Bowled over by Beefy? Er, no.
IAN BOTHAM'S TEST MATCH
(Tynesoft)
"I don't like cricket, oh no. I'm indifferent about it." It's hard to play and harder to watch. In school it was a good excuse to mess around playing the superior French version while you were waiting for your 3 ball long batting stint. I recall hitting a four once by getting a lucky edge, and another time I attempted bowling and somehow claimed a few wickets. At least I think it was me, it doesn't sound right to be honest. By and large, it's just not that much fun in my experience, but some must dig it, I suppose.
But cricket on your computer? Wow, what a rush! It's a totally different ball game. Well, really the same ball game but with no balls to rub on your pants like those fast bowlers do. It should be easy to recreate the excitement of cricket on computer as there isn't any. One early effort was Test Match by C.R.L. which looks okay but isn't very interactive, mostly making the odd decision, then sitting back and watching. Not as much fun as the epic Footy Manager highlights unfortunately.
But onto Beefy Botham's game now, brought to us by Tynesoft, who could never be accused of producing many good games, and were implicit in the travesty that was Harry S. Price's programming career. He didn't do this one though, but he probably ripped it off at a later point. So hopes might be high for a halfway decent experience.
The cover has a big old picture of Sir Ian of Botham himself, while the back features a screenshot... of the BBC Micro version. Load 'er up and you're treated to precisely zero digitised pictures of Beefy on a load screen or anywhere else in the game. Surely you should at least try to pixelate him if you've gone and bought the rights to him? What would Sam Fox say? Outrageous.
You can choose from the subtly differing variants of the thing we know as cricket - one day, limited overs, test match. You can bat or you can bowl/field. You can name your own players, call them all Botham if you like, or select "armchair cricket" which means the famous names are already provided for you. Hope they got all the necessary licences for them all, otherwise you'd have to settle for the likes of Graham Pooch and Allan Pork. Maybe Mike Tw**ting. Hey, this is fun.
Enough fun, back to cricket. Let's try bowling first, eh? Position your fielders, all in a line if that pleases you, then choose your favoured school of bowling - slow, medium, fast or murderous bodyline stylee. Then the over can begin. You'll almost certainly claim at least one wicket every over; the computer batters ain't that hot. If the batter makes contact, you can move your fielders and if you're really lucky it'll select the fielder nearest to the ball for you. But not often.
Batting is a little more interactive. Choose your whacking direction, then press the button at the last possible moment and... get bowlder out or LBW'ed. But you can rack up some runs once you get your bearings, choosing whether to risk a quick single or not, that kind of thing. It's generally a bit too easy though, and I'm not convinced that different skill levels exist in this game. I'm really not that good at cricket, but this game reckons I'm a genius.
Winning is fairly inevitable then and when you do, the screen simply offers "Winners - visitors". Not quite the fireworks in Penetrator, is it? And the pre-set names on closer inspection don't even include the hero of the piece, Mr. Ian Botham. Surely he wouldn't be happy with that? Perchance he didn't spend enough time playtesting this title before agreeing they could use his name and pay him his dollar?
The graphics are a bit odd - a weird perspective of the wicket not quite convincing the eye. Colour and sound are muted. And excitement is definitely muted. It's hard to make much of a case for this game generally. Cricket is possible on the Spectrum and possibly the best one I've seen was one that came free with Your Sinclair. Their International Cricket was actually a good effort, with nice graphics and a decent level of interaction. Good old YS.
Before it's time for tiffin or whatever cricketers munch at half-time, let's have a quick check to see if there is any evidence that anyone at all bothered playing this game back in the crazy '80s. Ian Botham's Test Match was good for one thing at least, it seems. Namely padding out a number of sporty compilation packages which plagued the dying commercial days of the machine.
YS slammed it when it featured on Game, Set And Match 2, reckoning a game based on Beefy's off-field antics would have been much more fun. And C&VG deemed it "unexciting and bland, much like C&VG", only I might have made up that last bit. The game featured on 4 other compilations at least, but surely the worst thought-out one was Tynesoft's own "Ian Botham's Test Match & Pyjamarama". Aside from the amusing idea of Botham replacing Wally Week in his game, surely the close proximity of such excellent Spectrum programming makes this humble cricket game appear even worse by comparison? One plus point though - it's not Superman.
CRICKET SCORE
22%
THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT: 1985 EDITION
4th place!
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