Game Review: Action Biker (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

One of Mastertronic’s biggest sellers of 1985 wasn’t an arcade clone as many of their early titles often were. Nor was it a re-release from another publisher – something that the budget giant relied on early on to establish their range. Instead, Action Biker, turned out to be something new and a licensed game to boot and captured the attention of gamers everywhere…

Mastertronic’s First Licensed Game? Should We Skip Over That Bit?

Understandably, Mastertronic wanted to make a big deal leading up to the release of Action Biker and their partnership with KP Foods. As this was their first licensed game, the deal had a marketing push seeing the game promoted on a reported 12 million packets of KP Skips. According to Mastertronic’s Bulletin Newsletter, the game was designed specifically as a joint promotion with KP’s character Clumsy Colin taking centre stage in the game.

It was never said publicly what the financial arrangement was between the two companies, or whether any license fee was actually paid but it did seem to be mutually beneficial. Mastertronic gained free advertising with the Skips logo being featured on the cover of over a quarter of a million games. Add to that the press attention gained from the marketing campaign and the reviews the game received, it certainly seemed to be worth the effort.

Action Biker’s Confusing Story And Getting Started

Unlike the Commodore 64 and Atari versions (which are completely different games), the Spectrum incarnation of Action Biker does have some connection to KP Skips which is a positive start. While the manual is somewhat confusing it’s a fairly straightforward game and it does have a few similarities to the other versions even if the game itself is different.

Taking direct control of KP’s mascot, Clumsy Colin, he finds himself dreaming and has to find his friend Marti and take him to the Spaceport. Definitely a strange dream if you ask me. Well according to the manual, that is. In reality, you’re looking for your friend Martin and have to take him to the Airport! To do this, you have to find items to help you get to his house that are scattered around the town. These can be found inside the different houses. There are 150 houses in the town, but only 50 have anything in them – some will upgrade Colin’s bike, others are essential to help you get to Martin and others are useless!

You have a limited amount of fuel but you can stop off at one of the petrol stations to refuel, packs of Skips can be collected for bonus points (although the manual mentions incorrectly that these will refuel your bike which they don’t) but it’s not that simple… Your dream is packed with danger as there are cars and other bikes moving around the town and contact with these will reduce your sleep meter. Once this drops to zero, Colin will wake up and it’s game over.

Playing The Game

Playing Action Biker is quite straightforward. Movement is controlled with keyboard or compatible joystick to go up, down, left or right with space or fire to enter or exit houses. Packs of Skips and fuel are picked up automatically as you ride over them. Upgrades are added and activated automatically where they are location dependent (headlights for the dark areas of the map, for example) but the game has one critical flaw…

While you can control the speed at which your bike moves, it suffers from unforgiving and somewhat sluggish controls making it difficult to negotiate the narrow streets and even worse, position yourself in front of any houses that you might want to enter. Throughout the game you feel as if you’re spending more time fighting with the controls than anything else.

Please Let Me In…

While a lot of Action Biker is spent riding around the town, the key to conpleteing the game is finding the items you need to get to Martin. These are located inside some of the houses and this is where I encountered the main problem with the game. It’s a problem that many people have mentioned with the game, but it can be very hit-and-miss as to whether you can go inside any of the houses at all. Normally you can only go inside them when the occupants are awake and all the curtains are open but in all the time I spent playing I was only able to enter houses on a few occasions! It wasn’t for not trying but it didn’t matter how many I tried or how I positioned the bike – it was incredibly difficult and just felt so random as to whether it would let me in or not.

Sometimes I could get in, and then the next house with open curtains I couldn’t even when I was in the same relative position outside… And that’s after spending what felt like an eternity getting lined up in the first place. I’ve actually watched walkthrough videos where people have played Action Biker and been able to go straight into any houses they have wanted to, so whether this seems to a case of sheer luck or what I don’t know, but this made the game so frustrating that it was borderline unplayable.

Crash And Burn

Even ignoring that fundamental problem with the houses (if you’re lucky enough to get past that without too much trouble), Action Biker is still fraught with other issues. As I touched upon earlier, the controls make your bike extremely difficult to control, and when you’re trying to navigate narrow streets, avoid other vehicles and position yourself in front of houses, that’s one extra thing you don’t want to have to worry about.

And talking of the other vehicles, they’re not just moving around randomly – it’s as if you have a target on your back as all too often you can get cornered by them. When these collide with you, they actually stay in the same location as you draining your sleep meter and if any others get too close, it’s easy to get trapped and within a matter of moments it’s game over. On more than a few occasions I started the game and had a couple of vehicles approach me in this way and it was game over in under a minute before I’d even moved away from the start position.

Now I don’t mind a game that provides a challenge, but Action Biker is incredibly punishing to the player and I’d say unfairly so. You’re up against the other vehicles you you have to deal with those, a fuel meter that’s steadily depleting, fighting with the controls and if that wasn’t enough you’re up against the clock as you have to complete everything before Colin wakes up at 8:00 am.

What you want to do is focus on enjoying the game and the challenge that it presents, not worrying about having to deal with the obstacles the game engine is putting in the way. By incorporating three separate elements that are diminishing during play, it puts unnecessary pressure that stops the game from being fun in any way.

Graphics and Sound

I’ll start with the sound, and as a game written for the standard 48K Spectrum, there’s not a lot to speak of in the sound department. There are basic engine noises throughout and then (thankfully) short unrecognisable “tunes” that play at the start of the game, each time you enter a house and at the end of the game.

In terms of Action Biker’s visuals, there’s a reasonable amount of variety in the graphics, even though they’re quite limited in terms of detail but the animation on Colin’s bike as it rotates is painful to watch as it moves at a snail’s pace. The playfield scrolls as you explore the town and while it’s not particularly smooth, it’s fast enough and is much better than flick-screen which I think would have impacted on the game’s playability more than the other issues have.

One nice touch is that we actually get to see Colin when he enters any of the houses, and each one changes with different furniture, objects (if any are present) and occasional people to meet which offers a nice change from the visuals of the town instead of just having the bike outside of the house and a text description saying that you’ve found something which Mastertronic could have done as an easy option.

Overall

Sadly, there really are no words for how bad Action Biker is on the ZX Spectrum. I can understand why a conversion of the Commodore 64 release wasn’t attempted, but there are so many issues with this game it makes it unplayable. Combining the awful controls and the fact that there are too many ways for the player to lose the game so easily and it’s easy to see why it left thousands disappointed, even at the original budget price tag. Arguably one of the worst ZX Spectrum releases from Mastertronic that I’ve played so far.

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