Producer: Ocean
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.90
Language: Machine code
Author:

Chinese Juggler is one of those games that has been translated from the original Commodore version, and done very well. As a game its success lies in the manic panic it inspires as you try to keep all the plates spinning at once - or is this getting ahead too fast?

The object of the juggler is to set eight plates spinning on top of eight poles and keep them spinning. This isn't so very easy as each plate has to be set in motion one at a time, so by the time you have got five or six going, you are too busy keeping up the spin pace of the first ones to have time to get the remaining plates up and going.

The screen shows the juggler's stage and the eight poles waiting. At the front of the stage are four small chinese pagodas on which the coloured plates appear. The juggler can be directed around the playing area to collect a plate and then back to a pole to set the plate spinning. Returning to the same pole and using the activate button will cause the slowing plate to speed up again. Of course, if you don't get to a slowing plate in time, it will eventually fall off.

On the first screen all you have to do is get all eight poles filled with plates of any colour. But on subsequent screens there are further complications, such as setting a plate of specific colour spinning, the colour determined by the border colour. If no plate of the required colour is available, then you must throw the plate in the air and catch it again. This will alter the plate's colour - though it might not be the right one.

COMMENTS

Control keys: B - SPACE for actions on the plate, Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, D/E dis/enable music
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive, sensible positions
Use of colour: good
Graphics: very good, nice animation especially on plates
Sound: excellent tune
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: 1
Screens: 10

At first glimpse I expected this game to be a ten minute gimmick. To say the least, I was wrong. Chinese Juggler is fun and addictive, also requiring strategy to keep the plates spinning. After a while the frustration, music and the Chinese shuffle send you into a hypnotic state of addiction (meant in the nicest possible way)! Very good indeed, but not quite mega-league.

First of all this was out for the Commodore 64 with its tremendous sound, and I was eager to see the Spectrum version. The Spectrum version seemed to be an exact copy, even down to the same tunes - but saying this the game wasn't even half the fun to play I think sound must have been a major feature of its 'parent'. It just seems to lack the manic drive of the original. Colour has been used well and the graphics are very good, and despite what I have said about the sound, it must be said that they have done very well considering the Spectrum's limitations. Overall a very playable game but one that will probably lack the addictive qualities of a good selling game.

Chinese Juggler is less a game and more of a party piece. Its furious pace, helped by the incessant, crazy music, is just the sort of thing for several people to get into hysterics over. Whether it has the appeal overall to last as a single player game, I'm not so sure. It's highly original, amusing and playable but perhaps that's not quite enough to make it a monster hit.

Roger: To be honest, my lack of infatuation with this oriental variety act is probably connected to personal taste. Legendary inscrutability, or objectivity, or something, must be maintained however.

Players are required to rush around with plates of various colours. The purpose is not to serve up two 19s, a 43 and a 27 with extra sweet-and-sour sauce, though. It's all about spinning 'em on top of sticks and keeping one's past successes going whilst doing it.

Other juggling tricks can be performed so as to change the colour of plates and increase score. Success with all eight plates spinning apparently leads to more difficult screens and less valuable dishes of a darker hue can be dumped off the back of the stage...

With all the ingredients of success, Chinese Juggler doesn't really make it, however you look at it. It requires skill and tactical planning, sure enough - but I found the fear, panic and aggression of good arcadia to be missing. It doesn't even possess the saving grace of being weird. 2/5 MISS

Dave: This is one of those games that seem great when you first start playing them, but don't hold you at the screen. 1/5 MISS

Ross: A fairly inscrutable game that seemed to have a lot to do with smashing plates! The point of it all? Don't ask me ask Confucious! 2/5 MISS

INSCRUTABLE PLATES

Memory: 48K
Price: £6.90

Throwing plates into the air and balancing them on poles might not be your idea of fun but obviously somebody at Ocean thinks that a Chinese Juggler makes a smashing game.

Your performer must take the plates from the piles set at the front of the stage and toss them into the air until they are the correct colour to go onto one of the poles.

Once you achieve the correct coloured plate you can spin it on one of the poles and return for another. That continues, together with odd intervals where you must re-spin plates which are threatening to fall, until all of the poles have been used.

After initial interest wanes the game becomes slightly boring and then excruciatingly so. Each level is easy and once you have been past the eighth or ninth level there is not much left to do.

The game has proved popular for the Commodore 64 which probably confirms what you have always suspected of Commodore users

PRICE: £6.90
GAME TYPE: Arcade

In the rush to provide games with as many playing screens as possible, it is sometimes forgotten that some of the best thought-out games can be played in very few screens. Chinese Juggler, with its ten levels of play but effectively only one playing screen is a good example of this.

You play the Chinese juggler of the title, and it is your aim to set a plate spinning on each of the eight posts shown, within the time limit, without allowing any to fall if it can be avoided.

The game is, perhaps, a little too easy and, once you have completed the first levels, the middle levels are relatively easy. Only the last levels, in which you have to match changing border colours, are very difficult.

Produced for the 48K Spectrum by Ocean Software Ltd, 6 Central Street, Manchester.