Producer: Cascade
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Orpheus

Four hundred years have since our time. Space travel has become economic, now Man can pass cheaply across distant unknown space, and make it his own. And with each new planet colonised, hopes of peace, freedom, and equality grew like seedlings in Men's minds.

But these seeds withered and died, as the rich became richer, and the poor, poorer. Anger and discontent grew amongst the masses, crime flourished. In desperation, governments used drugs to quash unruly elements - but their use also squashed vitality. After twenty years crime was dying, but industrial production had virtually ceased and worlds slid toward economic ruin. Until that is the discovery, and settlement, of the planet Naibmoloc.

Naibmoloc was a good world, and when it was discovered that from its forests could be refined a powerful control drug, without side effects, Naibmoloc became a very good world indeed.

A secret government department was established to recruit harvesters, processors and smugglers of the new drug. A drug they now called Sky. And from its name the agents took theirs. The Sky Runners began to work.

Whispered words reached planetary governments, who knew nothing of the control drug experiments. Determined to end this moral outrage they organised rebel Runner Squads of mercenaries, to disrupt and sabotage the Sky Runner's operations.

Mother ships have laid .rebel Skimmers into the planet's atmosphere. Armed and fast, they are specially adapted to destroy the defence towers surrounding the harvesting lands. You are a pilot of one such Skimmer. The screen before you shows a view from the Skimmer's cockpit, and the threat level the Skimmer is likely to encounter - which you can evaluate. The balance of your mercenary's fees is indicated, as fighting becomes fiercer, every successful mission adds bonus payments of increasing value to that account.

After an automatic take off, the Skimmer can be guided, accelerated or slowed. Tall harvesting towers appear, and all must be destroyed before stopping the Skimmer and dropping three SkyBikers it carries, down to the forest floor. Now control passes to a Sky Biker who can be steered through the forest trees in search of his enemy counterparts, whose positions can be seen on the scanner at the top of the screen. They attack from all directions, and fast manoeuvring is required to avoid their shots while lining up to deliver killing blasts. Some enemies carry a price upon their heads and disabling them earns a bonus. Your Pulse Blaster switches to a low level when a wanted biker is confronted. One shot disables, two shots kill, the blaster indicating when to fire.

But not all SkyBikers encountered are enemies, some are fellow- rebels, and penalties are incurred for killing them.

After the last opposing SkyBiker has been destroyed the Harvesters can be attacked, with high energy pulses to vulnerable points indicated upon their sides. When the last Sky Harvester is wiped out, the battle for Naibmoloc, and its evil drug economy is won.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Cursor keys and Space to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor
Use of colour: average
Graphics: neatly drawn, of reasonable size with good animation
Sound: average, tendency to be irritating after a while
Screens: three scrolling stages

Hands up who remembers Death Chase... I do and it's a damn sight better than this, and, thanks to ELITE, it's a lot cheaper too. Okay, so there are a few extra bits but they're pretty dull, instantly forgettable even. The graphics are reasonable, but they tend to get messy and there isn't really enough variation. The sound's run-of-the-mill, a bog standard engine noise and a sort of crunch when you prang. I can't recommend this, it simply isn't worth ten pounds.
BEN

Sky Runner isn't one of the easiest games to get used to. For a start you don't actually have to hit any of the defence towers accurately, just land a bolt in the proximity. The bikers haven't got the world's best collision detection on them either. Sometimes bolts go straight through without making any impact at all. However, the graphics are original and extremely well drawn, updating without flicker, and their action is silky smooth. Even though Sky Runner is hard to play l found it to be great fun and surprisingly addictive. Definitely worth a look at, even if you think it's not your cup of tea.
PAUL

A pretty basic sort of shoot 'em up, this. Graphically, it's unamazing; I feel the SkyBikers could be improved, and the harvester isn't particularly hot; the 3D effect works, but is a bit jerky. Whereas there's quite a lot of playability present, I think its addictive qualities are sorely lacking. Having progressed through the three levels, the towers, the bikers, and finally the harvester, there's little compulsion to try the run again, even on one of the higher threat levels. CASCADE seem to have made an effort with this one, but it lacks the addictiveness of ACE.
MIKE

Cascade
£9.95

There's an old game whose name escapes my aged brain, maybe Death Chase, in which you race through a forest on your bike trying to miss the trees and hit anything else that gets in your way. The reason I can't remember the name is that it came out about two years ago, and Sky Runner is really nothing but a tarted-up version of that.

Addiction is addiction, though, and even the simplest of games can keep you coming back for more if they've got the infamous Grab Factor. Sky Runner takes place in the latter part of the 24th century. The game starts with you in charge of a Skimmer, and astonishingly enough, this skims over the surface of a planet at just above tree height, while you have to shoot down the defence towers that look like telegraph poles.

Clear the first section of towers and the first of your three Skybikers descends from the Skimmer craft. These can now race across the surface looking out for other bikes, which may be friend or foe, so make sure you know whether you're meant to be taking them out or not.

Take out the last biker and you then have a crack at the huge Sky Harvester, and a map on the screen will point you in the right direction for that. Wipe that out and you go back again for more.

There are eight Skill levels, although they're called Threat Levels to make it all sound a bit more exciting, and instead of a score you have a cash balance, which you increase by eliminating everything that needs eliminating. The games quite addictive, but if you can take out the Sky Harvester on Threat Level 4 at your first attempt it doesn't sound too good for a long-term challenge.

Label: Cascade
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Roy Stead

Cascade's ACE was a No 1 title. Now here's the follow-up - Sky Runner - again written by Ian Martin.

If ever there was an over-complicated plot for a computer game, Sky Runner has it. When you cut through all the waffle that monopolises the back of the cassette box and spills over into the instruction sheet, we find that this a game about drugs.

You are a freelance Sky Runner a space pilot with an interest in the moral fibre of the universe as well as his bank balance. You are hired by upstanding governments to stop the trafficking of a mind-control drug, Sky.

This involves flying around on the planet in a rather dreadful skimmer-craft, flying over trees and shooting at poles in the ground. These towers are really defence installations that are set up by the highly-organised drug runners to protect the illicit harvesting operation in process somewhere else in the sector.

It's all done in a kind of 3D that is very similar to 3D Death Chase from Micromega which was around years and years ago and was thought to be extremely clever at the time. The screen goes left and right quite smoothly and your skimmer can accelerate and decelerate causing the engine to light up an authentic glowy manner.

As you bank left and right, the landscape acts in a suitable fashion and pretty soon you will have blown away the top of all the towers. Once this has been done, you will have to take on the bad guys on the ground; the runners themselves. For this part of the mission you will have to climb abroad a kind of jet-bike thing in which you can zoom around in-between trees and so on, blowing away criminals all the way. After this section the large harvesting machine must be destroyed before going on to the next level.

At the start of the game you can select the Threat level which affects quite how many aliens there are and how crazy they are. This is obviously handy for beginners as it allows a kind of practice mode to be explored while dealing with weedy aliens.

The main problem with Sky Runner is that although it's pleasant enough to play, you don't really feel that much is resting on your success. There's no feeling of urgency as you play. Even if you attempt to go really fast, all that happens is you end up crashing into a tree. OK so that's pretty bad...

Sky Runner is pretty offensive and quite a pleasant play. It doesn't hold any mysteries or genuine excitement, though, apart from the truly abysmal colour coded anti-piracy device that you have to use before getting into the game.

...THE FLIGHT HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN!

Bust the interplanetary drug ring in Cascades arcade game.

Cascade
£9.95

The plot's rather involved but the action is straightforward shoot em up fare. The inlay blurb rambles on about future civilisations and drug harvesting on distant planets but when you get into the game it turns out to be a pure seek and destroy game.

Your mission is to command a two phase operation against the drug growers (the drug is called Sky hence the title). As their plantations are heavily guarded by defence towers, you must first knock them out. Piloting your skimmer craft above the planet surface you have to blast the tops off the towers before they can unleash return fire. The threat level (the number of missiles lobbed in your direction) and speed can be altered quite drastically so that making this an exciting game rests mainly in your own hands. If you play at a slow speed with minimum 'threat' you are likely to doze off but at the other extreme it's virtually unplayable. So it might take you some time to find the right level where it's still a challenge.

When the first phase is complete you are ready to transfer to two wheels. A motorbike is dropped from your skimmer and sets off through "the forest", which means there are a few trees to avoid occasionally. Your aim here is to take out other bikers who are protecting the narcotic crops. A note of subtlety is introduced here as the bikers who all look the same may also be members of your own squad. A display panel tells you when the biker has been identified and whether he requires blasting.

Landing a shot on the bikers proves difficult as they drive up from behind you and disappear over the horizon in the blink of an eye.

Demolishing a few enemy bikes was as far as I got. To destroy the huge drug harvesting machine you must first destroy all the bikes.

Sky Runner is an undemanding burst of blasting that doesn't measure up to Cascades previous release, the flight simulator, Ace, but should please those who still like their fingers firmly on the fire button.