Reviews

1983 Sinclair Research
by Hudson Soft

The story is simple: You happen to be on the roof of a train apparently out of control.
Being the hero it's your job to go and stop the train from wrecking.
Of course, like in all games life ain't easy for the hero, and obstacles are necessary. The doors between carriages have all been locked and appears a gang of saboteurs are behind all of this.
Your task is to go thru all the carriages, avoiding the baddies who shoot giant bullets at you, well actually they throw them at you, until you reach the locomotive and stop the uncontrolled Express.

My first glance at this game many years ago was of excitement. I loved everything about it.
And despite finding it hard, it was really fun and incredible to look at.
Now today, after long years, I can firmly claim that this is actually very easy to complete, I finished it in a few plays. So a long loved game became a sort of a disappointment. Mainly because it is too short. The train has 20 carriages, and 3 stages, the first stage happens on top of the first 10 carriages, the second stage inside the rest of the train, then you reach the the key room which is the last stage (not mentioned in the game) and finally the locomotive. When complete the game restarts without resetting the score and the enemies then start appearing also from the front. For such an early game, and intended for the 16K, I can only consider it to be one of the best games ever released for this machine.
Although short its still very playable and fun.

Note: By the time I wrote this review I noticed the authors name wasn't attributed. It only claimed to be made by Hudson Soft. But I have found some clues that may lead to F.Itagaki. He authored a game called 'Itasundorious' also released by Hudson Soft. Now if you notice this game has the first syllable of Itagaki's name. Now returning to 'Stop the Express', can you remember the name of the express in which the action takes place? Exactly it happens aboard the ITA Express.
And what about the 'CongratuRation! You Sucsess!' message in the end?
Coincidence? Written by a japanese? I really don't know, but it sure looks like F.Itagaki was involved in the game.

A marvelous game and one of the best ever written for the Spectrum !!

Very colourful and also furiously fast !!

Prevent the express from derailing eluding baddies, wicked birds, ghosts and all sort of weird enemies ... very entertaining and exciting !!! Magic, pure 8-bits magic !!

Who can forget those red gangsters holding a bullet in one hand and throwing it at you as if it were a stone ... quite hilarious !!

Stop the Express is one of those magical games that were ahead of their time and which made me fall in love with the Zx Spectrum forever, and ever, and ever, and ever again ... and that I often miss in modern platforms.


A must have for all lovers of the Spectrum.

Thanks a lot Sir Clive Sinclair !!

This time your black wonder worked a miracle !! ;D


Ps - Doesn´t the main character in this game resemble Wonder Boy with his big blonde head ??

In this rather unusual game you have to negotiate various enemies and obstacles to reach the head of a runaway train. Although being and looking very old (1983!), gameplay wise it is one of those games which stood the test of time well enough to be recommendable even nowadays for a quick play. The real fault is that it is very difficult and could easily give way to frustration. In addition, it's really short, so it will probably take you a long time to finish it not because of its size but of its difficulty.

Stop the Express sees you running across the top of a train, jumping the gaps between carriages and chucking birds at the bad guys chasing you. If you manage to get to the tenth carriage, you climb down and make your way inside the carriages and from here you need to make it to the engine to stop the express. A bright, colourful, slightly insane game which is loads of fun to play.

When you first note that the Space Bar is the allocated button for 'Set Bird Free' you know that this isn't your run of the mill express train chase.
Stop the Express brought a high energy action thriller to the Spectrum with a runaway train and armed bandits to escape, whilst you try to reach the front of the train. But then they threw in some offbeat cartoony graphics and a bird you could catch and turn against your tottering enemies and send them spirallng to the tracks... odd to describe but deeply satisfying to achieve...
A quirky classic.
The first time I stopped the Express was a mini gaming achievement that has stayed with me.

One of the most legendary and infamous games on the Spectrum, mainly because of the Engrish text displayed when you beat the game. It still looks pretty well today in fact but I found the keys to be useless to use, but using the Interface joystick mapped to the keyboard worked so much better. Saying that, this game is fricking hard. It doesn't help that you have to get through two enemies each time on stage one instead of one. It is a nice enough game but it frustrated me to no end.

Japanese programmers always exceeded in arcades.
Well, in fact in every aspect of engineering and art. And what better than videogames to fusion both disciplines.

Still, few japanese ventured into the ZX world. Probably it was ported in Europe for the Spectrum and C64 or something but nonetheless Stop the Express made its way into a great deal of platforms for the time it was (MSX was the main port I think)

For 1983 this is one of the best efforts at bring fun and colour to the humble Speccy.

But not only that, it's a 16 Kb game!

Loving memories but also plenty of action and addictive factor.

You travel in a train out of control. To stop it, you must climb onto the roof of your carriage (the 20th) and walk along until the engine car, avoiding saboteurs that try to eliminate you. There are also birds to dodge, but if you can catch them, they can be used to made the enemies fall.

The program, coded by Hudson Soft for Sinclair Research, looks like a very good arcade conversion, but that's the great thing of it: it's an original game with a very nice arcade-ish look. Both graphics and sounds are very good and the smooth and constant movement of the train is very accomplished, features that are not very common in a game made in 1983.

A very addictive game with an epic final engrish message: "Congraturation, you sucsess".

This is one of the best classics!
Simple but effective.
Hilarious to play it secretly in the office!