[{"TitleName":"Traz","Publisher":"Gamebusters","Author":"Damon Redmond, Nigel Pritchard, Nigel Speight, Angus McKie","YearOfRelease":"1989","ZxDbId":"0005396","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 60, Jan 1989","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1988-12-15","Editor":"Dominic Handy","TotalPages":116,"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\nPhotography: Cameron Pound, Michael Parkinson\r\nContributors: Jon Bates, Robin Candy, Raffaele Cecco, Ian Cull, Paul Evans, Ian Lacey, Barnaby Page, Paul Sumner\r\nEditorial Assistants: Caroline Blake, Vivienne Vickress\r\n\r\nPRODUCTION\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nProduction Manager: Jonathan Rignall\r\nReprographics Supervisor: Matthew Uffindell\r\nArt Director: Mark Kendrick\r\nAssistant Art Director: Wayne Allen\r\nProduction Team: Ian Chubb, Melvin Fisher, Robert Hamilton, Robert Millichamp, Tim Morris, Yvonne Priest\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\nHAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL CRASH READERS\r\n\r\nTotal: 96,590\r\nUK/EIRE: 90,822\r\n\r\n©CRASH Ltd, 1988\r\n\r\nISSN 0954-8661\r\n\r\nCover Design & Illustration by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Gamebusters\r\nBat 'n' Ball: £2.99 cass\r\nAuthor: Imagitec\r\n\r\nFor the uninitiated, TRAZ, stands for TRansformable Arcade Zone. Why 'Transformable', you ask - well, because this is one game which you can alter to your heart's content, due a great construction kit.\r\n\r\nThe basic game is Breakout - it's all about knocking out coloured blocks by deflecting a tiny ball with one or more bats. Some of these blocks release question marks which have an unpredictable effect on the bat, speeding it up or even making it go round in circles. Some types of block are indestructible though, while others are transparent and after the path of the ball as it travels through them. Monster generators create nasties which hover around the screen deflecting any balls which hit them. If all the balls are lost through traps at the bottom of the screen, so is one of your three lives. Complete a screen and one or more exits appear. Only when all the screens have been visited is the game over. In addition, a two-player mode allows a daring duo to play simultaneously, taking control of one bat in turn, or two or more bats at the same time, switching bats every so often to mutual confusion.\r\n\r\nAll the block types and traps can be moved around via the designer to create new screens. Also, any number of vertical and/or horizontal bets may be placed onscreen along with the starting position of the ball. Up to 64 different screens can be created and saved to tape. Screens are linked by definable exits, and once you've created a whole set you can play the game proper. Or if that sounds too exhausting use the predefined set of screens.\r\n\r\nAlthough there are undoubtedly better Breakout variants around, the way TRAZ allows you to design your own screens makes it much more fun. In fact, just as much amusement can be had fiddling with the editor as in actually playing the resulting game. But for the budget price, it represents a great deal.\r\n\r\nPHIL 78%\r\n\r\nTHE ESSENTIALS\r\nJoysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair\r\nSound: nothing more than the odd beep\r\nOptions: one or two players. Design your own screens","ReviewerComments":["The playing areas are bright and colourful, and the action is certainly fast with screen after screen full of bouncing balls and weird monsters. The screen edit facility is a good idea, not exactly novel but it's great fun and simple to use (even for me). With the amount of Breakout games on the market I don't think TRAZ would be a big hit if full priced, but at a budget price you'd be daft to miss out.\r\nMark Caswell\r\n84%"],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"12","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Phil King","Score":"78","ScoreSuffix":"%"},{"Name":"Mark Caswell","Score":"84","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Designer Breakout with TRAZ."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"77%","Text":"Mostly simple blocks, but colour is used well."},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"80%","Text":"Improved by the fascinating two-player mode."},{"Header":"Addictive Qualities","Score":"80%","Text":"Designing your own screens is amazingly compulsive."},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"81%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 38, Feb 1989","Price":"£1.6","ReleaseDate":"1989-01-10","Editor":"Teresa Maughan","TotalPages":108,"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\nTechnical Consultant: David McCandless\r\nContributors: Marcus Berkmann, Guy Bennignton, Richard Blaine, Ciaran Brennan, Jonathan Davies, Mike 'Skippy' Dunn, Mike Gerrard, Sean Kelly, Catherine Peters, Peter Shaw, Rachael Smith, Phil South, Ben Stone\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":"TRAZ\r\nGamebusters\r\n£2.99\r\nReviewer: Marcus Berkmann\r\n\r\nAh, so this is what happened to it. Every so often a game is announced amid much excitement, palaver and huge advertising budgets, and then it never shows. Why? What happens? The usual scenario is that the company announces the game before it has seen the finished product, and when it does get an eyeful, the game's so dreadful that everyone tries, usually without success, to forget all about it. Traz is an Arkanoid clone, originally by Cascade, and was converted from the excellent and highly successful Commodore game of the same name. On the Spec, though, it doesn't take a genius to see that it doesn't cut it. So instead of an enormous star-studded (J. Minson) launch, out it has dribbled six months later as a cheapie. It's much the worst game of its kind that I've seen, so let's say no more and let it expire with dignity.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"79","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Marcus Berkmann","Score":"3","ScoreSuffix":"/10"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"3/10","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 82, Jan 1989","Price":"£1.6","ReleaseDate":"1988-12-18","Editor":"Graham Taylor","TotalPages":116,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Graham 'Oh God?' Taylor\r\nDeputy Editor: Jim 'unsound' Douglas\r\nProduction Editor: Alison 'Where's my red pen?' Skeat\r\nArt Editor: Tim 'Woops' Noonan\r\nAdventure: The Sorceress\r\nZapchat: Jon Riglar\r\nTechnical: Andrew Hewson, Rupert Goodwins\r\nContributors: Tony 'leather' Dillon, Chris 'snivel' Jenkins\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Katherine Lee\r\nSenior Sales: Shane Hussien\r\nAd Production: Emma Ward\r\nPublisher's Assistant: Debbie Pearson\r\nPublisher: Terry 'oops there goes another one' Pratt\r\nMarketing: Clive 'cheery' Pembridge\r\n\r\nPhone: [redacted]\r\nFax: [redacted]\r\nEditorial and Advertisement Offices: [redacted]\r\n\r\nThis Month's Cover: Jerry 'yee ha!' Parks\r\n\r\nPrinted by Nene River Press, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by EMAP Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©Copyright 1988 Sinclair User ISSN No 0262-5458\r\n\r\nSubscription Enquiries: [redacted]\r\n24 Hour Order Line: [redacted]\r\nBack Issues: Back Issues Department (SU), [redacted]"},"MainText":"Label: Gamebusters\r\nAuthor: In-house\r\nPrice: £1.99\r\nMemory: 48K/128K\r\nJoystick: various\r\nReviewer: Tony Dillon\r\n\r\nOh dear, here we go again with yet another Breakout variant. Well, not exactly. This one's a little different.\r\n\r\nIt has all the usual features of the Breakout games. The bat, the ball and the wall of bricks. Let the ball get behind the bricks and you lose a life. All pretty basic stuff, so what's new?\r\n\r\nFor a start, there's normally more than one bat on screen. That's been done before, you say. The bats can be on different walls and even floating in mid air. Seen it before, you say. You can have simultaneous two player action. Yawn. But have you seen all of those features on one common game? All this and a screen editor. Wow!\r\n\r\nThe aim behind TRAZ is to destroy all the blocks on a screen and then escape through one of the exits into an adjacent screen. To destroy the bricks, you have to bounce a ball off your bat into them, or use one of the pods that fly around, giving you special powers when caught.\r\n\r\nThe 64 screens are arranged in a maze of eight by eight screens. You have to try to find your way out, whcih isn't very easy, when you consider you have to clear the screens before you can even try.\r\n\r\nIt's the large amount of things going on at once on a screen that makes TRAZ a lot harder than most other Breakout clones., For example, having four bats under your control at once, one on each wall, as well as having lots of roaming monsters and funny little tiles that change the ball's path make some screens almost completely unplayable.\r\n\r\nThe graphics on the whole are great, even better than the megafab Arkanoid 2 and Batty screens. The backgrounds are shaded and colourful, but there's none of the old problem of not being able to make out the ball. The bricks are colourful and shaded, and of course, clash free.\r\n\r\nThe screens are well laid out and most are amazingly taxing. Designs like the original Ace 2 advertisement and a flag appear in places and due to most of the screens irregular shapes, there's not much chance of getting a lucky ball trapped in the back, bouncing around, knocking out huge amounts of bricks and knocking up some mental scores.\r\n\r\nThe screen designer is easy to use. Simply a matter of choosing a type of tile and laying down as many as possible. All your designs can be saved out and loaded back into be continued later. The only thing I didn't like about the designer was the way you have to design all 64 screens and the map, as opposed to just one screen.\r\n\r\nTRAZ isn't anything new to the world of Spectrum games. That said, it is a little bit different, and worth a look if you're a fan of the genre or are just after a bit of a challenge.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"A fresh twist on the old Breakout theme, a little too confusing to be playable.","Page":"45","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Tony Dillon","Score":"68","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"73%","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"54%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"61%","Text":""},{"Header":"Lastability","Score":"75%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"68%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) Issue 8, May 1988","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1988-04-07","Editor":"Peter Connor, Steve Cooke","TotalPages":124,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Advanced Computer Entertainment\r\nFuture Publishing [redacted]\r\nTelephone [redacted], Fax [redacted], Telecom Gold 84:TXT152, Prestel/Micronet [redacted]\r\n\r\nCo-editors: Peter Connor, Steve Cooke\r\nReviews Editor: Andy Wilton\r\nProduction Editor: Rod Lawton\r\nStaff Writer: Andy Smith\r\nArt Editor: Trevor Gilham\r\nArt Team: Angela Neale, Sally Meddings\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Jonathan Beales\r\n\r\nCOVER PHOTOGRAPHY\r\nStuart Baynes Photography [redacted]\r\n\r\nSUBSCRIPTIONS & SPECIAL OFFERS\r\nCarrie-Ann Porter [redacted]\r\n\r\nCOLOUR ORIGINATION\r\nWessex Reproduction [redacted]\r\n\r\nDISTRIBUTION\r\nSM Distribution [redacted]\r\n\r\nPRINTING\r\nChase Web Offset [redacted]\r\n\r\nCopyright - FUTURE PUBLISHING LTD 1988 - No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without our permission."},"MainText":"Spectrum, £9.95cs\r\nAmstrad, £9.95cs, £14.95dk\r\nC64/128, £9.95cs, £14.95dk\r\nIBM PC, £19.95dk\r\n\r\nCooperation is a must if you hope to complete any of this Breakout clone's 64 screens. In two-player mode you'll get nowhere last if you try to compete with a friend because the action is fast and furious and a lost life affects the both of you. Cooperation is necessary simply because of the way the game is structured. When you're in two-player mode you and your friend can find yourselves each with two bats to control - this is not normally too much of a problem, except when you consider that control of the bats switches randomly between the players. Wacky fun that's best enjoyed by two.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"73","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Traz - C64. Random bat switching will test your reactions to the full."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]