Turbulence

Your Sinclair Feb 1993, p. 4



Okay. What's the hardest game you

can think of? Most probably last

month's Guardian 2 - all that pixel-

perfect movement, advanced strategy and a

huge number of keys to boot. If you've been

with the Speccy a while longer you might

even vote for games like Lunar Jetman, Lode

Runner or TLL (after Level Two). The

privileged few who've actually seen the

blessed thing would undoubtedly make a

case for Astroball, and in doing so they'd

earn themselves a pat on the back for

feeding us a neat link line into Turbulence.

Turbulence, y'see, is extremely difficult. It's

also the sequel to Astroball. Sort of. Actually,

to make things easier, let's say it is.

It's quite a while since we had a completely

original game to describe, so listen up. The

screen shows two balls - the small, polished

form of Astroball herself and part of an

enormous chequered planet. Astroball can

bounce freely about the place, but the planet

can only be spun left or right. You don't

control Astroball. That would be far too easy.

In fact, you control the planet. By rotating it

left or right, or decreasing the gravity by

holding down the fire key, you can make

Astroball leap around. (The idea of the game

is to collect all the diamonds on each level,

but let's get the jumping about bit straight

first.) Now, the gravitational field of the planet

extends to the top of the game screen, as

these things tend to do, so by spinning the

planet while Astroball is in mid-air, you can

still control her flight. The only thing you can't

do easily is decrease her height. You see, by

pressing (and holding) fire you cause

Astroball to jump higher with each successive

bounce. Tragically, to reverse the effect you

have to let go of the fire button and let her

naturally settle, which takes a mite longer.

But that's not all! Drum this vital fact into

your nervous system - to make the planet

rotate you have to move the joystick in the

opposite direction. (Physics, eh?) Plus! The

direction the planet's going in when Astroball

hits it will influence the direction of rebound.

(If you imagine a game of Breakout, with the

planet as the bat, that should help.) Phew.

And so to the object of the game.

Scattered around each of the twenty(ish)

levels (we think - nobody's got past number

six yet) are a number of glittery diamonds.

You'll need them all to finish the screen. The

first level is merely unfeasibly difficult - take

the first couple of games to acquaint yourself

with the control method. Then, when you

start playing in earnest, watch out for two

things. One - those huge spike walls aren't

impassable (big hint), and two - every little

thing on the level, apart from the diamonds

and the planet, will kill you on impact. Pretty

harsh odds by anyone's standards, but there

you are.

Now it's quite probable most of you will

have one go of Turbulence, get nowhere and

give up. That's fine. But folks who like their

games in a slightly tougher flavour should

persevere - like the fine games of yore,

conquering the controls is half the fun. And

for the whingers - count yourself lucky you've

got nine lives, matey. Before we tickled the

code, you were expected to complete the

entire game with a titchily mere three.

So there. Nyah, and so on.



CONTROLS

Joystick or keyboard

Z - left, X - right, K - fire



[Re-typed in 2005 by Alessandro Grussu from a scan

of the original page.]