[{"TitleName":"Venture","Publisher":"ZX-Guaranteed","Author":"Geoff A. Bobker, George Neill","YearOfRelease":"1982","ZxDbId":"0012212","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"ZX Computing Issue 4, Dec 1982","Price":"£1.75","ReleaseDate":"1982-11-26","Editor":"Tim Hartnell","TotalPages":132,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"ZX Computing\r\nVol. One\r\nNumber Three\r\nOct/Nov 1982\r\n\r\nEditor: Tim Hartnell\r\nEditorial Assistant: Helen Bruff\r\nAdvertising Manager: Neil Johnstone\r\nManaging Editor: Ron Harris\r\nManaging Director: T J Connell\r\n\r\nOrigination and design by MM Design & Print, [redacted]\r\nPublished by Argus Specialist Publications Ltd, [redacted]\r\n\r\nZX Computing is published bi-monthly on the fourth Friday of the month. Distributed by: Argus Press Sales & Distribution Ltd. [redacted]. Printed by: Henry Garnett Ltd., Rotherham.\r\n\r\nThe contents of this publication including all articles, designs, plans, drawings and programs and all copyright and other intellectual property rights therein 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 Argus Specialist Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©1982 Argus Specialist Publications Limited."},"MainText":"VENTURE\r\nG & J Bobker\r\n\r\nZX-Guaranteed's first foray into the Spectrum market is \"Venture\", a program made up from seven separate games rolled into one. You start with £1,000 and at each stage you may either win some money or lose half of what you have. The first game is \"Duckrace\", in which three ducks move randomly across the screen, and you have to back one to arrive first. About as sophisticated as a boiled ducks egg. and the second part, \"Las Vegas\" is much the same. You are given ten goes on a one-armed bandit - pressing \"s\" stops the reels, but there is no hold feature. I can hardly think of a better application for user-defined graphics than a fruit machine, but unfortunately the program uses flickering numbers instead.\r\n\r\nThe third part is \"Treasure Hunt\" in which you have to guess the position of the treasure on an 8x8 grid. The game is made very easy by the clues given (e.g. \"down and right\"), so it's not much of a challenge. The next game is \"Mastercode\" again numbers-based and a completely routine Mastermind.\r\n\r\nRACING CARS\r\n\r\nThe fifth game, \"Track\", is an obvious conversion from the ZX81 - \"5\" and \"8\" steer a racing car on an upward-scrolling road. Leopards don't change their spots, and a flickery ZX81 game remains just that even if it is put onto the Spectrum. In the sixth part, \"Bomber\", you have to bomb a ZX81 before your plane crashes into it. This strikes me as being a rather ungrateful way to treat the machine on which all these programs were originally written!","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"78","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Phil Garratt","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]