When Castle Rathbone's very own Charles Atlas, the Ed, said that in just seven days he could make a strong woman out of me I guessed he'd bought me a chest expander! Instead it turned out to be Martech's muscle bound micro-game. Now I must confess that ever since a certain Daley Thompson was responsible for the demise of my second joystick in a weekend I've had an aversion to Sinclair sports, but they say that a healthy body makes a healthy mind, so here goes....
    Unlike the Track and Field mob, Geoff Capes concerns himself with displays of awesome strength He pulls trucks, chops logs, rolls cars, loads barrels and rings the fairground bell.... then he relaxes with a bit of Sumo wrestling! Or rather, you do and, sigh of relief, it's not all joystick bashing.
    Obviously before you can even punch your way out of a paper bag you'll need to build some muscle, which you can do either energetically, with ten seconds of wrist action or the lazy way, by pressing fire and accepting what God gives you. You then allocate the strength between eight muscle areas, from ankles to shoulders.
    Achieving each of the stunts calls for different skills. The ones involving vehicles consist of chasing the illuminating muscle icon with a pointer and pressing fire as an animated Mr Capes (be very polite here - he's bigger than me) flexes centre screen. Barrel loading sees the addition of joystick pumping and bell ringing could kill yet another Quickshot, but chopping and wrestling call more for timing. In each case you can apply more effort to the activity to speed it up though this uses muscles more quickly. As any remainder is added to muscle replenished it's worth aiming for efficiency.
    It's not perfect, but it should keep a lot of people happy with its variety and difficulty. And here's a playing tip - if you really want to build muscles like Geoff's.... do some press ups while the game's loading!

Ratings given by other magazines

8/10      6/10    Crash Review SU Review

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database