Tommy

As I've mentioned before, I entered the world of commercial games in 1987 (before that, I got my fix from "Videospectrums" and "Load 'n' Runs"). Consequently, since I didn't buy Microhobby until issue 147, the lesser-known games published earlier went unnoticed by me.

For that same reason, I wasn't aware of the "Future Stars" label until the middle of this year (yes, I didn't read an article in a Micromanía magazine I have at home that mentioned it—my mistake). Since I don't know if you're familiar with it, I'll tell you that it was a budget label launched by Dinamic in 1986, under which two other titles were published: Ali Baby and Krypton Raiders, both available on the website, as is Tommy.

But what surprised me most was discovering that one of those games—the one we have here—which had been released only for the Spectrum, bore a striking resemblance to an Amstrad CPC game (does it also exist for MSX?). This surprise reached astronomical proportions when I realized it wasn't just similar, but identical, that it was called End-of-Year Trip, and that it had been published by Juliet Soft (creators of games like Antares and Stop Ball, among others).

I don't know the reasons for this, but I suppose the Future Stars games were only released for the Spectrum, and the author decided to create another version, which was published by a different company after Dinamic's budget attempt failed (Dinamic would stumble over the same stone a couple of years later with their "100% by Dinamic" label, under which Delfox was released).

And this is my small contribution to the story of these "two games", which are only one, and which have all the ingredients for you to have a good time: good graphics, correct atmosphere and an acceptable level of addiction, which is reminiscent - without matching - of the legendary Wally games from the English company Mikro-Gen.