[{"TitleName":"Echelon","Publisher":"U.S. Gold Ltd","Author":"Graham Stafford, Peter Andrew Jones","YearOfRelease":"1988","ZxDbId":"0001571","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 61, Feb 1989","Price":"£1.25","ReleaseDate":"1989-01-26","Editor":"Dominic Handy","TotalPages":100,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"EDITORIAL\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nEditor: Dominic Handy\r\nAssistant Editor: Stuart Wynne\r\nStaff Writers: Mark Caswell, Philip King, Lloyd Mangram, Nick Roberts\r\nContributors: Jon Bates, Raffaele Cecco, Ian Cull, Ian Doggett, Paul Evans, Ian Lacey, Barnaby Page, Ian Phillipson\r\nEditorial Assistants: Caroline Blake, Vivienne Vickress\r\n\r\nPRODUCTION\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nSenior Designer: Wayne Allen\r\nDesigners: Melvin Fisher, Yvonne Priest\r\nPhotography: Cameron Pound, Michael Parkinson\r\nProduction Manager: Jonathan Rignall\r\nReprographics Supervisor: Matthew Uffindell\r\nProduction Team: Ian Chubb, Robert Hamilton, Robert Millichamp, Tim Morris\r\n\r\nEditorial Director: Roger Kean\r\nPublisher: Geoff Grimes\r\nAdvertisement Director: Roger Bennett\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Neil Dyson\r\nSales Executives: Sarah Chapman, Andrew Smales\r\nAssistants: Jackie Morris, Lee Watkins [redacted]\r\n\r\nMail Order: Carol Kinsey\r\nSubscriptions: Denise Roberts\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nTypeset by The Tortoise Shell Press, Ludlow. Colour origination by Scan Studios [redacted]. Printed in England by Carlisle Web Offset, [redacted] - member of the BPCC Group. Distribution by COMAG, [redacted]\r\n\r\nCOMPETITION RULES\r\nThe Editor's decision is final in all matters relating to adjudication and while we offer prizes in good faith, believing them to be available, if something untoward happens (like a game that has been offered as a prize being scrapped) we reserve the right to substitute prizes of comparable value. We'll do our very best to despatch prizes as soon as possible after the published closing date. Winners names will appear in a later issue of CRASH. No correspondence can be entered into regarding the competitions (unless we've written to you stating that you have won a prize and it doesn't turn up, in which case drop the Sticky Solutions Department a line at the [redacted] address). No person who has any relationship, no matter how remote, to anyone who works for either Newsfield or any of the companies offering prizes, may enter one of our competitions. No material may be reproduced whole or in part without the written consent of the copyright holders. We cannot undertake to return anything sent into CRASH including written and photographic material, software and hardware - unless it is accompanied by a suitably stamped addressed envelope. Unsolicited written or photo material is welcome, and if used in the magazine is paid for at our current rates.\r\n\r\n©CRASH Ltd, 1989\r\n\r\nISSN 0954-8661\r\n\r\nCover Design & Illustration by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"The ultimate anti-piracy game\r\n\r\nProducer: US Gold/Access\r\nDaylight Robbery: £9.99 cass, £12.99 disk\r\nAuthor: An anonymous Welsh person (sources inform us that it was the Design Design team (Forbidden Planet, Dark Star, Hall of the Things etc), but we don't believe a word of it!)\r\n\r\nOo ar jim me lad, the pirates are on the rampage in Echelon. But they aren't yo ho ho and a bottle of rum guys, or even software pirates, but space pirates of the future. ECHELON is an anti-piracy organisation and you're one of its top pilots.\r\n\r\nTo find the location of the pirate's base you must pilot your C-104 Tomahawk over 36 zones in search of 240 objects. Most of these contain clues, although some are booby-traps, and once teleported aboard can be analysed. Most of these clues are in code which you must decipher. To help you get started nine of the zones are already mapped and included in the packaging.\r\n\r\nNaturally the pirates aren't too pleased by your investigation. You can fight their ships with a choice of three weapons. But if you find combat too tough, or boring, then you can alter the enemy's strength from numerous to zero. You still have to return to base for refuelling however.\r\n\r\nThe view from the cockpit is depicted by wire-frame graphics, which move at an incredibly slow rate - I'm sure I went to sleep, had a great dream about scoring the winning goal in an FA Cup Final and woke up again before the screen updated! Even turning the zone map off only marginally improves the speed. Sound is nonexistent, which is very confusing during combat, and adds to the tedium.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the technical drawbacks would've been acceptable if the game was better and it certainly sounds ambitious, with ciphers and so on. But Mercenary it ain't, and the repetition of collecting objects soon induces sleep - if not a coma.\r\n\r\nPHIL 17%\r\n\r\nTHE ESSENTIALS\r\nJoysticks: Sinclair\r\nGraphics: the jumbled lines that pass for wire-frame graphics move slower than the Art\r\nDepartment...\r\nSound: ...but at least there's no Radio One, or noise of any kind\r\nOptions: alter the strength of enemy ships","ReviewerComments":["The best thing about this game is undoubtedly the sound - complete silence. Everything else is awful. Combat is probably the worst due to the dead-sloth speed of screen update, sluggish control responses, slow firing weapons and jerky enemies. Finding objects is little easier though, and with 240 to collect this is a game to haunt your worst nightmares.\r\nStuart Wynne\r\n15%"],"OverallSummary":"General Rating: A great disappointment after the tremendous success of their last flight game, Thunderblade - nice box, though...","Page":"62,63","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Stuart Wynne","Score":"15","ScoreSuffix":"%"},{"Name":"Phil King","Score":"17","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Presentation","Score":"60%","Text":""},{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"20%","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"0%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"16%","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictive Qualities","Score":"12%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"16%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 39, Mar 1989","Price":"£1.6","ReleaseDate":"1989-02-16","Editor":"Teresa Maughan","TotalPages":100,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Teresa Maughan\r\nArt Editor: Catherine Higgs\r\nDeputy Editor: Matt Bielby\r\nProduction Editor: Jackie Ryan\r\nStaff Writer: Duncan MacDonald\r\nDesigner: Thor Goodall\r\nEditorial Assistant: David Wilson\r\nTechnical Consultant: David McCandless\r\nContributors: Marcus Berkmann, Richard Blaine, Ciaran Brennan, Jonathan Davies, Mike Gerrard, Sean Kelly, Catherine Peters, Rachael Smith, Phil South\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Simon Stansfield\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Stephen Bloy\r\nAdvertisement Director: Alistair Ramsay\r\nProduction Manager: Judith Middleton\r\nAdvertisement Production: Katherine Balchin\r\nMarketing Manager: Bryan Denyer\r\nPublisher: Terry Grimwood\r\nFinance Director: Colin Crawford\r\nManaging Director: Stephen England\r\nChairman: Felix Dennis\r\n\r\nPublished by Dennis Publishing Ltd, [redacted] Company registered in England.\r\nTypesetters: Carlinpoint [redacted]\r\nReproduction: Graphic Ideas, London\r\nPrinters: Chase Web Offset [redacted]\r\nDistribution: Seymour Press [redacted]\r\n\r\nAll material in Your Sinclair ©1989 Felden Productions, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of the publishers. Your Sinclair is a monthly publication."},"MainText":"US Gold\r\n£9.99 cass/£12.99 disk\r\nReviewer: Jonathan Davies\r\n\r\nThere are three things that are guaranteed to make any reviewer's knees tremble - even one as hunky as myself: a 54-page A5-sized manual, a list of approximately 35 different control keys, and a deadline measured in nanoseconds. And all after I've just swallowed the last mouthful of Balisto.\r\n\r\nBut what is the relevance of all this, I hear tens of thousands of readers simultaneously cry? Well, the whole lot of them just fell through the letter box, along with a copy of Echelon. It's one of those awesomely complicated simulation games that I'm supposed to like so much, set on another planet just for a change.\r\n\r\nYour task, should you choose to accept it, and I strongly suggest that you don't if you value your sanity, is to patrol the solar system's tenth planet, Isis, in your C-104 Tomahawk and try to find the base of a group of pirates that have been giving the Space Federation some hassle. In other words, an explore, collect and shoot game.\r\n\r\nThere are all sorts of puzzles to be solved in order to locate the base, mainly involving finding little flashing dots on the surface. These are 'clues', which are used to fill in the six maps which show how to get to the base. There is also a code to break which will let you decipher the pirates' transmissions or something.\r\n\r\nBefore you get stuck into that lot, however, there are hundreds of bits and pieces to get to grips with, including a teleporter for getting the things you collect back to base, an RPV for exploring the planet surface by remote control, a hyperdrive for hopping round the planet and all sorts of other things. Hence the 35 control keys.\r\n\r\nIn case you hadn't gathered, this is one helluva complicated game, not to be tackled by the faint hearted. Left-right-up-down-fire fans can forget it for a start, as the one thing this game isn't is a shoot 'em up, and any pretensions it may have in that directions are best forgotten.\r\n\r\nThe problem lies in the graphics, which are horribly sluggish. Wire-frame animation is normally pretty smooth on the Speccy (Starglider being a good benchmark). In Echelon, however, you can get the screen update rate down to under two frames per second if you try hard enough. This means that accurate combat is practically impossible, and is best avoided. The only solution to the problem is to turn off various bits of the display, such as the scrolling map and the reference grid on the ground. This speeds up the graphics no end, but makes it extremely hard to see where you're going.\r\n\r\nThis aside, though. Echelon has a lot going for it. The map is awesomely huge and is littered with different types of buildings, towers, rivers and bridges. There is even a series of training courses to help improve your skills, and a nice touch is the ability to get the RPV to track your ship as it flies around, so you can watch yourself pile into the ground from any number of different angles. There's no sound, though, which is a shame.\r\n\r\nIf it wasn't for the lack of graphical elegance, Echelon would be a Megagame for sure. It's still blimmin' good though, and gives you more bytes per pound than most other stuff around at the moment. You'll learn some novel yoga positions trying to handle the controls as well.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"A brain-blendingly complicated space simulation with plenty of mileage in it.","Page":"44","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Jonathan Davies","Score":"8","ScoreSuffix":"/10"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"6/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"7/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Value For Money","Score":"8/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictiveness","Score":"8/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"8/10","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]