TLL: Tornado Low Level (ZX Spectrum)

Well, my first ever poll to decide which game I would play has ended in a tie. The only surprise is that it wasn't a tie with one vote each! The first game I've gone for is TLL: Tornado Low Level on the Spectrum. I remember seeing the box for this in a friend's house years ago, but never playing it. Apparently, it's quite a well-loved game!

TLL is a fairly simple concept: fuel up your fighter plane, take off, bomb/take out your targets and land. I remember playing Harrier Attack which was a similar idea, but was a side-scroller. TLL has an overhead view, but it features depth, so you have to learn whether you can go under or over certain obstacles.


The black target on the grass is what you're after... but you'll have to drop your altitude to hit it...

That takes some learning, and it's easier said than done. And to make it more difficult, and to make sure the game earns its title, to take out your targets you have to fly at low level.

Sometimes this isn't so bad... the target will be in a field or open plot of land, and you can take your time circling and lining it up. But others will be near houses, trees or powerlines, and these will call for some fancy flying if you want to prevail.

That seems to be it... I wasn't good enough to get past the first level to see how or if things changed. But in that time I could see that TLL was a decent enough game to be worthy of the reverence it's held in. I could definitely imagine it eating up a lot of any Speccy owner's time.