[{"TitleName":"Unbelievable! Ultimate 2","Publisher":"U.S. Gold Ltd","Author":"","YearOfRelease":"1987","ZxDbId":"0012206","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 59, Feb 1987","Price":"£1","ReleaseDate":"1987-01-18","Editor":"David Kelly","TotalPages":116,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: David Kelly\r\nDeputy Editor: John Gilbert\r\nSenior Staff Writer: Graham Taylor\r\nStaff Writer: Jim Douglas\r\nDesigner: Gareth Jones\r\nAdventure Help: Gordo Greatbelly\r\nZapchat: Jon Riglar\r\nHelpline: Andrew Hewson\r\nContributors: Richard Price, Andy Moss, Gary Rook\r\nHardware Correspondent: Rupert Goodwins\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Louise Fanthorpe\r\nSenior Sales Executive: Jacqui Pope\r\nProduction Assistant: Alison Morton\r\nAdvertisement Secretary: Linda Everest\r\nSubscriptions Manager: Carl Dunne\r\nPublisher: Terry Pratt\r\n\r\nTelephone [redacted]\r\n\r\nSinclair User is published monthly by EMAP Business & Computer Publications\r\n\r\nCover Illustration: Stuart Hughes\r\n\r\nIf you would like to contribute to Sinclair User please send programs or articles to:\r\nSinclair User\r\nEMAP Business & Computer Publications\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nOriginal programs should be on cassette and articles should be typed. Please write Program Printout on the envelopes of all cassettes submitted. We cannot undertake to return cassettes unless an SAE is enclosed. We pay £20 for each program printed and £50 for star programs.\r\n\r\nTypeset by PRS Ltd, [redacted]\r\nPrinted by Nene River Press, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by EMAP Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©Copyright 1987 Sinclair User ISSN No 0262-5458\r\n\r\nABC 90,215 July-Dec 1985"},"MainText":"Label: Ultimate\r\nAuthor: In-house\r\nPrice: £9.99\r\nMemory: 48K\r\nReviewer: Jerry Muir\r\n\r\nBy the time of Atic Atac, Ultimate was well on its way to fame. It's the first on Unbelievable Ultimate II. Much imitated, it's a giant maze game, set in a haunted house, with lots to pick up. Added interest comes from your ability to choose different types of hero.\r\n\r\nSabre Wulf has also inspired programmers. This time the maze is a series of jungle passages, inhabited by a variety of foes, some of which are best avoided. It's a huge game and possesses the Ultimate trademarks of great graphics and good humour.\r\n\r\nSabre Man crops up again in Underwurlde, which even improves on his first outing. Here he's seen sideways and he runs and bounces about a series of rooms and caves, swings on ropes and floats on hot air bubbles.\r\n\r\nOf all the Ultimate games, Alien 8 was the one that had most influence on the programming world. This was the game that introduced the solid 3D view, seen from above.\r\n\r\nEverything from Sweevo's World to Batman owes a debt to the antics of this little android, and even if some of the techniques used here have been refined since, the game's still got a lot of ingenious puzzles.\r\n\r\nOn the whole Ultimate in its hay-day did get it right, time after time. With four games for a tenner, you can't grumble if you want fast action and undemanding scenarios.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"The better of the two Ultimate compilations. Produced when the firm was at its peak, includes the classic Alien 8.","Page":"63","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Jerry Muir","Score":"5","ScoreSuffix":"/5"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"5/5","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"ZX Computing Issue 35, Mar 1987","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1987-02-19","Editor":"Bryan Ralph","TotalPages":92,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Bryan Ralph\r\nAssistant Editor: Cliff Joseph\r\nConsultant Editor: Ray Elder\r\nAdvertising Manager: John McGarry\r\nDesign: Argus Design\r\nA.S.P. Advertising and Editorial [redacted]\r\n\r\nPrinted by Chase Web, [redacted]\r\n\r\nAdvertisement Copy Controller: Andy Selwood\r\n\r\nDistributed by: Argus Press Sales and Distribution Ltd, [redacted]\r\n\r\nZX Computing Monthly is published on the fourth Friday of each month. Subscription rates can be obtained from ZX Subscriptions, [redacted]\r\n\r\nThe contents of this publication, including all articles, designs plans, drawings and other intellectual property rights herein belong to Argus Specialist Publications Limited. All rights conferred by the law of Copyright and other intellectual property rights and by virtue of international copyright conventions are specifically reserved to Argus Specialist Publications Limited and any reproduction requires the prior written consent of the company.\r\n\r\nArgus Specialist Publications Limited. ©1987"},"MainText":"U.S. GOLD'S LATEST COMPILATION IS AN ULTIMATE GREATEST HITS COLLECTION.\r\n\r\nU.S. Gold/Ultimate\r\n£9.99\r\n\r\nThis is the second of the two compilations of Ultimate games released by U.S. Gold, and by far the better of the two. Ultimate almost singlehandedly pioneered the arcade adventure hybrid which has now become so widespread, and the four titles on this compilation read like a history of the genre.\r\n\r\nSide one of the tape kicks off with Atic Atac, the first real arcade adventure, and the game which introduced that mythical hero, The Sabreman, to the gamesplaying public.\r\n\r\nYou have to search the five floors of a castle in search of the Golden Key. Along the way you have to map the layout of each floor and find the objects that you'll need to overcome various creatures (such as the Frankenstein monster). Atic Atac was also one of the first games to attempt some sort of 3D graphics by giving an overhead plan view of the rooms and objects. This game, like all the others on this compilation, gave birth to a great horde of imitations, games which were graphically similar but which often lacked the addictiveness of the originals. Because of this, Atic Atac may well seem like a familiar style of budget game to people who didn't catch it the first time around, but you shouldn't underestimate its addictiveness even if the format of the game now seems a little dated.\r\n\r\nNext on side one is Sabre Wulf. Each time Ultimate produced a good game this was often followed by disappointment if their next game wasn't a huge improvement on its predecessor, and this was the case when Sabre Wulf followed Atic Atac. Both games were very similar except that the rooms in Atic Atac were replaced by a mazelike path through a jungle. However, games which look a lot like Sabre Wulf are still being produced, which gives you an indication of how good it was at the time.\r\n\r\nUNDERWURLDE\r\n\r\nFlipping over the tape you first load up Underwurlde. Now this really was an influential game: Nodes of Yesod, Starquake and Tremor are all among the hordes of games that have a more than passing resemblance to Underwurlde. Faced with the task of finding your way out of the underworld, you have to find the weapons and magical gems which are scattered around the caverns and which you'll need if you're to guide the Sabreman past the monsters that stand in your way, For the first time Ultimate began to introduce series of obstacles that needed to be manoeuvred past (floating gas bubbles and swinging ropes), and gave the Sabreman the ability to jump so that the game involved more than just shooting monsters and collecting objects. Now you had to stop and think about where you were going and how to get there, and this added an extra element of difficulty to the game that helped make it even more addictive.\r\n\r\nAt this point you'd expect the fourth and final game to be Knight Lore, which was the next game that Ultimate produced as well as being the fourth in the Sabre Man sequence (and my personal all-time favourite). Unfortunately Knight Lore has already been included on another compilation, so this one jumps forward to Alien 8, the game which came directly after Knight Lore.\r\n\r\nAlien 8 is the robot which you control in an attempt to save a space ship from plunging into a star. Aboard the craft are the records and last survivors of a dying planet who put themselves into cryogenic suspension while their ship sought out a new home world. But of course completing your task involves getting past the strange creatures which populate the ship, and finding your way through the deadly traps which occupy the cryogenic chambers.\r\n\r\nBy the time they produced Alien 8, Ultimale's reputation was at its height, With its two most recent games they had perfected a style of 3D graphics that were revolutionary, and which has more or less become adopted as the 'standard' way of presenting 3D graphics: Movie, Batman, Sweevo's World, Nexus, Prodigy and many other games are simply variations on the format that Ultimate pioneered, and Alien 8 has still to be bettered in its combination of problem solving, difficult obstacles, and detailed graphics.\r\n\r\nSadly, Ultimate never really progressed from this point and while they've produced some good games since they've been unable to get back to the peak that they reached with the games on this collection. Because these games were so influential, people who have only gotten into computing in the last couple of years are likely to be more familiar with the large number of games that have copied Ultimates originals, but these games are still among the best of their various types, so this compilation is worth getting if you're at all interested in arcade/adventures.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"61,62","Denied":false,"Award":"Globella","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Alien 8."},{"Text":"Atic Atac."},{"Text":"Sabre Wulf."},{"Text":"Underwurlde."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"Great","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]