Game Review: Rifle Range (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

In Rifle Range, you need to shoot all the squirrels, aliens and ducks as they move across the screen.  If you take too long shooting the targets, some of the squirrels start coming back meaning that you’ll need more bullets to complete a level.

The squirrels are on bottom row and move from the right of your screen to left and are the first to appear.  These are followed by the aliens a few moments later, moving in the opposite direction on the middle row.  Finally, the ducks appear on the top row going right to left.

Above the ducks there is also a blue wall, with potential bonuses such as teddy bears and goldfish bowls and extra ammo.

Playability

There are 3 screens and 3 difficulty levels.  Selecting the medium or hard levels enables the squirrels to drop their nuts in a vertical line.  Selecting the hardest level also means you’ll start the game with less bullets

Although the targets move fairly, the game doesn’t suffer from any additional lag when there more things happening at same time.  There is a slight bit of jerkiness as the targets travel across, but nothing bad enough to come anywhere near ruining the game.  The rifle does slightly flicker too but the collision detection is spot-on.

If your rifle is hit by a falling nut, a good feature is that it doesn’t kill you outright.  Instead, what happens instead is that it’ll deplete you ammunition as it moves over your rifle.

The Stall Holder

In the top-left hand corner of the screen, you will mostly see the Stall Holder.  From time to time, however, he does disappear and then return.  When he’s there, you’ll be deducted points if you shoot any the teddy bears or goldfish bowls.  You can even lose bullets if you hit the ammo boxes.

When he’s not there, and you shoot through the gaps in the wall which quickly moves rightwards, if shots successfully hit one of those, you’ll benefit by getting either extra points or ammo.

Shooting the Stall Holder does result with your immediate arrest for murder and then being taken away in a police car!  Not only does that mean game over, but any score you got during that game doesn’t count.  So, if you would’ve achieved a high score, it won’t count.  Crime doesn’t pay after all.

Brucie Bonus!

When you have cleared a level, there is a special bonus rollercoaster round.  This is where you can get awarded 9 extra bullets for each successful shot at the rollercoaster as it moves quickly across the screen.  The letters Bonus Game are written across the rollercoaster doors and each direct hit awards you the extra ammunition.

This is a nice additional bonus to the game in my opinion, and necessary to get your firepower back, so aim as well as you can.

Strange Playing Keys

Rifle Range does have some rather strange playing keys.  Pressing 6 moves your rifle to the left, 7 towards the right and 0 to fire.  The game can be paused by pressing H and un-paused by press S. There is no option to be able to re-define the keys, which is shame as they aren’t the most comfortable ones to use.

Music and Sound Effects

After loading the game in full, you’ll hear a short tune which gives you a fun fairground setting.  This puts you in the mood for the challenge game ahead.  Although the tune cannot be skipped, this isn’t a problem as its played just the once.  The other music to is a quick tune when it’s the game over.

During gameplay, when your fire rifle, you’ll hear is a tat-tat sound and if your rifle is hit by a squirrel’s falling acorn, you’ll hear high pitch beeps as it goes over your rifle.  Also, if you hit the barrier, or see the police car, there are sound effects too.  If you run out of bullets, there is a screeching noise for a few seconds.

Loading the Game

When halfway loading the tape, you’ll be asked to Stop the Tape.  Doing so will then ask if you want to read the instructions.  Pressing Y will then run through some pages about how the scoring system works, how bonuses can be made or penalised and interestingly, even murder!

It’s worth a quick read first though, so you get a feel of the scoring mechanism and a quick glance at the graphics.  Obviously, if you don’t want to read the instructions, it does add a few extra moments for the game to load, so just press N and keep the tape running instead.

As with the very early Mastertronic games, the loading screen is the Mastertronic logo.

Final Observations

When reviewing Rifle Range, I found myself playing it a lot more than I anticipated!  It plays exactly just like you’d probably imagine it to be but also has that bit more with the Stall Holder feature, adding different elements to the gameplay.

I did notice that accidently pressing the Break key on the keyboard does crash the game.  This results in a slightly corrupted frozen screen frame and having to reset the computer.

Unusually, on the front cover of Rifle Range it has the words “Any Spectrum” printed in the yellow top-right-hand corner.  I believe this only appears on two other Mastertronic inlay games, which are Gnasher and Spectipede (of which there are two different covers!)

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