 BEACH HEAD II US Gold 1985

 CONTROLS : Keyboard, Kempston, Cursor
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 AIM : The evil dictator from Beach Head I, the Dragon, has rebuilt his
army and is challenging the Allies' power in the Pacific once again.
Stryker, the Allies' best commander, leads the attack on the
dictator's stronghold to kill him...

 GAMEPLAY : You can play BHII as either the Allies or the Dragon in
the one player game, or play head-to-head in the two-player version.
There are a number of levels, all of which you must win to capture
the stronghold / defeat the Allied attack.

 1. Parachute Assault - Allied troops are airdropped into the battle
zone from a helicopter. Pressing fire drops a soldier, but if the
helicopter is too low for the chute to open, the soldier will not
live to tell the tale!  On landing, the soldiers make a dash for the
nearest wall, but they must brave machine-gun fire from a gun turret
controlled by the Dragon.  However, the machine gunner is hampered
by the fact that it takes time for him to react and turn the gun on
the troops.

 2. Frontal Attack - Once all the men are hiding behind the walls at
the top they have to make their way to the bottom of the screen,
avoiding the gunfire. The edges of the walls flash in a cycle along
the edge of the line. Pressing fire brings a man out, and you must
control him as he runs down to the next section of wall. From the
third wall, nearest the gun turret, the troops must be manoeuvred to
the bottom of the screen.  The control method is the same as before,
except that pressing fire lobs a grenade roughly in the direction of
the gun turret - you might get lucky and destroy it. Pressing fire
twice when you select a wall sends down a computer-controlled soldier
who is useful as a decoy!


 3. Protect Hostages -	You must protect a group of hostages from
the now-desperate enemy forces. The Allies have captured a gun
turret which can be used against the enemy attacks. The hostages run
across the screen from left to right and have to face four types of
enemy attack: a soldier drops stones from the top of the wall the
hostages have to walk beneath; a tanks rolls on from the right and
squashes anything in its path; an armoured car drives from the left,
firing a machine gun; and enemy troops lay mines, popping up out of
trapdoors (!) to lay them. All of these obstacles can be shot by
your turret to safeguard the hostages' passage If you shoot a
hostage by mistake it only stuns him, but this could give the enemy
the opportunity to kill him.

 4. Evacuate Hostages - Having rescued the hostages, you must ferry
them to safety in four helicopters that fly over a
vertically-scrolling landscape. Tanks and guns placed on the terrain
try to shoot your 'copters down; the difficulty of the terrain is
decided by the Dragon before this section starts.

5. Showdown - Commander Stryker gets to meet the Dragon in
face-to-face combat. The two opponents stand opposite each other on
parallel platforms on either side of a river. The idea is to hit the
other man with poonta sticks - javelins, in effect - until he falls
into the water. Each time a combatant is hit three times he takes a
fall and there are five rounds to be fought before the game is won -
or lost.

 COMMENTS : "A pretty simple and boring game." RATING : 74% (CRASH #24,
January 1986)

 NOW : A rather poor game which is not much fun to play, as well as
being somewhat bizarre towards the end. I wonder how the Gulf War would
have ended if George Bush had had to hurl poonta sticks at Saddam
Hussein?
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 KEYS : Redefinable             - Joystick controls
