Ankh: The Tales of Mystery is a 3D point-and-click adventure game set in Cairo, Egypt, 500 BC. The player controls the boy Domi Rhadjif who is tasked by his father to help him out with a number of errands, even though there are a number of terrorists outside his house, anachronistically armed with automatic guns. Eventually, Domi has to rescue a princess, deal with the god Osiris, and get rid of the Lybian terrorists. Despite the Egyptian setting, there are numerous modern elements and items used for comical effect.
The game uses a classic point-and-click interface. The mouse is used to move around and actions (Use, Look, Pick up, Talk, Give, and Open) can be selected at the bottom of the screen. Domi can pick up various items and store them in an inventory, shown in the bottom right of the screen. It is possible to talk to NPCs and select from multiple dialogue options.
A platform shoot-em-up featuring a reincarnated knight who was tasked with freeing the world of Lylvania from the tyranny of 3 demented Warlocks. The game set over ten large levels. The early levels are reasonably linear, but they soon become larger, requiring much exploration. Hidden rooms and caves can be found, containing extra lives, magical power-ups and level warps. Other features of this game are smooth parallax scrolling, thunder and lightning, rain, animating backdrops, stunning 256 colour graphics and great sound effects and music.
This game has been reviewed in:
Acorn Computing, Christmas Special December 1993 (with coverdisc demo)
Archimedes World, January 1994
Acorn User, February 1994
Acorn Action, Spring 1994
The game requires 1Mb of ram and RiscOS 2 or higher, but as it uses some minor video trickery, it will not work properly on VIDC2 machines without a software VIDC patch. It is compatible with the standard Acorn joysticks.
To enter the first hidden room, on level one after the seco
Pac-Mania is a variation on the game Pac-Man. You need to guide Pac-Man around a maze and eat all of the dots on the board to proceed on to the next round. Numerous, multi-colored ghosts also roam the maze trying to stop you. If you eat one of the power pellets in the maze, the ghosts will temporarily turn blue and run from you. Pac-Man can earn bonus points by eating the ghosts when they are in this state. The maze is now shown in isometric perspective and is larger than the screen which will scroll to follow the action. To help get out of tight spots, Pac-Man can now jump. But be careful, because some of the ghosts have learned this trick as well and you could end up in a mid-air collision!
You play the role of the last fighter pilot remaining and must protect a convoy of HUGE spaceships from 32 waves of attacking aliens.
Several ships in the convoy have forest domes that supply the fleet with food and oxygen. The player is tasked with protecting these domes from alien squadrons that launch increasingly frequent attacks on them. When a dome is under attack, a warning sound alerts the player to the threat and if it isn't met within 15 seconds, the dome is permanently destroyed. If all the forest domes are destroyed, the fate of the convoy is sealed and the game ends.
The game grants the player freedom to move around the convoy at will, but collision with any part of the fleet results in the loss of a life. Familiarity with the convoy layout is paramount to protecting it. Upon completion of a level the player is instructed to carefully dock with the largest ship in the fleet to re-fuel. Once successfully docked, bonus points are awarded for every dome left intact.
A radar at the top of the screen
Chocks Away is a flight simulation game for the Acorn Archimedes. It was written by Andrew Hutchings and published by The Fourth Dimension. The game is loosely set in the First World War, though many elements are simplified and anachronistic.
Sir Freddy is a sneaky and mean man who lives in a castle on an island. He turned green with envy when you built a better and stronger castle across the sea. He got a fleet of balloons so that he didn't get wet and then planned to bomb your castle with ease. What a cad to think of this wheeze! You in turn employed a gun crew to build a battlement with a good view to shoot down Sir Freddy in his balloon. To match your defensive intent, Sir Freddy phoned the Ship Shop and hired several Gun ships to shoot your cannon crew. You must defend your castle and shoot down the balloons and the invading ships.
The player, piloting a lone craft with limited firepower, must defend a finite landscape against ever increasing waves of enemy craft. In Zarch, the landscape is being invaded by aliens who are spreading a virus across the landscape. The seeder vessels are slow-moving, predictable, and easily destroyed, but as the game progresses they are supported by increasing numbers of flying support craft, which do not scatter virus but instead attack the player.
The seeder vessels scatter red virus particles across the landscape. As they land, they turn the green landscape to brown and red, and cause the trees to mutate. Some flying enemies shoot the mutated trees, to cause themselves to become much more aggressive and dangerous. To clear each attack wave, the player must destroy all enemy vessels.
At the conclusion of each attack wave the player is awarded bonus points for the amount of landscape which remains uninfected. After four attack waves have been successfully repelled, the player is awarded a new landscape; ho