1 - Commodore Is Awesome

TH
GAMES CHALLENGE
Eve body's Ku Fu Fighti
And so it begins. After a month of rest in which
to practice and steel himself for combat, the
time has come for The One's very own games
champion Gary Whifta to defend his crown
against the first in a long line of worthy reader
challengers.
The Game: I K + .
The Challenger: Grant Harrison.
The Rules: T w o men enter the Challenge
'Chamber. One man leaves.
Let battle commence...
Well, a lot of you certainly
S o, seemed Whitta's to think a soft so touch - the is chal- he?
lenges have been flooding in! Anyone
who can hold a joystick, from
Dorset to Dusseldorf, has offered to
publicly humiliate Whitta in front of
his 'fans'. But at the end of the day
it was Grant Harrison. a plucky
young lad from Balham in South
London, who was chosen to face the
mammoth might of Whitta. His
boast was simple but effective: "Give
me a decent joystick and half a
chance, and I'll give Whitta a kicking
so hard his mother'll feel it."
As it turned out, it was a confrontation
that no-one would
ever forget...
THE CHALLENGER
year-old Grant Harrison.
.gx • An Amiga owner for
_ t h r e e years, he's a dab
hand at Speedball 2,
C " In Mega-lo-Mania, the red corner... Hudson 16-
Hawk, Lotus 2 and Jimmy White's
Whirlwind Snooker. But he chose IK +
as his challenge game, having made
it to black belt level a mere week
after buying it on budget earlier this
year. Unfortunately what he didn't
know is that Whitta has been an IK +
black belt since 1989 - but then he's
not played it in nearly two years. A
case of youthful enthusiasm versus
jaded experience if ever there was
one.
CHA ENGE!
M O S 4 0 0
0 2 0 1 , 0
THE CHALLENGE GAME: IK+
Four years after its release, Archer Maclean's IK+ is still indisputably the
best beat-'em-up on the Amiga ever, A sequel to his earlier 8-bit classic
International Karate, the game pits three fighters against each other in
a martial arts free-for-all tournament where the idea is simply to stay
alive until the end of each bout and progress through the belt rankings.
Moves available in the high-speed fumpin' action include a lethal
array of kicks, punches and, our favourite, a skull-cracking headbutt.
Though the full-prire version has since been discontinued, it's still available
on Hit Squad at the bargain budget price of £7.99. If you don't
have a copy, buy it now. We said NOW!
TO THE CHALLENGE
CHAMBER!
After the initial face-off and weighin
(the balance on the scales when
Whitta stepped up was too embarrassing
to print - "I had a big
lunch," he protested feebly), it was
down to business.
IK+ is played over in 30-second
bouts of increasing difficulty
between three fighters - two human,
one computer-controlled. The first
fighter to reach six points (accumulated
by landing kicks and punches
on opponents) is declared the winner.
For the purposes of this challenge,
the object is to stay alive until
either Whitta or Harrison is knocked
out • the survivor then wins. To pre-
I.1
vent any fluke results, the winner
shall be declared by a 'best out of
three' competition.
ROUND ONE
The flip of a coin determined that
Whitta would wear the white jimjams
and Grant would wear the red.
A brief flurry of pre-match trumpeting
from Whitta seemed to indicate
that he felt he had the psychological
advantage - but any confidence he
may have had was quickly shattered
when, just four seconds into the first
bout, Grant expertly floored him
with a perfectly-timed front kick.
As Whitta lay crumpled and
dazed. Grant went on to make short
work of the blue-clad computer
fighter. But the fat Dep Ed, now fully
recovered, stormed back in with a
forward somersault quickly followed
by a lethal face punch. Grant went
down, giving Whitta his much-needed
first point and bringing the score
to 3-1.
Over-confident Whitta then tried
to take on the computer player, but
a mistimed block let in a high kick to
the jaw that won the computer two
points and left the champion with
no option but to lay on the ground
as the last few seconds ran down. A