BLOOD MONEY 

 BLOOD MONEY is an arcade game from David Jones and Psygnosis. It
offers excellent graphics, fabulous animation, tough gameplay, four
planetary environments, two-player mode, two difficulty levels, 
joystick control, and copy protection.  

 Despite an initial resemblance to MENACE (also written by David
Jones), BLOOD MONEY pushes arcade action well beyond its
predecessors. A purposely languid pace belies great difficulty. 
While the Psygnosis press release is a masterpiece of
over-exaggeration, BLOOD MONEY is definitely one of the best games
to be released. 

 The plot is this: After your parents give you a $200 gift, you
decide to blow it on an Alien Safari, a dangerous sojourn that'll
take you to four planets: Gibba ($100), Grone ($200), Shreek
($300), and Snuff ($400). Each planet has a unique environment: 
Gibba has a heavy-metal landscape, Grone is underwater, and I have
no idea about either Shreek or Snuff. The difficulty levels are
Patient and Impatient, which mean (in layperson's terms) 
Unbelievably Tough and Why Bother? 

 The goal of BLOOD MONEY is to battle the inhabitants of each planet
and confront the Guardians. Shooting an inhabitant causes it to
explode and excrete a coin worth a certain amount of credits. 
Collecting the coins adds money to your account, which can (and
must) be spent at any of the equipment stations scattered around the
planet. 

 MENACE did not offer money. It had six planets and six Guardians, 
and hitting the scenery on Expert level depleted your ship's
shield. In BM, everything is deadly: The slightest brush with
scenery or inhabitant means instant annihilation -- and you have
only three lives. 

 On Gibba, you'll pilot a helicopter; on Grone, you'll steer a
submarine; on Shreek, you'll be in a jetpak; and on Snuff, you'll be
in a spaceship. Weapon enhancements range in price from $100 to
$250, and include: skybound, earthbound, rear-fire, and long range
missiles; neuron bombs; ship speedup; extra life; and something
called a "Norton Thunder-Thru." 

 The ST screen display consists of upper and lower walls, between
which you guide your craft. The screen scrolls horizontally and
vertically. Tracking guns cling to the walls. The inhabitants can
come from anywhere, and they do. On Gibba, you'll see combat
machinery out of "Return of the Jedi," spinning buzzsaws, floating
faces, rockets, and pulsing bubbles. 

 Underwater on Planet Grone, there are schools of wonderfully
animated sea anemones, monsters with gaping maws, mines, squirmy
little tubes that track you from the walls, and more weird pulsing
bubbles. 

 BM is controlled completely with a joystick: The stick moves your
craft around the screen in all directions; the button fires the
current weapon. Landing on the equipment platform brings up the
consumer weapons screen: Move the arrow to the weapon of your choice
and select it with the button. Assuming you have enough blood money
in your account, it'll be automatically added to your craft, where
it will remain until your craft is destroyed. Then it's back to
single shots. 

 The program comes on two copy-protected disks. After booting, there
is disk access when loading a new planet. Neither hard disk nor
second drive is supported. The documentation includes BM programming
information, as explained by David Jones. 

 Without going into lengthy detail, BLOOD MONEY is a stunning
program. The excellent graphics are overshadowed only by the
zillions of wildly-animated sprites. However, the scads of sound
effects promised by the manual, the package, and the press release
never materialized; all I've heard so far are basic explosions and
the clink of coins. Also, from reading David Jones's comments, I got
the impression that the ST version is somewhat less than the
original Amiga program (although Wayne Smithson, the translator, 
should not be blamed). 

 With its great difficulty, BM is reminiscent of Taito games such as
ARKANOID and A.L.C.O.N., two really good time-wasters designed for
instant frustration. I hasten to point out that BLOOD MONEY is so
far beyond most home computer arcade games that it has the potential
to become a personal favorite. Even it doesn't become your
favorite, your money will have been well spent. 

 BLOOD MONEY is published and distributed by Psygnosis. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253