Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

object to perform the action,
Graphics and sound are impressive - particularly
the sampled sound effects which
accompany many actions Also, there's
always plenty of depth in games of this ilk, so
Dead Of Night is a fairly fine game on all
Counts. Although I haven't yet reached the
message telling me that's as tar as I can go,
this is apparently a demo version. The full
mority costs US $10 and is available from the
authors.
Magoptic FieId5 Tanks
Produced by: Magnetic Fields
Available from On Line PD
Disk No. 0G87
From the title screen logo it appears this is
the same Magnetic Fields responsible for
the hit Lotus games. This might just raise
expectations a little, although it would hardly
be fair to expect PD offering Tanks to compare
with that classic arcade racing series.
Approach MF Tanks as if it were any other
PD disk and you'll find it to be a competent
and enjoyable blaster.
Controlling your tank via the mouse, the
obiective is simply to seek out and destroy
enemy tanks before they do the same to
you. Hitting the left button fires, whereas the
right button activates one of your three
smart bombs, killing all enemies in the area.
The scanner at the top of the screen is an
invaluable aid as increasingly large numbers
of enemy tanks close in.
The simple line graphics might not look
too stunning but they contribute to a fast
and smooth game. In fact, while Tanks is a
very simplistic affair, it's actually quite entertaining
for a while. Admittedly, after a bit it
does start to drag, but it is the sort of thing
you can whip out every now and again for a
quick blast.
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Compiled by: Jonathan Fisher
Available from. Professional PC
Disk No. MG02
Hot on the heels of Mega Disk #1. which featured oodles
of tiny top-quality games, comes this selection of utilities.
A couple of these programs will already be favourites of
Amiga users across the country such as GUlarc, which
removes a great deal of the tedium from archiving and
extracting LHA files. There are also plenty of decent
programs that might not be part of everybody's collection.
For instance, ARestaure is a file undeletion program,
the sort of thing you might not fully appreciate the value
of until that special file bites the dust and there's no backup
copy to fall back on. Chopper performs the same
function as JSplit, reviewed elsewhere in these pages,
with a similarly attractive interface, and Crypt is an excellent
file protection program ideal for paranoid comms
butts.
There's also SystemSpeed, a tiny benchmark program.
SoftProtect, a way of tricking your machine into
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action is very much the
name of the game here
Imagine your worst
enemy was in that
exploding tank. Fat from
provoking aggression.
computer games can
relieve it
with -1Sptit
Amiga Computing
MAY 1995
Pluming iltils *2
Written by: Various
Available from: Online PD
Disk No. 0U84
A mixed bag of utilities are included on this
disk, of which the highlight is probably JSplit.
Imagine for a moment that you want to
transfer a large file from your friends' hard
drive to your own - possibly a picture or a
huge archive. The problem is. it's too big to
fit on a floppy disk.
JSplit is designed to deal with this sort of
situation. It takes a file and basically splits it
into parts of a specified size. It can then
rejoin them later, perhaps on another
machine. It's a simple but good idea and the
user-friendly interface makes this an
extremely valuable program to have handy.
The descriptively named ILMB2ASCII
converts IFF pictures into text files. As well
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on the Flummy Ettilitie• disk
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command -
lines whenever you want to
do•arc h an LNA archive thanks to OUlarc
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thinking " a floppy disk is wnte-protected when it's not, and
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a whole host of other interesting offerings. And for just
"
E1.75 for a total of 26 programs, Mega Disk 2 is also
very good value,
as possibly being of use to bulletin board
operators, this could prove useful for people
writing Read-Me documents as, for
example, a logo could be incorporated.
Games fans struggling with their
favourites will be particularly interested in
Frontier Trainer and Skodmarks Edit. These
allow various settings to be altered, making
the games slightly easier.
Among the best of the rest is Sound:lox,
a competent if slightly limited sound sample
editor and converter. The small amount of
documentation provided is in German but
the interface is hardly difficult to work with
and overall this isn't a bad effort. In conclusion,
this is an interesting although scarcely
essential compilation of utilities. Still, it
might be worth getting hold of if only for
JSplit. 1 1 7
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Cheetah PD
29 Green Lane. Middlesborough,
Cleveland TS5 7S,1
Freestyle PD
108 Woodside Way, Short Heath.
Willenhall. West Midlands WV12 5NH
(Tel: 01922 710985)
OnLine PD
1 The Cloisters. Helsel! Lane, Formby,
Liverpool L37 3PX
(Tel: 01704 834335)
Philip C Swales
28 Campbell Road, Hartlepool,
Cleveland TS25 3BB
(MovieZone costs E1.40)
Professional PD
28a Woodland Rise West. Sunway
Park. Sheringham, Norfolk NR26 8PE