Catch 23 - ZX Spectrum

1987 by I. McArdle & M. J. Smith. Martech. A very primitive POV shooter in which you were thrown (I think it was parachute jump) in an island at night (22.00h) with the only help of a map, three cartridges of ammunation (five bullets each one), 3 bombs (ricochet style) and an undetermined thing that could be a vacuumer (actually the cartridges looked like sandwiches so a mine detector could be easily a vacuumer machine).

You were supposed to find hostages, put bombs and sabotage things... You know. That kind of argument used in any 80's movie or videogame, the manual didn't help too much, but that's not new in speccy games. During your trip, you had to fight "scuba" man (they wore diving clothes) and tanks (A.K.A. patrols). You had to shoot them once they appeared in your screen, it you took too much time to aim, then you were dead. Deaths were a bit annoying, you always received 5 bullets from the guy who shooted you (the whole cartridge). There were as well many elements on the map that you could interact with (for example teleports, doors and ¿computers?, forget that last one 'cuz I`m not sure).

Enviroment of the island offered several types of terrain, such as mountains, trees, houses, swamps... Many of the places were mined, so you had to use the vacuumer to absorb them. The island was divided in several zones that were shown in the map, but it was not very helpful because you always started in a differente place (because of the parachute jump, I guess).

Gameplay was nice, you could move forward and backward, turn 360º, search everywhere. The perspectives of the houses were great. Actually you could enter in some of them, hide...

A hard game: short ammunation, only 1 life and leak of orientation and objectives. A classic, anyway.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• catch
• 23
• spectrum
• sinclair
• ay
• zx

[jr2nd]

this was my most favorite game EVER, well the amstrad cpc version, spent years playing this and even drew myself a large A4 6X6 sheet map of all the location!!!! :D seriously this game is CRYING for a modern remake!

[AshleyMarkPomeroy]

It always reminded me of Midwinter, a bit. I had it at the time, but it was impossible to play for very long. I remember reading a walkthrough, and you had to solve puzzles on some computers that I would never have got. It's a bit like Cholo as well.

[psyjax]

sounds like a primative FarCry :)

[chichuf]

Vector graphics :D thanks for your post