What Will You Be Playing This Christmas?

What Will You Be Playing This Christmas?

Sega? Nintendo? Or a Nissan Cherry? It could be an expensive Christmas this year. Marcus Berkmann compares the games consoles with Amstrad's glistening new Spectrum +3.

Marcus Berkmann

It could be a hard winter for Alan Nutrisweet and his Speccy. Under attack from all sides by rinkier and dinkier games consoles and computers, he's reacted by launching the Spectrum+3, the first version of the aged but adored computer that actually looks like a computer, what with its disk drive, sassy keyboard and matt black finish. But people have carped. The new machine adds little to the old +2, they say, other than an ability to prod in and whip out data at about a billion times the speed. Besides, it's £249, no mean sum. Can it survive the onslaught?
    It's always a good idea to suss out the competition, so we spent a couple of days road-testing two of the most serious challengers to the Spectrum's gameplaying crown, the Sega and Nintendo games consoles. Both machines have been due to come out in this country for as long as anyone can remember, but it looks as though they'll be ready for the PCW Show, if not before. The Nintendo, which is supposed to have sold ten million units in the land of the rising yen (ah-so), is being marketed by toy company Mattel, while the Sega's coming from the ever-expanding Mastertronic.

Consoling thought
Both consoles are 16-bit machines, which makes them rather more sophisticated than all the 8-bit computers (like the Spectrum) that we've come to know and love. With this new technology, they're more akin to the zappy new mega-computers like the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga, but with a couple of important differences. The ST and Amiga, after all, are proper computers, which you can do rather more than play games on - and they're also a billion times more expensive. You can pick up either Sega Nintendo starter packs for a few pennies under £100.
    So while anyone wanting to program, store data or generally trainspot would be well advised to steer clear of the consoles, hardened gamesters could be onto a good deal. Both machines boast graphics and speed that, at their best, make the poor old Speccy look like a pocket calculator. And the prospect of some of your fave arcade games in virtually their original form is pretty enticing. So where's the catch?

Yes, where's the catch?
The main problem, we found, was with the games themselves. They're not exactly cheap - the Sega cards and cartridges start at £15, the Nintendo cartridges at £20 - and the range is really quite limited when compared to what you can get for the Speccy. Strategy/simulation? No. Adventures? No. Arcade adventures even? No, not really. Both the Sega and Nintendo consoles have been designed with a very specific market in mind - arcade game fans. And as the games you'd buy for the consoles are so expensive, the systems stand or fall on the quality of the arcade games they've chosen to convert.
    The problem with this is that it's most unlikely that British software companies will get involved in designing games for the new machines. In fact at the moment they're not even allowed to. The only companies allowed to import games for the Sega and Nintendo are, respectively, Sega and Nintendo. The money is made on the software, and the parent companies aren't prepared to see any Tom, Dick or Toshiro get in on the act. But even if they change their minds, the entry costs are so high for British companies that we'll still probably see nowt but imported games on the shelves. Although this means lots of spanking arcade games, there won't be anything with the subtlety and depth of The Sentinel or Head Over Heels, for instance. So for the moment at least, we'll have to fall back on what Mattel and Mastertronic are doshing out.
    And on this count, Mastertronic's ahead by a couple of lengths. The Sega's a slightly newer machine than the Nintendo, and in recent years the company's certainly had a better record in the arcades, which may be why its release schedule has a slightly starrier look. Out Run, Enduro Racer and - tarantara! - Space Harrier will all be out before the end of the year. We've seen Space Harrier and it's totally and absolutely brillsville - certainly worth the £25 it'll cost you. Nintendo, on the other hand, has nothing much more gripping than Donkey Kong.

Toying with your affections
There's one other thing to consider - the companies who are marketing the consoles. For Mastertronic the Sega is a large investment, an expansion of its computer-based business, and something you can be sure will be backed up to the hilt. Mattel, on the other hand, is a toy company, and not surprisingly sees the Nintendo as, to, all intents and purposes, a toy. It'll be sold mainly in toyshops or toy departments and will probably be aimed at a slightly younger age-group (8 to 14 or thereabouts). It could be that the games planned for the machine will reflect this approach.
    So how do the consoles compare to the +3? Well, for simple gameplay, graphics and speed; the Spectrum can't compete. But you can't program a Sega, nor can you POKE into its games, word-process, learn about computing, play around with graphics packages, store data or fiddle about to your heart's content. Nor with a Nintendo. All you can do is bung in a gamecard or cartridge, switch it on and play a game, And while the consoles load their games instantly, the new +3 loads games in around 15 seconds - not so bad for what's essentially old technology. One of the first games available on disk will be Microprose's latest helicopter simulation Gunship, which has been a vast success on the Commodore and may well do the same on the Speccy. You won't see a game of similar sophistication on the consoles.
    So before you buy a console, or badger someone else into buying one for you, think about it - and convince yourself that it won't find itself locked away in a cupboard by New Year's Eve.

SEGA BEAVER
So what's available? Mastertronic promises a regular supply of games, with 12 at first and five a month from then on, including Out Run, Choplifter, and Phil's fave, World Grand Prix. You can also get a Light Phaser gun (which comes with a cartridge of three shooting games) for just under £45, and best of all, the 3D glasses and adapter for £49.95! There'll be games designed for phaser and for glasses, and in the case of 3D Gunner, both. Trouble is, if you want to enjoy this amazingly fab 3D outer space shoot 'em up, you'll end up having to shell out a gargantuan £215.80 for the game and all of the equipment. Aaargh! With Mastertronic behind it, the Sega may be off to a good start. The company certainly knows the computer games market, and has chosen to pitch the basic set at £99.95, the same as the Nintendo. Game cards, which are about the size of credit cards but packed with inscrutable oriental electronics, retail at around £15, while the big games, which come on fully fledged cartridges, go for £20. It's only the hyper-mega-vasto games, like Space Harrier and Enduro Racer, that set you back 'orrible sums like £25, and these need two cartridges (not a bad deal by any means). Each of these formats is about a fiver less than the Nintendo equivalent.

SEGA RELEASES
Mastertronic's forthcomers
Hang On (included in set), Ghost House, Zaxxon 3D, Transbot, Enduro Racer, Fantasy World, 3D Gunner, Super Tennis, Pro Wrestling, World Grand Prix, Shooting Gallery, Spy Vs Spy, Space Harrier (yay!), Choplifter, Rocky, Black Belt, My Hero, Action Fighter, F- 16 Fighter, World Soccer, Astro Warrior/Pit Pot, World War 3D, Out Run, Teddy Boy, The Ninja.

GOOD NINTENTIONS
And in the red corner, the Nintendo console, which in this country comes via the massive American toy company Mattel. It was the toy companies who started off the whole video games craze in the early eighties, when Mattel were responsible for the intellivision console (Don't remind us. Ed). Fortunately technology has come on a little since then and the Nintendo is as sophisticated a games machine as you'll see outside an arcade. The basic set is £99.95, or a ton to you and me, and with that you also get Super Mario Bros, an excellent version of a corky old arcade game (and my fave of the software we saw). The deluxe version comes with another light gun, this time called a zapper, and a robot called ROB (Robot Operated Buddy), plus two games, Duck Hunt (for use with the zapper) and Gyromite (a game which uses ROB) - all for around £155. Not bad, huh? Mattel's initially launching 17 titles with loads more to come, and you can snap 'em up for between £20 and £35 - steepish, I think you'll agree. Each one comes on a sort of plastic lump that looks not unlike those eight track music-cartridges estate agents use to play in their Triumph Spitfires about fifteen years ago. But then the machine itself is hardly elegant, so who's complaining? (You. Ed).

NINTENDO GAMES
Mattel's winners
Super Mario Bros (comes with basic set), Gyromite (comes with deluxe set), Duck Hunt (comes with, deluxe set), Wrecking Crew, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong II, Wild Gunman, Baseball, Balloon Fight, Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Popeye, Excitebike, Pinball, Kung Fu.

THREE'S COMPANY
As widely reported, the Spectrum+3 will cost £249 initially, although I think we can expect a hefty price cut before Chrimble if A. Sugar Esq has anything to do with it. We've already done a full report on the machine with technical specs in the July issue, but what's the gen for gamesters?
    Well, the good news is that games load up in a fraction of the time you're used to on previous Spectrums - 10 to 15 seconds for most of the ancient Ocean games included in the package. And the bad news is that, thanks to a design cock-up of quite massive proportions, most joystick interfaces simply will not fit into the machine. Reason? Connected to the giant power pack is not the homely old coaxial plug beloved of all Speccy owners, but a rather hefty 5DIN plug, which fits into a hole right next to the expansion port. Which means that unless you chip a bit off the Kempston, you can't fit the bugger in! (Technical note: One solution, not to be recommended to any but the most resourceful, is to whip off the casing and plug the circuit boards in - but don't blame us if you electrocute yourself or burn the house down!) so for most of us, it's keyboard play only until the interface people get their act together or alternatively you can use a Cheetah joystick since they use dual plugs which are compatible with the +2 and +3.
    Meanwhile, don't worry that all of your cassette software is now useless - it ain't. With the normal lead(s) you can easily connect up a cassette recorder to the +3, and the manual claims it is compatible with all software previously published for the Spectrum. We haven't yet had the opportunity to test this out - "And the three bears" was the general reaction in this office - but if it's true, it makes the +3 an even more worthwhile purchase.
    Finally, what's the possibility of companies writing games exclusively for disk? Not high, according to our fearless sleuths. Most companies are, naturally enough, waiting to see whether the machine takes off before they start devoting pots of money to disk software, but our impression is that most +3 releases will just be mildly enhanced (and of course faster loading) versions of 48K and 128K cassette games. This may change, but not just yet.

Published in the September 1987 issue of Your Sinclair

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