Game Review: Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge (Commodore 64, Ricochet)

For those of you who do not know who Brian Jacks is, he started his sporting career as a judoka, and represented Great Britain at World and Olympic level, with a World bronze in 1967 and Olympic bronze in 1972, as well as two European championships in 1970 and 1973.  In the late 1970s he turned his hand to the BBC television sporting competition The Superstars (official name, although most called it Superstars) where he won the UK championship twice, tied for the European title with Ties Kruize, won an International championship and had a best of third in World Superstars, and along the way holding the records for arm dips (100 in 60 seconds, and he had time left) and squat thrusts (118 in 60 seconds via the controversial sliding technique.)  After his loss in the Challenge of the Champions event, transmitted early 1981, he never competed in the event again.

Despite him not taking part in the programme when the game was originally released by Martech, the programme itself was still on the television, and many still associated Jacks with it.  As such it made sense for a multi-event name with Brian’s name on, but note the careful titling of Superstar Challenge (minus the plural) so that it hopefully avoided any hot water with the BBC bosses, who may have wanted to produce their own game. The Commodore 64 version may also have been the original release as the game is markedly different from the other eight-bit formats, with one slightly different event and the events themselves in a different order.

Players and Powersync

The game loads without a loading screen and the title screen is simple but effective, with stars all over the screen indicating the superstar part.  The whole game is joystick only and on the title screen you can select one or two players with up or down and then pressing fire to start.  One notable aspect of the controls in some events is what is referred to in the game instructions as “Powersync”.  Effectively this means starting off with a steady rhythm of waggling the joystick left and right and gradually building up the speed once you are in rhythm before going full pelt.  It is a nice idea but often there are no visual indicators to guide you of the speed which means you end up waggling for the hell of it anyway, which may not be ideal.  There are eight events in all and in the order of this version they are as follows.

Canoeing

The first event is the first experience of Powersync, and gradually once you work out the rhythm you can build up the speed against your opponent.  With a number of these split screen events you can normally tell if you are doing well as your character (always at the top in one player mode) will be to the far right of the screen and your opponent more left if losing badly.  This takes time to get a good build up of speed going and takes its time.  At the end of this and each event you will note you are given a score based on your performance.  Any score marked with a star means you achieved a target score – and to compete against Brian Jacks you need to score all eight stars – one from each event.

Boar Shoot

This in in place instead of the archery on all other versions (and the archery on those is very reminiscent of Hyper Sports.)  Here the boar moves across the screen from the left or the right and you need to aim the crosshair and then fire the crossbow at the boar’s target to score well.  A bug appears to be present here – you can hit the boar with you right crossbow fine, but from the left it was almost impossible for some reason, despite timing the aim at the same time.  It smacked more of the crossbow shooting in Superstars but not as playable as it could be.

100 Metre Sprint

Powersync is only in play for the first few metres to build up the speed well and then you can go for it waggling the joystick to your heart’s content.  The overall feeling of speed as the background scrolls past is reasonable, although you often find that the computer will match your pace very well and prove a tough opponent.  The key here is to ignore that and just make sure you aim for that target score and achieve the star that you need.

Squat Thrusts

An iconic event from the original programme and one Brian was legendary at, a novel control system is at play here, with you being in the gym hall for this one.  You need to move the joystick left three times to bring the feet back, and then right three times to bring the feet back forward.  Once you have done that, repeat that process as fast as you can, with the time limit saying sixty seconds but that time in real time is longer.  You will gradually build up a good rhythm and you would find this easier on a keyboard if the controls were supported.

Swimming

Powersync is in operation once more here as the gun goes off and you start to get the arm strokes going in the water to build up the speed and rhythm.  You also need to press fire to breathe (did someone mention Hyper Sports again here?) at a regular interval, although the sound effect that prompts you to press fire sounds very muffled indeed.  It always takes far too long to build up a good speed and inevitably one forgetful moment not breathing slows you down and breaks up that speed.  It does seem a little bugged in this regard which is a bit of a shame.

Arm Dips

This event is another iconic Brian Jacks specialism, and at first you will fall off the bar a lot until you master the controls.  When you start, pressing fire descends the athlete down and when you get so far down the bar, waggle the joystick to get back up to the vertical position, and repeat as needed.  Each time you get back down, it is one arm dip, and the sixty seconds feels more like three minutes or so in real time.  A joystick killer this one, although maybe not in the way you might think as the pressing of fire and waiting is a novel touch to try and break the tedium.

Football

Clearly the penalties event that used to be in Superstars is the inspiration here.  From left to right, weave your way above or below the cones by pressing up or down, with a waggle to get some speed up.  When past the final cone, the perspective changes to shooting, and pressing fire plus a direction aims the ball that way.  I was able to score two out of three on most occasions but if you go too fast and miss a cone, that go is forfeited immediately which can prove to be frustrating if you have tried to go faster.

Cycling

It is you against the opponent and as well as using the Powersync system to build up the speed, you can also change gear too by pressing up and fire button to go up a gear, with down and fire to go down a gear.  I was able to get to a third gear and cycle fast to set a good time, but had to remember that for each gear the rhythm apparently used in the Powersync changes somewhat.  Either way it showed a good turn of speed once you got the hang of it so that was at least something here.

The Final Score

Once you have completed all eight events, your score is totted up for all eight events.  The first task in hand is to see if your score was better than the computer score (or your friend if in two player mode.)  If you manage to get a star in all eight events, you can then have a go second time around and this time compete against Brian Jacks – although the graphics do not change to resemble Brian at all.  If you do not get the stars needed, or you lose to the opponent, then it is game over.

Out of the eight events, four of them are split screen which means two players simultaneously (canoeing, 100 metres, swimming and cycling) with the other four being turn-based.  That still does mean plenty of competition in between that you can beat a friend at during the eight events due to their appearance in order.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge range considerably.  For the two gym tests events where overlaid sprites are used, the graphics and animation are good, but for some of the split screen events the characters are poorly defined, as re the backgrounds.  The boar shoot event looks reasonable in between and the podium celebration at the end is also poorly presented.  There is only a small piece of music on the title screen and the sound effects are functional if somewhat minimal – not sure if this was because of the attempts to get all eight events into one load.

Final Thoughts

On this version at least, Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge is so near and yet so far.  The eight events do offer a good degree of variety, but there are some notable glitches in some events which make them less fun to play, and without a suitable aid to work out if your Powersync method is working correctly or not, then those events which use that system fail to work as they should and you end up waggling the joystick as fast as you can in more desperation than skill.  Having a simultaneous two player mode is nice, but on those events the graphics do suffer somewhat.  If the same attention had been paid as they had been to the two gym tests events, by far the best ones on here, then it would have been a much better game.  However, even at budget price it may be a case of you might like it, but you might not and there will be elements of frustration during play.  A great shame really as it does have some promise.

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