The combined force of Tim Williams and Chris Jones who gave us gaming gems such as Turtle Timewarp and Fahrenheit 3000 also gave us this little playable arcade game in the early days of the ZX Spectrum.
This little known game was released back at the beginning of 1984 and was generally regarded as a decent and fast moving game in the arcade / shoot em up genre.
You can tell this is a game from the early days but I tell you what it oozes a lot of charm...
It was pretty much standard arcade gaming fayre. Each wave attacked with ships of five, and there were also indestructable meteors making random paths downwards which you had to avoid. These meteors would sometimes 'stick' to the bottom area of the screen for a short while.
You could move your ship to the left or right and also fire a single shot upwards. Each enemy ship shot would rapidly fall downwards making you have to shoot and move quickly. There was no room for sticking around and it was fast paced action all the way.
A neat feature in this game was the firing action. You could press the fire button and hold it - which allowed your 'shot' to hover above the nose of your craft until you released the fire button.
This added a little bit of handy tactics to the game as those alien nasties moved around the screen at rapid speed.
All in all this is a very simple game that is fun for a while. It plays really well and you need quicker reflexes than 'The Flash' to do well.
Give it a go - it's a testament to the real early days of ZX Spectrum gaming.
GENRE: Arcade Game
RELEASE DATE: Early 1984
RELEASED BY: Perfection Software then re-released by Softstone
DEVELOPER(S): Tim Williams and Chris Jones
PRICE: £5.50 then £4.95 - UK
This is classic arcade action from the early days:
1 comment:
Love these early games.
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