Hypersports

Copyright : Imagine | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Based on the hit arcade game of the same name, itself a follow-up to the popular Track and Field, Hyper Sports brings six of the original seven events to the Amstrad - Swimming, skeet-shooting, the vault, archery, triple jump and weightlifting (only the pole vault is missing from the line up fact fans!)

Heavily delayed on release, the CPC version of Hyper Sports split the gaming press of the time in to two distinct camps, Amstrad Action who loved it enough to make it a Rave and Amtix who panned it to within an inch of its existence.

Graphics

As with most games made up of several events, Hyper Sports is graphically a mixed bag with some of the sports looking better than others.

Of the six, the best looking is certainly the swimming (which is handy as it?s the first event that you play!) although this is far from daring in design (viewed from above, it?s blue backgrounds ahoy!).

The archery looks bizarre thanks to the odd choice of viewing proceedings from above and having a moving target (never saw that in the Olympics?)

One thing all the events have in common is a rather cutting corners look in animation with each of the player controlled sprites confined to only two or three positions that jerk backwards and forwards in time with the shonky scrolling that slows down the game no end.

Having said that, Hyper Sports does feel like a proper arcade game though thanks to the screen layout and the adoption of the Track and Field standard of having the top three scores in the right hand corner.

Sound

Arcadey bangs to signify the start of each event and skeets blowing up in mid-air. Lacklustre.

Gameplay

One of the old school joystick wagglers, four of the six disciplines on show require some near arm destroying that would have committed many a Quickshot and Cheetah to the great joystick graveyard in the sky. Unfortunately the programming leaves a little to be desired as it is fairly easy to go faster than the programme can handle in a few cases, leaving the player you are controlling to stop dead. This adds an extra level of frustration to an already ?easy to snap? genre - literally.

Only the swimming, with some slightly moderated waggling, and the archery get pass marks for me.

The skeet shooting is nigh on impossible thanks to some poor collision detection and the weightlifting is far too difficult especially after playing through umpteen different events first.

The real turkey in the group though is the triple jump which has been rendered completely unplayable thanks to the glaring ommision of any markings on the track from which you are supposed to begin your jump?

While its not the worst example of a joystick waggler out there, it?s still far from good - looking and playing poorly compared to contempories of the time like Daley Thompson?s Decathlon. I?m with the Newsfield boys on this one.