Laserdiscs

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Back in the day when I had far more disposable income and free time, I was an early adopter of the whole ‘Home Cinema’ thing. In hindsite, I spent a dreadful amount of money on a 40inch back projection TV, Dolby surround amp, later a Dolby Digital amp (back when it was called AC3) and of course, being pre DVD, a laserdisc player.

Like vinyl, laserdiscs were glorious 12inch slabs of beauty, just silver. The covers were equally gorgeous in many cases. In a precursor to what later became the norm with DVD, laserdiscs often came with director’s commentry, extras and even physical bits and bobs – Spinal Tap came with a Spinal Tap plectrum.

Anyway, time has moved on and I’ve now started selling them all off. It’s quite heartbreaking seeing laserdiscs that cost £100+ now going for £3 but that’s the way it goes. I also found that where laserdisc looked fantastic on an analogue, projection TV, a modern LCD makes them look pretty poor as the digital processing causes them to look not much better than VHS which is a shame.

Anyway, here’s a few of the covers as a reminder of days gone past.

tIMG_1718 Black Adder The Third. This one was still sealed, I never got around to watching it. From Encore Entertainment who were great supporters of LD in the UK.
tIMG_1719 Black Adder (one). This one was also still sealed.
tIMG_1721 Towards the Within by Dead Can Dance. Great live concert footage but have to say, the interviews are cringeworthy. Seriously up their behinds.
tIMG_1722 Ah, Micromusic by Gary Numan. It took me years to find this on laserdisc before some kind soul in Germany told me he’d seen one in his local shop and sent it over to me. Very trusting, total star. Also has the honour of being the only laserdisc I sold for more than I paid for it.
tIMG_1723 Aliens – the only way you could get the special extended edition was on laserdisc as a deluxe boxed set. For extra quality, it was encoded using CAV rather than the more common CLV format. This essentially meant perfect still frame but at the cost of only being able to store 30 mins per side and a lot of disk turning (yep, laserdiscs had to be turned over, just like LPs unless you were lucky to have a player than could do this for you by spinning the heads around). It had masses of extras and was a serious showcase for LD. It was also over £100 to buy…
tIMG_1724 The Fall of the House of Usher and the Pit and the Pendulum with Vincent Price. A glorious pair of movies. Somewhat oddly, this came as two discs but with one side containing the end of film 1 and the start of film 2. Still, a good excuse for a twin feature session.
tIMG_1725 Subway by Luc Besson, Another still sealed one that I never got to watch. It looks cool though in a dodgy 80’s sort of way.
tIMG_1726 Thunderbirds are Go AND Thunderbird 6, the rather less well known sequel movie that I’ve never seen for sale apart from this laserdisc. That said, it’s pants so I’ve not really looked very hard. The first movie is great though and features my favourite space ship, Zero-X.
tIMG_1727 Tubular Bells II live. The premier at Edinburgh Castle was excellent (wish I’d been there) and this Japanese laserdisc captured it nicely.
tIMG_1728 Another great concert. Pink Floyd. How I Wish They Were Here.
tIMG_1730 A serious slice of the 80’s 20 Videostars – Men Without Hats, Yazoo and (18) more. Not that common a disk, it seems.
tIMG_1731 Communion, staring Christopher Walken. I was slightly disapointed by this one first time but enjoyed it more on later viewing.
tIMG_1735 Highlander Special Edition. A gorgeous gatefold sleeve, extra pics, information and a laserdisc that ticked all the boxes, THX, AC3 (Dolby Digital), Directors Cut (a good one, for once)

Book Review: Atari Inc.: Business is Fun

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Having been a hardcore Atari nut since the late 70’s when the VCS came out then moving through the various 8bits (400, 800, 130XE, 800XL), STs (520 STm, 4160STe, Mega STe, Falcon) etc, I was looking forward to this book immensely.

The authors are well known in the Atari community, particularly Curt Vendel who has a stunningly improbable collection of documentation, prototypes and source code. Heck, he even has one of their old mainframes. Marty Goldberg is also steeped in Atari-ness and well known amongst the hard core. Basically, if you wanted a book written by those who know, this is it.

First, the bad news. Whoever edited this book needs shooting. Some pages had as many as a dozen typos. Some sentences just don’t parse and the photos have various captioning issues. Oddly, great big chunks go by without so much as a missing apostrophe. Go figure.

Once you get past that, what you have is a stunningly thorough book that covers Atari’s history from the lead up to its inception as a company to the sale of the struggling once mighty entity to the Tramiels. (The next volume will cover their part of the story).

The authors have interviewed a great many Atari alumni, key industry figures and had access to Atari’s old email system, engineering notes and more. The result is a wide ranging, hopefully authoritative and detailed history. Along the way, the truth behind many long standing Atari stories/myths such as the cartridge burial in Mexico, the Amiga chipset saga and others are discussed, along with documentary evidence of the reality.

I thought I knew pretty much everything about this period of Atari but there were several projects discussed that were new to me. Machines I’d never heard of, even if they’d only made it as an on paper concept as well as ones that got to more functional states. There were also quite a few people I’d not realised were ex-Atari and it was fascinating reading what they did there. There are lots of good photos although as someone else noted, the reproduction quality isn’t always great. Maybe when this finally comes out on Kindle it will have better quality images.

One of the book’s stated aims is to recreate the atmosphere at Atari, which it does well and focuses on the people and internal ‘policies’ to a larger extent than most books of this type. It was also interesting to read the various problems the company had to deal with, the politics between them and Warners, Atari’s owners for much of this key period and the damage done by the marketing department at times.

The only thing I’d have liked more on was the development of the 8bit series. I was a huge fan of the Atari 800 and wanted more on the OS development, the chipset design process and the peripherals. There is a lot on these machines but it’s nothing that wasn’t already well documented elsewhere. It was only after reading this book I found out the OS was bought in, something not mentioned here.

Overall though, if you’re an Atari fan, particularly in their first incarnation (or two), this is an essential read. This will end up as a 3 volume set and with this book alone weighing in at almost 1,000 pages, Atari will end up one of the most thoroughly documented companies of this era. A fantastic piece of work. I’m looking forward to volume 2, I just hope the editing’s a bit better!

You can buy Atari Inc.: Business is Fun from Amazon UK or Amazon US

Zinio – Dreadful Service. Never again

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OK, I make no bones about it, this is going to be a bit of a rant just to get this off my chest.

On the 25th of March, I signed up with Zinio and downloaded their Android app to allow me to buy and read digital version of magazines. I read a lot of magazines, both print and digital (the latter via Google Play, which works faultlessly).

Having signed up, I bought my first magazine. That in itself was probably a warning. The app said it was £2.99 but when I went to pay, it said £3.49. I went back and forth, yep, totaly disparity. Anyway, I went ahead. On the 27th, a voucher arrived for $10 against other purchases as a welcome gift. Nice I thought and bought two more magazines. All 3 downloaded fine. My credit card had 2 payments on it, the original full price magazine and the balance of the other two less the $10 I got. So far so good.

When I went back to the app to read them it just hung. I could see lots of people complaining about this in the Play feedback and someone said they got back in by clearing the cache and reinstalling. I did that and happily, I was back in. However, no magazines. I logged into the web site, which alarmingly said the same, no purchases recorded

I emailed support on the 3rd April and got a reply saying they’d get back in 24-48 hours. After 9 days, I gave up and emailed again on the 12th. Still nothing so I tried again. On the 16th I finally got a reply asking which magazines. I replied it was so far back I couldn’t remember (I do buy/read a lot) but gave them the dates and amounts from the credit card.

And today, 18th, another email, sorry, need to know the magazines you bought.

I give up, I’m writing off the money and I’ll never use Zinio again. If they can’t write software that doesn’t lock up, can’t tell who bought what from them, have customer support so piss poor they can’t reply for over a week or track purchases used via their own coupons, I don’t want to do business with them. Sorry Google Play for ever doubting you. Zinio, never again.

Where the High Street Got it Wrong

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Lots of hand wringing around about the news that HMV has followed Jessops in going into receivership. Given that HMV reportedly have 38% of the UK music market as well as some major gig venues, distribution and ticketing, it’s going to shake things up.

This is a wakeup call for High Street chains. In my experience, the thing that has reduced my spend is poor customer service. There’s no way any bricks and mortar shop can compete with online vendors on price so the differentiator has to be something that adds real value to the shopper. The problem is, as times have got harder, service and flexibility has plummeted.

Some examples. Just before Christmas, HMV had an Android tablet on their web site for a very good price. I ordered one and got the email to say it was on the way. Then it got interesting. People on the various bargain hunter websites such as HotUKDeals started to chatter about the rumour HMV didn’t actually have any. It then moved on to this being a regular thing with HMV. An awful lot of people said they had vowed never to shop there again having been caught out before. Sure enough, my order turned sour. Whether incompetence or policy, it seems HMV’s website had no real stock management and would happily accept orders for products that didn’t exist. People remember these sort of things and after looking around, it seemed within a certain section of the online community at least, HMV had joined Sony as one of the companies people loved to hate.

Another example. I used to buy a lot of stuff at Jessops. I mean a lot. They could always be relied on to do a deal. They couldn’t always match the best online prices but if they got close, they got my business as I valued being able to browse, especially on high value items. As their fortunes dipped, so did their interest in deals. Whereas once they could be relied on to knock £999 down to say £850, the last time I went there they knocked 50p off a £450 lens IF I BOUGHT A FILTER TOO. They were pretty surly about it to boot. That was the last time I shopped there.

In both these examples, they lost customers for stuff they really should be doing right, but weren’t.

Going back to HMV, there’s been some interesting blogs today from people on the inside and it seems the senior management were woefully missing the way things were going such as dismissing downloading music as a fad, saying they didn’t need a web presence (OK, that was a while ago) or throwing out marketing people for pointing this sort of stuff out to them. Old school thinking in a world that was no longer old school. Time and time again they clung on to the old model, sure they would win through and that each new tech opportunity was a temporary thing. Bad news HMV, you were too late to every party and now people have stopped inviting you.

Atari Jaguar – Fight For Life – Review

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Last one… <sniff>

Iain Laskey previews what is possibly the most eagerly awaited Jag title yet, Fight For Life

Every console these days must have its beat-em-up and after some decidedly lacklustre titles, the Jaguar bounces back with a real winner.

Fight For Life has been a long while coming. More than any other Jaguar game, it has been back to the drawing board time and time again as the opposition have upped the ante. It looks like the wait has been worth it though.

From the moment you plug the game in, you know it’s something special. The intro screen is like a mini pop video with the music and fighting synchronised along with zooms and cuts from one view to another. Choose from training, two player or tournament and the battling begins. The plot is largely irrelevant. You can play against the computer or a human opponent. The computer plays a pretty mean game and is great to practice with but you can’t beat (sic) playing against a friend to really get the competitive juices going.

Each of the eight opponents have their own special moves as well as the standard ones. Every time you beat one, you get to choose two of their special moves to add to your own. As you progress, your range of kicks and punches increases. However, there are so many, most people will probably settle on a few favourites. There are also combo-moves which are extremely hard to get right but well worth it in terms of hit points and spectacular on-screen action. How about a face slap combo? Try and remember >^B<^B>^B! With button combinations like that though, a few more hit point wouldn’t have gone amiss.

A fun feature is an invisible force field that surrounds the play area. If you can push your opponent into this, you get to see them electrocuted by long blue sparks. The jerking bodies and sound effects are not for the squeemish!

The computer controlled opponents each have a definite personality and what works against one may not work against the next so it’s a constant learning process getting the tactics right. To beat an opponent, you need to win two out of three matches. The early ones are soon mastered but later ones do take a bit more work. If successful, you get a password to allow you to keep the new skills you have gained.

Given that so many people try to put down the Jaguar, the speed and detail of the graphics should be a revelation to many. Each fighter is fully texture mapped and the various moves are well animated. A nice touch are the little ‘dances’ that the winners perform at the end of each match. The camera angle can be set to fixed or rolling. In the latter mode it pans wildly around the arena following the players. Sometimes close up, it can then fall away to a long shot. Very occasionally it can make it difficult to judge your positioning but this rarely lasts for long.

The music is good and consists of the usual techno tunes. Tempest 2000 has a lot to answer for! The sound effects whilst sparse are well chosen with kicks producing gentle whooshing noises and characters grunting and squeeling when hit hard. An awesomely deep voice introduces each new match.

Comparisons to Tekken and Virtua Fighter are inevitable. I’d be lying if I said this came into their league. Given that they come on CD with hundreds of megabytes of sounds and graphics and Fight For Life is all packed into a 4Mb cartridge, it’s an astounding achievement. It may be missing some of the polish and sophistication of Tekken but it matches them for sheer playability. The only real caveat is that for long term value for money, you need another human opponent to play against. Highly recommended.

Product: Fight For Life
Price:     £59.99
Contact: JTS Atari
Telephone: 01753 xxxxxx

Highs: Superb playability, texture mapped players, sound effects
Lows: Price, some moves tricky to achieve, no really powerful moves

In Short… The wait was worth it! 90%

Atari Jaguar – Cannon Fodder – Review

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Nearly there with the retro reviews…

Cannon Fodder is the first Jaguar title from Virgin. Having been released on just about every other platform, it needs no introduction. When you first start the game, you are treated to a bouncy theme song that is rather reminiscent of Ace of Bass. Press the fire button and the action begins.

The game consists of 24 missions, each with up to 6 phases. Once each mission has been completed, you can save your current position. With so many missions to get through, this is pretty much an essential. Each mission requires you to destroy various targets in order to finish. You start off armed with machine guns but you can bolster up your kit with grenades and bazookas that can be picked up along the way. These can be a bit hard to use in the heat of battle though, requiring you to hold button B whilst pressing button C. Each enemy is dispatched with a blood curdling variety of screams and groans and buildings explode with satisfying amounts of flame and debris, the latter sometimes landing on your head if you’re not careful.

Later missions add new features including a variety of vehicles. These are a bit tougher to kill although you always board them yourself and turn the tables on the enemy. If you’re lucky you can find the Supa Dupa Boostas which add such nice things as heat seeking missiles and bullet-proof vests to your troops.

There are five different terrain types, jungle, arctic waste, desert, moorlands and underground. Each has its own set of features and traps. The enemy comes in different varieties too. It can be a bit embarrassing to pick on a single enemy with your team, only to find he’s armed with a bazooka or grenades.

The graphics are small but detailed with lots of humour as dead bodies bounce around, exploding trees fly across the screen and at the end of each level, your victorious troops jump up and down.

The sound is excellent from the intro tune to the various background noises of trickling water, howling wind and jungle sounds. The graphics however seem to be unchanged from the computer versions. The shading is fairly course with few colours being used. Even the ray-traced stills look like they haven’t been updated. The Jaguar is capable of much better than this and it’s a pity Virgin didn’t see fit to get the graphics improved for this release.

I found the controls a bit tricky at first. I think this game is more suited to a mouse. After half an hour or so though I found it much better though. The only time it got frustrating was when the troops get stuck behind an obstacle and you have to fiddle about trying to get the right angle to free them again.

Where this game really scores though is in the ‘just one more go’ stakes. Every time you die, you KNOW you can do better next time. Each level adds new features and when trip wires blow you up, you just have to try again and again until you find the best way to complete it.

Verdict

Cannon Fodder won’t get top marks for its graphics but when it comes to sheer addictive gameplay, it’s a thoroughbred. This isn’t a game to show your jaguar off to your friends with but it will certainly give you many hours of good plain fun and in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

Product Name: Cannon Fodder
Publisher:         Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd.
RRP:                 £49.99

Score               7 out of 10

Atari Jaguar – Defender 2K- Review

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Yet more Retro goodness although rereading this, not one of my better reviews. Pretty shabby. Sorry.

Save the humans! Defender 2000 has arrived and it’s blasting time.

Once again, Jeff Minter has woven his magic to create an updated and enhanced version of the timeless arcade game Defender. There are three versions to play, Classic, Plus and 2000.

For those who aren’t old enough to remember the original, Defender has you controlling a ship that flies over a scrolling landscape protecting humans from invading nasties. There are several kinds of enemies. The main ones are landers that steal humans and use them to turn into mutants which are faster deadlier versions of landers. Other targets includes ones that break into swarmers when blasted. These are small,fast and very hard to shoot. You can either be shot or collide with trails left by certain invaders. Each level has a fixed number of enemies and when they’ve all been destoyed you get a bonus for your remaining humans. Your basic weapons are a laser and smart-bombs that destroy everything currently on screen. You get an extra life and smart-bomb every 10,000 points. If all the humans are lost then the planet explodes. It’s then wall to wall mayhem as you get attacked from all sides. The action is fast and exciting. On later levels the adrenaline really starts pumping. In my opinion, Defender is probably one of the finest games ever designed. Atari brought in the original designer and coder of the arcade version, Eugene Jarvis for final approval and he was very happy with the conversion.

Starting with the Classic version, this is a near as dammit perfect copy. The sounds effects are sampled straight from the original game. The game plays and feels just like the arcade version in almost all respects. I couldn’t find a real arcade machine to check but the end of wave graphics did seem a little different though.

The Plus version adds updated graphics with detailed, shaded sprites. The ground features some psychedelic swirling colours that only Mr Minter could provide. Finally, there are some power-ups to enhance your weaponry. This too is very playable.

Last and unfortunately least comes the 2000 mode. Whereas Tempest 2000 was a superb variation, Defender 2000 sadly doesn’t cut it. The graphics are just far too fast. The background is completely different and it’s quite hard to keep track of where you are and what’s going on. The scrolling is rough and leaps along in quite large jumps. There are some nice bonus items to collect to help make your ship a bit more powerful though. Despite many attempts at playing this version, I found it more a case of luck that skill when achieving a high score.

Each flavour of Defender has its own high score. The high score letters have those Minter sparkling trails as you add your name. There are some nicely drawn static screens too.

Another plus is some excellent techno music that’s even better than that in Tempest 2000. Crank up that volume and enjoy!

Defender 2000 has a lot to live up to after Tempest 2000. If you want an almost perfect copy of original Defender then this game is a must. The Plus version is a bonus and in some ways can be more fun to play. However, the star of the show, Defender 2000 is really just a case of ‘nice try’.

The bottom line for me though is that when I send this review cart back to Atari, I’m going to go straight down the shops to buy my own copy, just for playing Classic Defender.

Product Name: Defender 2000
Publisher:         Atari.
Telephone:        01753 xxxxxx
RRP:                £49.99

Pros:                Classic version. Sound effects, Music.
Cons:               2000 mode too hard.

Score 7

Concert Tickets – Too Expensive?

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Might as well start the year with a moan.

I was reading Mojo magazine (as you do) and noticed a ticket stub for a King Crimson gig from 1972 with the price showing as £1. A quick calculation shows this is the equivalent of £10 in 2012 money. I then cast my mind back to the Gary Numan Wembley gigs in 1981 – A fiver back then. That means £20 today or if you take into account the fact he famously subsidised every ticket to stop the fans being fleeced for the large venue, about £24 each.

Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve not paid much less than £50 for any semi-decent band in recent years (to be fair, smaller bands can still be seen for much less but I’m talking about the bigger ones here) and have had to pass on a few who wanted £100+ which was beyond my reach. So why the huge increase?

Two main culprits keep cropping up. Firstly, the rise of Ticketmaster who realised how much can be made just selling tickets. You know when they add an extra £5 to the price to allow you to print the ticket at home, something is pretty rotten. It’s now assumed that any ticket you buy wil pick up a whole raft of extra charges out of all kilter to the actual cost of providing them. Yes, I expect them to make a profit too but c’mon!

Another more interesting view is that there has been a shift from artists making their money via album/single sales to gigs. Given the high levels of piracy, smaller income from aggresive licencing deals with outlets such as Google’s Play store  and Apple’s Itunes plus the tiny residuals they get from Spotify and the like, this does make sense.

A Concert ticket breakdown from 2011 showed an average $70 dollar ticket netting $41 for the artist with the rest made up mainly from additional fees ($14) and the cost of putting on the show ($11.50).

Certainly, it’s a given these days that any half decent band will be expected to put on a major light show plus other sundry gimicks and that does cost money. That said, Numan did manage the epic Wembley gigs for the equivalent of £20.

On balance, it looks to me that the bulk of the increase does seem to lie with the artist shifting their income streams from CDs/Vinyl to gigs. Given that most CDs are a fiver and often less, especially as downloads compared to the £15 they hit at one point, this doesn’t seem entirely unfair. It would certainly be interesting to see some stats on how a band like say U2 derive their income now compared to 20 years ago. Sales of music via download show a healthy year on year increase but the prices are lower and the percentage going to the band is lower too.

Welcome to the modern world then, cheap music as downloads (played on tinny mobile phones or iPods but I’ll save that one for another day) but if you want to see it live, be prepared to have deep pockets.

 

Atari Jaguar – Dragon The Bruce Lee Story – Review

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You’ve seen the film, now play the game. Are you worthy to be a master of the martial arts?

I have to lay my cards on the table. I’m no great lover of beat-em-ups. They’re one of the biggest movers of the games world though and have been for some time. With Virtua Fighter and Mortal Kombat as its rivals, how does Dragon shape up?

Dragon has several different modes of play. As a single player you can choose to follow the plot of the film or just take on the computer for some serious fighting. Two player options include human versus human and two humans versus a computer controlled player. You can also choose from five difficulty levels and three speeds. It’s a brave fighter who tried tough and manic mode.

You control Bruce against the various enemy fighters. The gameplay is the usual frantic hammering of buttons and joypad bashing. There are several modes of combat controlled by your Chi rating. Each successful hit boosts your Chi and each failure reduces it. When your Chi is high enough, you get access to different sets of moves. You also have to keep an eye on your energy level as each hit you take reduces your strength. Luckily, death isn’t always permanent and if your killed, you get a chance to reprieve yourself in one last fight for the right to return again.

There are a total of ten locations, each with a progressively tougher opponent culminating in the Graveyard where you meet the Phantom who was said to be the cause of the real Bruce Lee’s death. One location, the Long Beach Stadium adds an extra twist, you only get 60 seconds to defeat your opponent.

There are so many moves in this game that it would take a serious amount of practice to even remember them all, let alone use them effectively. I counted 39 in total! Luckily, most are a combination of the A, B, C and option buttons which makes it a bit easier in the heat of the battle. Which moves are available depends on the distance between you and your enemy. The manual recommends that you practice in two player mode but with no second player until you get used to the myriad of punches, kicks and throws. A few rounds of this and I was starting to get quite proficient at head stomps. Very satisfying.

The graphics are all hand drawn which in these days of digitised fighters in games like Mortal Kombat, is a bit of a mistake. The backgrounds are nicely drawn but nothing to get excited about. The animation is good enough. By current standards, Dragon is a bit of a letdown in this department. The sound is more of the same with adequate noises and tunes. The high scores and game settings are saved but you can’t save your current position in the story.

A nice touch is a short one page resume of Bruce Lee’s life until his premature demise at 32. I wonder if they’ll ever find out how he really died?

Dragon would have been a great game if it was released a couple of years ago. As it stands, it just can’t keep up with the current crop of beat-em-ups on other machines. It doesn’t even have the extreme violence of Kasumi Ninja to give it an edge. Mortal Kombat III is on the way for the Jaguar though so hopefully we’ll soon have a quality combat title to boast about.

Product Name: Dragon The Bruce Lee Story
Publisher:          Atari.
Telephone:         01753 xxxxxx
RRP:                  £49.99

Pros: Lots of moves. Chi feature.
Cons: Average graphics and sound. No game save.

Score 5

Atari Jaguar – Flashback – Review

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Is Flashback more than a flash in the pan for the Jaguar? Iain Laskey regains his memory and reports back.

Flashback is US Gold’s first Jaguar release. Unfortunately they have decided to debut with a title that has been and gone on just about every other platform. With the game now a budget title for many other systems, is it worth the full price on Jaguar?

Flashback is a kind of graphic adventure albeit a fairly simple one. You have seven levels of running, jumping, shooting and general exploring to do as you attempt to get your memory returned. I found the gameplay to be intensely frustrating. A lot of tasks boil down to precise timing for a leap or shot at an enemy and if you get it wrong you have to start again from the last save point. You cannot save the game at any place other than the predesignated save points and these are far too few. Flashback does have a curiously addictive quality though. I found myself tearing out my hair in annoyance but still trying again and again to complete each stage.

The graphics wouldn’t look out of place on a SNES and US Gold really could’ve done something to improve them. One of the games original selling points was its use of rotoscoped graphics and these do work well with some very realistic animation of the main characters. However, the overall look is less than stunning. To be fair, they have packed the cartridge with lots of very different looking levels. At fixed points you also get movie sequences to help tell the story as it unfolds.

If you like this kind of game then I’d recommend trying it before you buy. It’s not terrible but then it’s not particularly good either. Far too many Jaguar developers are taking the easy route when porting games and the console deserves and can do much better than this.

Product Name: Flashback
Publisher:         US Gold
Telephone:        0121 xxx xxxx
RRP:                £39.99

Pros: Lots to do.
Cons: Basic graphics, frustrating gameplay

Score 5