The Games That Time Forgot: 1987 Edition

More of a military font than a spacey one really. POKE this screen and you'll see more...

COLLISION COURSE

(Americana)

3D games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum? The daddies of them all have got to be those Ultimate Stampers and their Knight Laws, Alien Hate, Shightshade and Pentacles (damn this auto-correct) but there was someone else who started doing 3D things even before them and for some time after. And his games still managed to be innovative and playable too, unlike some of those mentioned above. It's heresy I know, but I don't care, I'm going to hell anyway. You see, I killed all those people, murdered them in cold blood like a heartless bastard. I don't like to talk about it much, and I brought it on myself really. I never should have bought Zzoom...

Very nice, even if you don't get a laser gun and your ship doesn't resemble a helicopter

Phew, enough intensity! Any idea who I'm yapping on about above? I speak of none other than Sr. Costa Panayi, who started 3Ding with those walls in Android 2, graduated to the immense Highway Encounter and Alien Highway, went flying for a spell with T.L.L. and Cyclone, and carried on 3Ding with Revolution and H.A.T.E. He also stuck with just the two dimensions in Android 1 and Deflektor, but he's always been more at home in 3, bless 'im. Someone should have broken the bank to get him to do a Speccy conversion of Zaxxon, he'd have aced it I'm sure. Wait, I'm getting deja-vu... hold on, ah yes, I said that a couple of years ago in my review of H.A.T.E. Well, no matter, it didn't get many views, so I can probably recycle the comment with little fear of reproach. Maybe Allan Turvey could team up with him, it sounds more exciting than Frogger to me.

On level 1 we're in good shape, about to pick up some shield with oodles of time left

There's a story behind Collision Course, not that we know very many details. Costa was apparently not happy with the finished product, but Americana went and released it anyway. Presumably for this reason, following in the famed footsteps of Emily Bronte, Stephen King and the like, he cooked himself up a pseudonym. And so H. Ziehms was born. Some might say it wasn't a very good nom de plume, and it doesn't seem to be an anagram for a swear word disappointingly. But the point is he must have felt pretty strongly to not want to use his own name. It's hidden in black on black on the loading screen, I'm told. Yes, I'm that gullible I believe it. So this doesn't bode well for the game quality, but on we press...

In the blueness of level 2, you have around 8 milliseconds to pick up that cell. Clue: you won't

The intergalactic, planetary plot goes a little like this. You are effectively a crash test dummy (mmm mmm mmm mmm) and have been given a shiny new spaceship to play with. Downside is it's experimental and the odds are you'll die. You have to travel through strangely octagonal stargate zones to reach deeper and deeper into space in order to test a new pan-galactic teleporter type system. The dogs and monkeys they sent up first all died sadly, so you're next up. Unhandily the radiation plays havoc with your ship's shields so you have to regularly collect energy cells to top up your tank. When your shield reaches zero, you're space junk. Watch out for meteors, space mines and micro pulsars, while picking up diamond stashes for added wealth if you get out of this alive.

Level 3 adds some unasked for height hazards to proceedings

So effectively it's a racing game. You have to hit the checkpoints before time counts down for your shields, until you reach the end of each section. And each checkpoint gives you enough added time to reach the next if you're canny. Things start easy enough but become more complicated when the meandering meanies get in your way, or when the checkpoint you're trying to hit is floating at a different height to yourself. So getting your ship at the right altitude becomes critical, otherwise you go round the thing in circles and look silly.

"And the stars look very different today.... in a strangely magenta way"

Costa Panayi's games have all had some pretty darn impressive graphics (okay maybe not Android 1, but that was a long time ago), and Collision Course is no exception. The 3D effect is perfect with the usual shadowing beneath objects to convey a believable sense of height. The ship itself is a slightly odd unaerodynamic looking craft, but moves hyper smoothly and at a decent speed too. It's a screen flicker rather than a scroller, but that works quite well in keeping you guessing which way the 'road' is going to point next. I wonder if he wanted to get it to scroll instead, and this was the sticking point with the publishers? We need to track him down and ask.

What a classic Highway Encounter was - part shooty, part puzzly - Panayi at 100%

It plays really nicely in my opinion and makes for a superior budget experience. I suppose more features might have meant it could have been a viable full price release, but it's perfectly good as it is. So those people on Spectrum Computing's user scores bit who rated it as 5, 4, 3 and 2 out of 10 should give their heads a wobble. It's a good, playable 3D offering which is worthy of its place in the author's impressive portfolio. So ner.

SCORES IN 3D (Put on your 3D glasses now)

75%

-FIN-