Classic Software: QUAZATRON (48K) Hewson Consultants Released 1986 R.R.P `8.95p This seems to be one of those mid-eighties games put into the drawer marked 'forgotten for no good reason'. Quazatron is an addictive arcade strategy struggle where you control a robot whose task it is to clear the city of hostile droids. Being of the same basic design you can inter-face with them and enter an internal grappling match.
This rather excellent idea involved firing pulses of electricity along a wiring diagram in order to change the colour of a row of rectangles running down the middle of the screen. With a little more depth this sub-game would have stood up pretty well as a program in its own right! Maybe some programmer did rip this idea off although I must say the bells are not ringing on that one. The aim of the grapple was not only to disable the droid but to steal all its useful bits and pieces to turn your robot (name of KLEPTO, how sweet..) into a veritable war-monster! By far the best weapon to nab was a Disrupter... ooohhhh, lovely word that... DISRUPTER! It sounds really electrical and wonderfully painful doesn't it (well it would if you were a pooftah robot.) The enemy robots in Quazatron varied from humble utility drones to mighty ST programmers, whatever they are/were/is. The high class Battle droids were the ones to go for with their sexy blue DISSSRRUPPTERRRSSS (get on with it - Claire) Roaming around shooting the robots with items of lesser weaponry is something of a specialised art seeing as how most of them move like greased lightning with the runs. The architecture of the cities is very impressive, beautiful even with sheer walls, banked slopes and precarious ledges.
Imagine if you will an isometric 3-D Elephant & Castle shopping centre simulation. Once you get to know the levels and which lift goes where you will soon be whizzing around Quazatron like nobodies business searching out those big git Battle droids with their turquoise you-know-whats. The usual power level trap plays quite a large part in the gameplay but with plenty of sockets to plug into and robots to pilfer you shouldn't fair too badly in that direction. You can also log into consoles to access maps and droid info libraries; useful for finding out whose got what hidden up their metalic kilt. Some awkward menial sod robots have disrupter shields! the audacity of the lower order indeed... When I dusted this off and loaded it all the others started fighting as to whose go it was next. That either goes to show bad manners or the fact that this forgotten gem of a game is still as addictive as it ever was. The levels are big and a certain amount of jerky scrolling has to be put up with each time you reach the edge of the play area. I'm afraid the title tune is one of the worst over-loud beepy git songs ever commited to our beloved Z80. It starts off with your hands clasped over your ears and then quickly degenerates into a pseudo-classical phantom of the opera type cacophony. Its worse than stale cake. Maybe it was because this game was a conversion of the C64 hit Paradroid that it failed to ignite the Speccy world in an original between the eyes sort of way... but who needs boys and chocolate when you've got Quazatron. (AMANDA)
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