& LIGHT-YEARS! - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

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H REVIEWS dents spend requesting catalogs, prepar ing essays, visiting colleges, and thinking about the many choices before them, an investment in College Explorer is mini mal and can pay handsome dividends. Deciding which college to attend is up to you. College Explorer doesn't rob you of that responsibility, but it does assist you in the more tedious opera tions. And that will make your hunt for the right school a pleasure. — Kristen Stemberg College Explorer For... Apple II (128K RAM and extended 80column card needed for lie)—$49.95 IBM PC, PS/2, and compatibles in either 5V4- or 3«nnch disks—$49.95 From... The College Board College Board Publications Box 886. Dept. PO8 New York. NY 10101 -0886 (212)713-8165 Abrams Battle Tank There's a firestorm every minute in the land of rolling thunder, Western Eu rope, where the Warsaw Pact has bro ken through NATO defenses to begin World War III. You're in command of an M1A1 Abrams tank, history's most sophisticated armored fighting vehicle. If Patton had ridden in this tank, Berlin would have made him mayor. Abrams Battle Tank gives you a taste of what it's like inside one of these 60-ton iron maidens. Whether guiding your crew through a single mission or holding your own in a World War III invasion scenario, be prepared for firing action from every angle—east, west, north, south, and even from above. From the main menu, you select from four options: Scenario, Campaign, Mi-Info, and Exit. Mi-Info gives you a rundown of your weapon systems, using illustrations and appropriate military jargon. Select Scenario to choose a sin gle battle from among eight missions; choose Campaign to move through all eight missions in an order randomly se lected by the computer. Before you head to war with the Russkies, you'll report to the fuel depot. That's where you choose your arma ment mix, balancing Sabot (very effec tive against tanks and other armored vehicles), HEAT (very effective against infantry and constructions like enemy 68 COMPUTE! headquarters), and AX (an experimen tal wire-guided weapon that can vapor ize enemy helicopters) rounds. It's enough to make weapons procurement part of your everyday vocabulary. Out on the battlefield, you play three roles: commander, gunner, and driver. Each position offers a unique view of the outside world and is ac cessed by a specific function key (Fl to move to the gunner's position, for instance). In the heat of battle, moving from one station to the other can cost you time—and your life. Therefore, you'll almost always stick with the command er and gunner stations. The driver's sta tion is more an afterthought than a necessity: You can get speedometer readings from the commander's station and receive warnings if you're working the motor too hard. I would gladly trade the driver's perspective for a good pair of binoculars: Spotting the enemy at a distance is imperative to survival. Guiding the tank is your first chal lenge. You'll have to learn to distin guish between heading (the direction in which the body of the tank is pointing) and bearing (the direction the turret— and therefore the main gun—is facing). To turn the tank or the turret, press the left- or right-arrow key or move your joystick to the right or left. The A key aligns the turret and the tank; the C key switches control between the tank and the turret. For example, suppose you're in the commander's station and your heading is 270 degrees (there are no compass di rections in this game—just degrees). You take a hit bearing 2 degrees. You can swing the entire tank toward the right (0 degrees is due north), or you can switch control to the turret and change your bearing to point your can non at the enemy. Getting a moving, southbound enemy into your sights when you're rolling west at 40 kilome ters an hour is a skill that takes hours to develop. Your main defenses are speed, nat ural cover, and smoke canisters that blind the enemy for about 20 seconds. To see through the smoke or to see at night, you can switch on your thermal imaging system (press the T key). If your tank is too heavily damaged to continue the fight, you can return to base for repairs. When you contact enemy forces, use your target acquisition and designa tion system (press the Enter key while in the gunner's station) to identify the target—don't shoot friendly forces, or headquarters will have your head. Press the L key to lock onto the target and hit the space bar to fire. If your hit takes out the enemy, your commander ap pears onscreen to acknowledge the kill. My few objections to Abrams Bat tle Tank center on its operation. The game ran well on an AT clone, but the tank was slow to respond on my Tandy 1000 EX. To compensate, I had to an ticipate my movements—another level of confusion to an already-complex game. Also, the skill levels—Novice, Moderate, and Expert—function only in the Scenario mode; if you choose Campaign, you must play on the Expert level. Fighting on that level, while much more realistic than fighting on the other two (no tank can survive hit after hit without serving up its crew like so much fondue), is frustrating for be ginners eager to fight an entire cam paign. My tours usually ended with a snap, crackle, and pop—and I'm not talking Rice Krispies. Hit your enemies on the run if you want to survive in Abrams Battle Tank. Abrams Battle Tank provides hours of rapid-fire warfare simulation without much emphasis on real NATO defensive strategies. (No one expects a single tank to rescue a stranded con voy—that's a job for a helicopter gun- ship—or to take on single-handedly several enemy battalions.) But if you put those questions aside and accept the game as a graphically excellent, tactical ly complex simulation, you'll get a lot of bang for your buck. Abrams Battle Tank For... IBM PC and compatibles—S39.95 From... Electronic Arts 1820 Gateway Dr. San Mateo. CA 94404 (415)571-7171 — Peter Scisco And... A combination pack for the IBM that in cludes 514- and 3Y2-inch disks sells for $44.95; an Amiga version is planned for an August release, but no price has been set.
n reviews TV Sports Football Red dog 23! Hut! Hut! Hut! Thud! Ooof! Crash! XJunhl Arrgh! Once you've heard Cinemaware's TV Sports Football, you'll know this program is, as the package says, "so real... il sweats!" Its bone-crushing, in-the-trenches ac tion propels this gridiron simulation to the top of the computer-football heap. As in real football, there are strategic and tactical lev els to the game. You can play with either the 28-franchise Cinemaware Football League (CWFL), modeled on the NFL, or use the program's editing features to build your own players, teams, and leagues. The computer can run any or all of the franchises, or you and up to 55 (!) of your friends (one each as offensive and defensive captains of each franchise) can play against each other. This game en courages team play, an aspect lost in many other sports games. You have to play an entire season, but if you can't devote that much time to the turf, the computer can play most of the games for you. The CWFL franchises have offensive and defensive strengths and weaknesses modeled after the actual records of NFL teams; you can even play a franchise against itself, which can settle those nagging postseason disputes about the relative merits of one team's offensive and defensive squads. The program saves league stats on a separate disk, which must remain in a second drive while you play. You perfect your tactics by watching exhibition games and then trying practice plays. Learn how to hand off, pitch out, rush, kick, and pass with the joystick. It takes practice to learn how to drop into a pocket, spot a re ceiver, avoid the rush, fire the ball, and then make a div ing catch. Don't rush into a season before you're prepared. You select your plays from the Playcalling screen, which also shows play diagrams, the score, the down, yards to go for a first down, and the game clock. Choose a play by selecting the appropriate icon in the lower part of the Playcalling screen, or let the computer call the play for you. Over time, TV Sports Football learns the kind of plays you are likely to call in any situation and will call those plays if you're temporarily away from the game raid ing the fridge. Once you have selected a play, you switch to the play ing-field screen to run it. With the joystick you can control key players, such as the quarterback, receivers, and defen sive backs; or, you can let the computer handle them. If you want to veg out in front of the screen as you do during a real TV game, the computer will run the entire game. Calling and running plays is exciting, but TV Sports Football also scores in the visceral-impact department. The look and feel of the game are amazingly authentic. The design, pacing, and graphics accurately mimic a tele vised game, with commentators, pregame and postgame shows, commercials, and a halftime extravaganza. The colorful screens, detailed players, and smooth animation are what you'd expect from a Cinemaware game, especial ly on the Amiga; you won't be disappointed. Added to the stunning visual effects is the game's realistic sound. With the digitized samples you'll hear the explosive grunts of colliding linebackers, the roar of the crowd, and the calls of the refs. The ball does make a funny arcade-type noise as it flies through the air, but that helps you read its flight and position your receiver. Even the program's musical score sounds like the kind of UNITED COMPUTER EXPRESS 724 7 AVE, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK 10019 800-448-3738 212-397-1081 ILL UNITS ARE TESTED AND FORMATED BEFORI: SHIPPING IBM IBM IBM IBM IBM ORIGINALIBMXT 26 PC. PACKAGE IBM XT CPU + Keyboard ■ 4 77 MHZ-360K Floppy Drive ■ Expandable lo 640K -12' EQUITY I + IBM XT COMPATIBLE 26 PC. 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