[{"TitleName":"The Spy Who Loved Me","Publisher":"Domark Ltd","Author":"Dominic Wood, John Kavanagh, Matt Furniss, Tony West, Paul Margrave, Lloyd Baker","YearOfRelease":"1990","ZxDbId":"0000008","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 82, Nov 1990","Price":"£1.85","ReleaseDate":"1990-10-18","Editor":"Oliver Frey","TotalPages":60,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"EDITORIAL\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nEditor: Oliver Frey\r\nFeatures Editor: Richard Eddy\r\nStaff Writers: Mark Caswell, Nick Roberts, Lloyd Mangram\r\nArt Editor: Mark Kendrick\r\nPhotography: Michael Parkinson\r\nProduction and Circulation Director: Jonathan Rignall\r\nSystems Operator: Paul (Charlie) Chubb\r\nReprographics: Matthew Uffindell (Supervisor), Robert Millichamp, Robb Hamilton, Tim Morris, Jenny Reddard, Lisa McCourt\r\nGroup Advertisement Manager: Judith Bamford\r\nAdvertisement Sales Executive: George Keenan\r\nAdvertisement Production: Jackie Morris (Supervisor), Joanne Lewis\r\nMail Order: Carol Kinsey\r\nSubscriptions: Caroline Edwards [redacted]\r\n\r\nTypesetting Apple Macintosh Computers using Quark Express and Bitstream Fonts.\r\n\r\nSystems Manager: Ian Chubb\r\n\r\nColour origination by Scan Studios [redacted]. Printed in England by BPCC Business Magazines (Carlisle) Ltd, [redacted] - a member of the BPCC Group.\r\n\r\nDistribution by COMAG, [redacted]\r\n\r\nYearly subscription rates: UK £17.20 Europe £24.00, Air Mail overseas £37. US/Canada subscriptions and back issues enquiries Barry Hatcher, British Magazine Distributors Ltd [redacted]. Yearly subscription rates US$47.00, Canada CAN$57.00 Back Issues US$5.20, Canada CAN$6.20 (inclusive of postage). \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 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 us a line). No person who is related, no matter how remotely, to anyone who works for either Newsfield or any of the companies offering prizes, may enter one of our competitions.\r\n\r\nNo 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 on 35mm transparencies is welcome, and if used in the magazine is paid for at our current rates. Copy published in CRSH will be edited as seen fit and payment wil be calculated according to the current printed word rate. The views expressed in CRASH are not necessarily those of the publishers.\r\n\r\nCopyright CRASH Ltd 1989 A Newsfield Publication. ISSN 0954-8661. Cover Design by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Domark\r\n£9.99/£14.99\r\n\r\nIn every Bond movie there's an evil megalomaniac who attempts to take over the world - here it's Karl Stromberg, a bit of a fruit cake, who, from his underwater base Atlantis, has hatched a cunning plan! He steals two nuclear submarines, one British, the other Russian, and with them plans to destroy New York and Moscow. It's up to Bond and beautiful Russian spy Major Anya Amasova to save the world (again).\r\n\r\nThe game is split into six parts, each a scene from the movie. The first has Bond and Anya driving along the open road to meet Q. Bond's white Lotus is viewed from above (in true Spy Hunter style), and the idea is to collect as many of the Q tokens as you can whilst avoiding the obstacles. The Lotus is armoured but repeated knocks and crashes result in a loss of a life.\r\n\r\nBy visiting a dock halfway through this scene the Lotus transforms into a speedboat and you race it up the river avoiding jettys, mooring posts and trigger-happy Stromberg goons.\r\n\r\nIn scene two various vehicles hinder progress but Q's van is at hand. Board it and you can buy additional weapons with your collected Q tokens. Make sure you get the jobbie to convert the Lotus into a submarine because you're underwater in level three where Bond and Anya are attacked by a variety of underwater vehicles as they head for Atlantis.\r\n\r\nThe final three levels see Bond blowing the doors to the control room where the nuclear subs are being directed. Bond is perched atop a surveillance camera whilst you, as Anya, must shoot the soldiers trying to stop Bond. Scene five sees Bond and his jetski heading for Atlantis to save Anya who has been kidnapped by Stromberg, whilst the sixth and final scene has Bond shooting it out with Stromberg and his sinister henchman Jaws.\r\n\r\nThe movie is one of my favourite Bond romps, and so I had high hopes for the game. The verdict... well it does have its good points, the attention to detail is one. Both the moving and static sprites are nicely detailed, though scrolling is a little on the juddery side.\r\n\r\nThe gameplay is tough which may put some people off. Also the sound is a bit of a letdown, the decent tune at the start makes way for a few bog standard blasting effects during play. It's a good Bond adaption, but doesn't top Licence To Kill for action!\r\n\r\nMARK 78%","ReviewerComments":["The Spy Who Loved Me follows in the tradition of other James Bond games: it has slick presentation, neat graphics but is incredibly short on gameplay. The first sections are very similar in look to the age old Spy Hunter but, sadly, not as playable. The most annoying thing about the game is that changing direction as you are driving along makes the car slide the opposite way, almost always into the ditch or off a bridge! Another feature that lets it down is the way you have to memorize the layout of each level before you can complete it. Learning by your mistakes is the only way to succeed. The Spy Who Loved Me wont keep me playing for long.\r\nNick Roberts\r\n78%"],"OverallSummary":"Good Mr Bond, but not quite good enough to deserve an accolade.","Page":"49","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Mark Caswell","Score":"78","ScoreSuffix":"%"},{"Name":"Nick Roberts","Score":"78","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Presentation","Score":"80%","Text":""},{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"85%","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"75%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"70%","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictivity","Score":"72%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"79%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 59, Nov 1990","Price":"£1.85","ReleaseDate":"1990-10-11","Editor":"Matt Bielby","TotalPages":100,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Matt Bielby\r\nArt Editor: Sal Meddings\r\nProduction Editor: Andy Ide\r\nDesign Assistant: Andy Ounsted\r\nContributors: Robin Alway, Marcus Berkmann, Jonathan Davies, Cathy Fryett, Mike Gerrard, Kati Hamza, Duncan MacDonald, Jon North, Rich Pelley, David Wilson\r\nAdvertising Manager: Mark Salmon\r\nAdvertising Executive: Simon Moss\r\nPublisher: Greg Ingham\r\nAssistant Publisher: Jane Richardson\r\nManaging Director: Chris Anderson\r\nProduction Director: Ian Seager\r\nProduction Coordinator: Melissa Parkinson\r\nSubscriptions: Computer Posting [redacted]\r\nMail Order: The Old Barn [redacted]\r\nPrinters: Riverside Press [redacted]\r\nDistributors: SM Distribution [redacted]\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair is published by Future Publishing Ltd [redacted]\r\n\r\n©Future Publishing 1990. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission."},"MainText":"Domark\r\n£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk\r\nReviewer: Matt Bielby\r\n\r\nAs dedicated Spec-chums should know by now, Domark hold the licence to the entire run of James Bond films, and seem set to release a new one every year. This time round there's no new film, so it's raid-the-back-catalogue time again, and what have they come up with but The Spy Who Loved Me (possibly Roger Moore's best outing as 007). Good film, but will it translate into a stonker of a game? \"Yes,\" say Domark confidently. \"It's destined to be the best yet.\" Let's see, shall we?\r\n\r\nOkay, so first off how does it all work? Well, it's pretty much an updated Spy Hunter really or at least half of it is. There are seven levels of overhead-viewed action, some of them very much racing games with you zooming your Lotus Esprit around roads, over bridges and so on (and shooting or dodging other cars while you're at it) while the others (the water-based ones, where there are no roads or obstacles as such) play much more like your standard vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up. Your task (as secret agent James Bond 007, of course) is to prevent arch-villain Stromberg's mad plan to provoke nuclear war and rule the resulting mess from his undersea base Atlantis. In levels very (very) loosely based on scenes from the film (for instance, the famous bit where Bond drives his car off the end of a pier and it turns into a submarine, as opposed to the wet bike shoot-'em-up and speedboat chase which have nothing whatever to do with the film) Bond must defeat Stromberg by, erm, simply driving along and shooting things (it would appear).\r\n\r\nIn this way, Spy isn't really a film conversion at all in the way that, say, Ocean do them - there's no real attempt to tell the plot of the film or explain how the levels connect. Instead this is more of a scrolling shoot-em-up 'inspired' by the movie. All very well, you might be saying, but is it actually any good?\r\n\r\nWell, yes it is, in a funny sort of a way. The actual driving bits on the roads are excellent - though only monochrome, there's a rather pretty background to them, they scroll quite last and smoothly, and the difficulty build-up is quite well handled. There are lots of collectable items that add speed and weaponry to your car, a shop sequence set in Q's truck and so on - you can see how they've gone for an arcade game feel with all this stuff. They're also the bits that are most reminiscent of the film.\r\n\r\nLess successful are most of the aquatic bits. The speedboat chase (Level Two) is okay, but spoilt by the fact it's got absolutely nothing to do with the movie, while the underwater Esprit bit, perhaps in a misguided attempt to reproduce the feeling of being in the deep, blue briney, is just too slow. There are some nice visual effects (the bubbles, how your car goes all wavey as if being viewed through water) but how on earth are you meant to dodge enemy subs or (badly-drawn) divers when your car's plodding along at such a snail's pace?\r\n\r\nThe final jet-ski fight is a disappointment too - a vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up has to be something special to earn much of a vote these days, and this just isn't it. No background to speak of and some rather weedy little sprites shifting aimlessly round the screen - it could be set in space for all the difference it would make to the game (in fact some stray person wandering into the office actually thought it was!).\r\n\r\nSo not a bad Spy Hunter update overall, and certainly an improvement on recent(ish) attempts like Action Fighter, not to mention the vast bulk of past James Bond games. I enjoyed it - particularly the road-based sequences - but it's not a knock-out by any means.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"Half good/half bad Bond game. There's quite a lot here though, so it's not bad value.","Page":"58,59","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Matt Bielby","Score":"76","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Eek! Looks like I'm about to have to do a Live And Let Die-type boat jump! (I don't remember this bit from the film.)"},{"Text":"One of the early driving bits, and really the high-point of the game. Oi! Get over to your side of the road, you scamp!"},{"Text":"The underwater Lotus - wibbly car, weedy divers, lots of colour and a power-up icon. (It's just a pity it all moves so slow.)"}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Life Expectancy","Score":"79%","Text":""},{"Header":"Instant Appeal","Score":"75%","Text":""},{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"74%","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictiveness","Score":"77%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"76%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 79, Jul 1992","Price":"£2.5","ReleaseDate":"1992-06-18","Editor":"Andy Hutchinson","TotalPages":68,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"SCHOOL'S OUT FOR EVER!\r\n\r\nWhen you have nothing to say, say nothing. I did. Anyway, what was the first thing you did after your last exam?\r\n\r\nEditor: Andy (Got arrested for being drunk and disorderly while at college) Hutchinson\r\nArt Editor: Andy (Flicked the V's at a teacher and then skipped home) Ounsted\r\nDeputy Editor: Linda (Went baby sitting) Barker\r\nStaff Writer: Jon (Sat down with a cream tart and a nice cup of tea) Pillar\r\nArt Assistant: Maryanne (Tried Sherry for the first time) Booth\r\nAdvertising Manager: Alison (Sighed) Morton\r\nSenior Sales Exec: Jackie (Went shopping) Garford\r\nProduction Coordinator: Lisa (Burned her books) Read\r\nPublisher: Jane (Went for a wee) Richardson\r\nPromotions Manager: Michelle (Went to see David Bowie in concert) Harris\r\nPromotions Assistant: Tamara (Burst into tears) Ward\r\nGroup Publisher: Greg (I Went screaming off in a customised Beetle across Waterloo Bridge shouting along to Talking Heads' Psycho Killer & The Only Ones' Another Girl Another Planet)Bingham\r\nCirculation Director: Sue (Went and had a froffy coffee) Hartley\r\nAssistant Publisher: Julie (Left Coventry instantly and vowed never to return) Stuckes\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair (Went to bed for a week). Future (Considered a career as a dentist) Publishing [redacted]\r\n\r\nManaging Director: Chris (Drank most of a bottle of bubbly and then... can't really remember) Anderson\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: Future Publishing Ltd [redacted]\r\n\r\n©Future Publishing 1992. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bertie Arbuthnot of Calcutta Deirdrie's motorway cafe.\r\n\r\nISSN: 0269 6983\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair fails its exams, but just doesn't care with other rebellious mags like: Commodore Format (Went on a Venture Scout jamboree), Amstrad Action (Burnt school books), Amiga Format (Went down to the beach in Bournemouth), PCW Plus (Dived fully clothed into a swimming pool), PC Answers (Signed up for re-sits), PC Plus (Cried), Sega Power (Won a race to get out of a three hour exam and into the bar first [winning time 45 mins]), Amiga Power (Asked everyone else what question five had actually meant), Amiga Shopper (Caught a plane to Venice), Classic CD (Listened to a nice symphony), Needlecraft (Stitched a noose), Cycling Plus (Went home), Photo Plus (Joined the moonies), Mountain Biking UK (Went to see a personal supervisor to explain why they'd only turned up for half an hour and written their name in the first exam of the season), PC Format (Fed school blazer to the dogs and watched them rip the thing to pieces), Public Domain (Broke wind), ST Format (Went inter-railing to Greece, France, Germany etc). Total! (Dossed in the sun until shoehorned out of the garden by mom and dad to go and get a job) and Today's Vegetarian (Went hurtling to the pub faster than you could say transcontinental plate tectonics) and coming soon... What Scart Lead.\r\n\r\nBut what we really want to know is... if Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck and Pluto's a dog, what the hell is Goofy?"},"MainText":"THE SPY WHO LOVED ME\r\nThe Hit Squad\r\n£3.99 cassette\r\n[redacted]\r\nReviewer: Stuart Campbell\r\n\r\nI was going to start this review by singing the title song of the movie, but I couldn't remember the words, so think yourselves lucky. The Spy Who Loved Me, despite being one of the older James Bond films around, is actually the most recent computer game. Not that it really matters, because the gameplay is linked to the movie in only the most tenuous way, but there you go anyway. What you get, game-wise, is a multi-sectioned game featuring Spy Hunteresque driving action, scrolling speedboat antics in a Spy Hunter vein, and underwater shoot-'em-uppy bits strongly reminiscent of, er, Spy Hunter.\r\n\r\nBut hey - this is no straight Spy Hunter clone. Nope, it's nowhere near that good. For a start, despite being composed of simple vertically-scrolling sections with hardly ever more than two things moving at a time, it's almost completely monochrome, which makes for very dull and largely featureless landscapes. Then there's the sound. It starts off promisingly (in 128K mode, at least) with a moderately funky version of the James Bond theme, but as soon as the program has to produce any other sound effect at all, the music stops in mid-bar and doesn't come back again, ever. The gameplay itself is hideously dull, and amounts to nothing more than learning the road/river/baddie layout of each level and remembering it. Since the most complicated thing you ever have to remember is whether to go left or right, this isn't too tricky a task, and if you've got plenty of time on your hands you'll finish the game the day you buy it.\r\n\r\n'But Stuart', I hear you all cry, 'If the game's so short and easy, why do we need plenty of time?' Ah well, my little Honey Nut Loops, the reason you need plenty of time is that whenever you lose all your lives (not a very hard thing to do), you have to rewind the tape back to the beginning and start the entire game all over again. Yes, even on 128K machines. Since loading a single section takes longer than your game will have lasted, this quickly gets very wearing indeed. And since there's nothing in the game to make it worth all the faffing about, you'll very probably give up inside about half-an-hour. Dismal stuff, and no mistake.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"58","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Stuart Campbell","Score":"26","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"But while everyone's attention was on Tarquin, Jerry slipped away on his boat."}],"BlurbText":[{"Text":"BLIM!\r\n\r\nWhen Bond creator Ian Fleming died, it's rumoured he was close to completion of a new Bond flick set in a secret agent's retirement home. Sadly, 'Bond - Age? Up Yours! failed to attract major financial backing and will probably never be seen."}],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"26%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 105, Nov 1990","Price":"£1.85","ReleaseDate":"1990-10-18","Editor":"Garth Sumpter","TotalPages":84,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Garth Sumpter\r\nActing Dept Editor: Gary 'Wide Boy' Liddon\r\nDesigners: Jenny Abrook, Gareth 'Boyo' Jones\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Jim 'Brummie Git' Owens\r\nAd Production: Emma 'Cor Blimey' Ward\r\nMarketing Manager: Dean Barrett\r\nMarketing Assistants: Sarah 'JR' Ewing, Sarah 'No vices' Hilliard\r\nPublisher: Graham 'Interesting' Taylor\r\nManaging Director: Terry '....er..' Pratt\r\n\r\n©1990 EMAP Images, [redacted]\r\n\r\nTypesetting by G'n'G, output to a 20260 Liddontype\r\nColour work: Pro Print.\r\nPrinted by Kingfisher Web Ltd, Peterborough.\r\nDistributed: Frontline.\r\n\r\nIf any part of this magazine is reproduced without permission you're in BIG trubs sonny!"},"MainText":"Domark's habit of bringing out James Bond film licence games several years after the film has appeared is pretty disconcerting, but in the case of The Spy Who Loved Me, things aren't so bad, since the movie was on the TV only last month (and in fact seems to be on every other month).\r\n\r\nYou may or not remember the plot; this is the one where 007 teams up with a Soviet agent, Anya Amasova (which translated from Russian means Hot Bit of Skirt) to see off web-fingered loony Karl Stromberg, who plans to start a nuclear war by kidnapping two submarines. Bond and Amasova have to penetrate Stromberg's seabase Atlantis, with the help of a Lotus Esprit which has the handy ability to work underwater.\r\n\r\nThe game reproduces four sections of the film; a race to the coast in the Lotus, a journey to Atlantis by speedboat, an underwater attack on the base and a final journey by jet-bike.\r\n\r\nIn the first section the vertical scrolling is fast but none too smooth, and though the background details of the roadside buildings viewed from above are decent, the Lotus turns a very funny shapd when you turn corners.\r\n\r\nThe idea here is to race to the coast as fast as possible, avoiding pedestrians and bollards, slowing down for crossing oil slicks and collecting tokens which entitle you to extra weaponry in later stages. Then it's a virtual repeat, this time in a motorboat, but this time you have to avoid jetties and hit ramps to leap over obstacles.\r\n\r\nTrouble is, if you steer the wrong way around a jetty, you'll tur... into a dead end, and you can't back out.\r\n\r\nNext there's another road race where you're attacked by helicopters, followed by the underwater routine in which you fight off enemy frogmen and subs, and finally the jet-bike section which I admit I haven't yet reached, but which I think we can all imagine.\r\n\r\nNot at all bad in most ways; the impressive arrangement of the Bond theme music adds to the atmosphere, and despite the absence of the anti-hero Jaws from the Spectrum version. The Spy Who Loved Me must qualify as one of the better Bond movie licences.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"This one will leave you shaken but not stirred; A competent movie licence.","Page":"20","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Chris Jenkins","Score":"72","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"78%","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"80%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"77%","Text":""},{"Header":"Lastability","Score":"70%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"72%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]