Game Review: Motos (ZX Spectrum, MAD)

Bumper Cars In Space

To set the scene, imagine Motos being Bumper Cars but without any safe perimeter to stop you falling off the stage.

You move your spaceship over chequered squared backgrounds with the primary objective to knock alien baddies off either the edges or down holes.  The aim of the game being to knock the alien craft off to progress onto the next stage.  Obviously, you need to avoid being knocked off the board yourself too!

Gravitas

Each object has its own mass and as you’d expect, the bigger an object is, the heavier it will be to shove around.

Your ship isn’t the heaviest object by a long way, but it does have plenty of manoeuvrability and is rather nippy.  The enemy start of quite lightweight, so you can quickly practice pushing them around and see what happens when you collide with something.

Sometimes though, some of the smaller objects such as the Space Bees may look quite small.  They do however pack a bit of a punch so looks can be deceiving.  I guess you could say it gives them a bit of a sting so proceed with caution!

Gameplay

The difficulty level of Motos is extremely good and the reason I say this is because, as you progress, the screens get more and more heavier objects.  They don’t always have to be large and sometimes, can be pretty much your size and move faster too.  The progression is therefore just right.

As you can move swiftly, you’re able to move between alien objects. Placing yourself in the right positions can enable you to strategically use your mass.  Quite often you’ll find yourself moving your ship and using it in combination to give more bashing force and that extra bit of authority!

There is also a two player option where you take it in turns to play.  Each time you move onto a new stage, it’ll show the stage number and either player 1 or 2.

Although there is a hi-score displayed in the top-right of the screen, unlike the arcade machine, there is no high-score table to put your name in if you get a top 5 score.  This isn’t something that I found to be a major issue at all but that is a difference.

Power-Ups and Bonuses

After a few stages, you will start to see two types of power-ups sometimes appearing.  Collecting P is for power (making your ship have more mass) and collecting the boxed ^ shapes is to obtain jumping ability.  If you have collected any of these, they will be displayed on the right-hand side of the screen.

You will also see bonus items on some screens too for extra points.  The way to gain the points though isn’t to collect them but also knock those off the screen too.  These are optional so if you don’t do this, you can still progress on the next stage.  One thing to point out is, if that the aliens can also bump into them and knock these off the screen too.

When you enter the next stages, you will get the option to choose how many of these you may want to use.  If you feel confident, try not to use any and if you see that there are screens with a jump, obviously you’ll need to choose that too.

Jumping across the screen though does have consequences but can also be tactical too.  When you land on the ground, a crack is made in the surface of the board where you land.  Should you land in the same place a second time, your ship will explode, losing a life.  Lives are displayed on the right-side of the screen and shown as large spaceships.

Graphics

From the main menu, there is a option to play the game in either multichrome or monochrome.  Multichrome is effectively with multiple coloured background tiles which can sometimes change colour or monochrome which is set to one specific colour per stage.  Being monochrome, you may automatically think of this just being black and white but the background just changes from stage to stage instead.  I don’t recall any other Spectrum game that gives you the option to choose.  I’m not saying that there aren’t any but I sure can’t think of any other game which does that.  My preference was multichrome.

The graphics throughout the game are very good and well animated.  Objects tend to turn pivot at a 45-degree angle when they turn and this works very well.  Even the circular objects look rather smooth too.

The loading screen isn’t too bad.  I feel it could have been slightly more colourful at the top but apart from that, very nice.

Sound Effects and Music

The game comprises of some explosion and metallic clinking noises when you bump into objects.  When collecting items and jumping there are also some sound effects.  At the beginning of some stages, if you have collected power-ups (which can make you heavier or able to jump) then there is a sliding scale noise whilst you choose what you may want to have on that stage.

In addition to the above-mentioned sound effects, on the Spectrum 128K, there are three musical scores. The first being on the main menu before you start, the main one whilst playing Motos and a game over musical score too.  Before starting each stage, there is also a short piece of music that lasts just a few seconds.  It is as if you have made a grand entrance to the stage and is a real nice touch.

Not a Total Pushover

On some stages, you will find that there are large base structures.  After a short period of time, you will suddenly see a wave of new aliens appearing out these bases, giving you more to contend with.  This does result in the game slightly becoming slower but that’s because of the animation and sprites on the screen.  As mentioned earlier, positioning your ship between aliens isn’t too bad unless you happen to be on the wrong side of the edge of the board or a hole.

After around 40 seconds into a stage, meteors will start being fired diagonally from the corners of the screen.  Each hit creates a small explosion and makes a gap in the ground.  A nice effect is that rather than just make a gap, there is a nice animation of that tile flipping over.  The longer you’re on the stage, obviously the more gaps there are to avoid.  You can jump over these if you have the power-up (and selected it at the start) but be quick.  Just like teeth, you don’t want too many gaps (unfortunately, I know this from experience!)

Arcade Conversion

Motos is an arcade conversion of the Namco classic and wasn’t the only Mastertronic game tied in with Namco.  Bosconian and Gaplus being the others.  Note, however, Gaplus was not released on the Spectrum and was a Commodore 64 release).

Motos was also released on a compilation disc for Spectrum +3 owners known as Plus 3 Hits Arcade.  Motos is the second game out three on the compilation disc and Motos can be found on side A.  In case you are wondering, the other games on the were Bosconian and Angleball.  The inlay cover has the Mastertronic logo on rather than the cassette version with M.A.D.

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