case), the game just, well, gels. There are thousands of baddies to zap, many obstacles to avoid (that barbed wire is really rotten), a massive map to memorise and those blimmin' guard dogs to curse. I enjoyed every cordite-permeated moment of it.

Verdict

Uppers: Good, old fashioned blast game...

Downers: ... that looks dreadful... ... but who cares, eh?

Jonathan Nash

Other Spectrum 48K/128K Game Reviews By Jonathan Nash


  • The Postman Pat Hit Collection Front Cover
    The Postman Pat Hit Collection
  • Super Space Invaders Front Cover
    Super Space Invaders
  • Bully's Sporting Darts Front Cover
    Bully's Sporting Darts
  • First Class With The Shoe People Front Cover
    First Class With The Shoe People
  • High Steel Front Cover
    High Steel
  • Scoria Sonic 2 Preview Front Cover
    Scoria Sonic 2 Preview
  • Chefs Mate Front Cover
    Chefs Mate
  • Toy Bizarre Front Cover
    Toy Bizarre
  • Street Fighter II Front Cover
    Street Fighter II
  • Spy Vs. Spy 3: Arctic Antics Front Cover
    Spy Vs. Spy 3: Arctic Antics