Dom Robinson reviews

for

Distributed by
Sega

Price: £19.99 Players: 1 Originally released as Gunspike in Japan, the re-named Cannon Spike is a blast-em-up, allowing you to play as one of several old favourite Capcom characters (apparently, since I've never heard of them), including Charlie, Arthur, Shiba, Cammy, Simone, not all of who look human, because they're not really. Played out with a 3D isometric view, the idea is simple. Wave after wave of terrorist robots are coming for you and your task is to avoid their fire whilst returning plenty of your own. Once a level is clear, you'll travel round the world on your high-powered motor boots to another place and do battle there too. It actually looks a bit like the old arcade and ZX Spectrum favourite Target: Renegade and Alien Breed, where enemies approach you from all sides and you've got to do exactly as described above, except with arcade-quality graphics.

While the graphics are far from revolutionary, since they look like a tarted-up game from the 80s, they certainly shift about at the required speed and I didn't notice any slow-down. Don't expect your DC to be overheating from playing this one though. As for the sound, it's a bit of techno here, a bit of a Bontempi keyboard organ there, also harking back to the arcades of 10-15 years ago. There's nothing wrong with that at all since it creates the right atmosphere and you can laugh at all of those who claim that retro is "soooo yesterday!" The gameplay's a tricky fella though. One minute you're able to fend off the horde of baddies with a constant stream of gunfire before they explode - which is easy, as well as trying to circle round them and spraying fire as you go - yet, the next, they're either up close which means that the gunfire appears to go right through them(!) and they're taking a swipe out of you, or one of the big end-of-level bosses has got you cornered and you have little or no hope of evading him, so you may as well turn round and bend over while he dilly-dallies with his great big cannon spike!

Overall, it is a fun game, but one that'll have you questioning its longevity, so for the casual gamer it is certainly worth a rental, but don't forget that those with a PC should easily be able to find something similar to this on the internet, such as using MAME and looking for the aforementioned game ROMs. For those without such access it's definitely worth a rental. I would've advised a purchase, given it's cheap price, for some multiplayer post-pub gaming with your mates, but try as I might I cannot find anything other than a single-player mode which rather spoils things a bit.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT	0
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.