Producer: Ocean
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Andrew Deakin

Voluptuous Athena, goddess of wisdom - worra woman. Tired with the everyday life of cleaning her heavenly home, our bikini beauty decides it's about time she got involved in a bit of the old heroic dealings. So off she sets to battle her way through six levels of forest, ice, land, sea, sky and hell.

Our heroine is no dumb blonde - this girl can jump, duck and run through these strange multilevel arenas, facing perilous odds as bizarre beasties attack her. Peanut men advance, demons close in, apples fly through the air, and armadillos swing into action.

By giving a good kicking to the first bad guys she meets, Athena can gather their weapons and, armed with perhaps an axe or a ball and chain, move on with a little more confidence. She scores points for every creature she thumps to death.

Our dynamic damsel's weaponry can also be used to demolish the rocks and blocks that make up the landscapes. This reveals some useful objects for Athena's arsenal - and some deadly ones, so look out. Athena can also collect wings and fins to speed her on her dangerous way.

But the beasts reduce Athena's life force (you knew there was a catch), and she has only five lives. To restore her vitality, the curvaceous fighter can destroy roses, which release collectable hearts.

The goddess with gumption can leave each world by battling past a large and mighty sentinel, but wimps are advised to seek the other exit. And hurry - on each level a time countdown limits our heroines's scope for slothful perambulation.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: small, neat, but monochromatic
Sound: lots of imaginative effects and tunes
Options: if you die on one of the first five levels, you can continue from the same point with a new set of five lives (the carries on, though) - up to 15 extra lives can be wangled this way

Athena could have been very good - with rigorous playtesting. But as it stands the game is unplayable and unappealing. The graphics, small but neat and nicely animated, go a long way to redeeming it, though they do flicker occasionally. The sound is also well above average, with loads of good tunes and atmospheric effects crammed in. But you'll have to look elsewhere for a decent heroine…
BEN [60%]

Wow! Athena has all the qualities you expect of a good arcade though it's a bit too hard. The shading is excellent, and there are some really lovable characters - I liked the hooded ghost and the big-nosed ogre. This is simply an excellent game.
NICK [86%]

Athena is definitely not for the arcade novice - it's an excruciating challenge to beat, through level after level of madcap violence. I needed all Athena's 15 lives to survive the first three levels! Graphically good and addictive, Athena is worthwhile for fans of the original and all hardened arcade players.
RICKY [80%]

Imagine
£7.95

Put on deep, doomy voice. "Transported to a strange forbidding land, Athena, a bold oriental princess must battle for survival to reach the Dark Overlord who brought her to his realm as a pawn for his macabre games..."

Being naturally prone to scepticism (Being a miserable old sod, you mean. Ed), I didn't expect an awful lot from this conversion. Athena's very much the sort of multi-screen platformerama that sits so happily on 16-bit machines, but can struggle so dismally on the Speccy. And the original coin-op is such a mammoth piece of programming that it looked a dead cert for the ever-growing scrap-heap of Conversions That Should Have Been Tried.

But no. Although the amazing pretty colours have gone for a burton (as usual these days), the game itself has remained intact. And what game! You play Athena as she battles through a scrolling landscape towards her eventual confrontation with the Dark Overlord. Nasties attack her from all sides, and as she moves along she must upgrade her weapons and her shielding picking up various useful bits and pieces. Not that these are just lying around. All are in fact hidden behind rocks which need to be battered away with whatever weapon you have to hand. You can dodge some nasties by jumping over or crouching beneath them, but you'll need to kill more than one of the big fellers who charges towards you before you get an axe powerful enough to start bashing down rocks. It's terribly easy to get killed very quickly in the early stages - if you can survive this part and pick up some effective shielding, things get slightly less frantic.

Its not quite as simple as battering your way through screen after screen, though. You can also drop down below ground, and ramble around down there - part of your task is to find the route that passes by the most useful weapons, the strongest shielding and the most useful other bits and bobs. For in Athena, the placing of the goodies is not random, as in most similar games - it's fixed, with just one exception. And that's that the first thing you'll find is a pair of winged boots that'll help you jump higher. Otherwise its up to you to remember where things are, 'cos that's where they'll be. (Very profound. Ed)

As part of the game's challenge is to find out what the various icons you collect actually do, I don't want to give too much away. I will say, though, that K stands for Keep (for one life at least), and that you should pay attention to what's written on the bottles, 'cos' ones poison and tho other's its antidote.

There are seven worlds in all, all with really sparkling graphics. Not surprisingly it's a multiload, but it's hard to imagine how they'd have done it otherwise. The important thing is that it accurately reproduces the pace and detail of the onginal, and if you ask me it's even harder. Expect a few letters in the Clinic - map, hints or cries for help will be gratefully received!

Label: Imagine
Authors: Andrew Deakin, Ivan Horne
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

How many games can you think of in which you had to play a woman that were also a big success? Thought so. Why??

Anyway let's hope the same fate doesn't befall Athena it's an all-round good game. If we were playing spot the trend I'd say that 'building up your firepower by collecting things' is flavour of the month.

In Athena you begin on uppercut power alone, but gradually build up until such things as axes and ball-and-chains increase your destructive capabilities markedly.

Incidentally, those foolish urchins who do strange things like leer over cassette inlays (cf Barbarian) will be disappointed that the sprite representation of Athena bears surprisingly little comparison with the original on the the cassette inlay.

Anyway enough of this irrelevance. The game is played over six worlds - forest, sea, sky, ice, fire and hell. In each Athena pummels her way through, past countless peculiar aliens including big monsters and small potatoes (surprisingly vicious for root vegetables). She is looking for one of the two exits out of each world, one of which is protected by an enormous monster. Trash it for lots of points and, voila, the next section.

Actually it isn't 'voila the next section' because in 48K you have to load it from tape. It is, however, pretty quick.

But Athena does more than trample aliens, she tramples rock itself. In a sort of bizarre variant on Boulderdash, Athena often has to clear vast amounts of landscape which block her path - and it means she sometimes has to choose her route through each world carefully.

There are some curious aspects to the gameplay, too. You get five lives in the usual way but have to complete each level within a time limit. Assuming you are still within the time limit, you are offered the option of continuing with the game after all five lives have been lost. Press Y within 10 seconds and you're back to five lives again. Peculiar.

Having actually managed to get through the first level I can exclusively reveal that the next level is set in caverns and is very similar to the first level which is a forest. The caverns are yellow and the forest is green. In the forest section there are (seemingly) more baddies but in the caverns there are more 'shifting the rubble' type problems.

Graphics, though two-colour are pretty good with a fair amount of detail in both the sprites and backgrounds. The movement is smooth(ish) and some of the visual ideas are quite inventive. (A lot of the monsters, for example, look amiably doltish rather than threatening.) The potatoes are particularly nice.

Athena is the stuff of which high score letters to Jon Riglar are made. It won't win any awards for great innovations, but definitely take a look at it anyway.

Supplier: Imagine
Version Tested: Spectrum

In this arcade conversion you play the part of Athena - not the goddess, but a fearsome Oriental princess. It is your goal to seek out and dismember the Dark Overlord, who has transported you to his realm for a bit of sport. The realm consists of six worlds, each of which you must battle through before you can face the Overlord.

You have five minutes to complete each of the worlds, each of which takes the form of a multi-level horizontally scrolling landscape with more than a hint of maze about them. Every world has two exits, one guarded by a powerful monster, the other unguarded but usually very difficult to find.

The worlds are filled with a variety of assailants from hooded monks to small potato-like creatures. Contact with any of these will drain your energy - in most cases, very quickly indeed. At the start of the game Athena can only attack by kicking, but after killing a few foes you should discover a cudgel, which Athena can then use to smash her way through rocks and opponents. Hidden inside some of the rocks are special icons which can grant anything from new weapons and armour to winged boots that provide extra height when jumping.

Athena is spoiled by your extremely short life-expectancy. The sheer frequency, number and speed of creatures attacking you means that even when clad in armour and carrying a powerful weapon your life won't last long.

With its well-defined graphics and competent sound this game could have been very addictive; it has animation and features that are potentially engrossing; but its virtually unplayable.

Reviewer: Dave Packer

RELEASE BOX
Spectrum £7.95 cs, Out Now
Amstrad £8.95 cs, £14.95 dk, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 7/10
1 hour: 6/10
1 day: 5/10
1 week: 4/10
1 month: 3/10
1 year: 0/10