ZX Spectrum Games - The Empire Fights Back - Classic ZX Spectrum Game

The Empire Fights Back
This cult classic game was yet another budget offering from the kings of cheapo gaming, Mastertronic.

It was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1985 and this was around the time that the company began to shake off the 'Masterchronic' moniker and put out some playable games for a mere £1.99.

I remember picking this one up from the budget stand in Kingmoor post-office and getting a fair amount of playing time out of it. It has to go down as having one of the most misleading titles and pieces of cover art ever though!

The Empire Fights Back cassette sleeve looked awesome 

So, the game has nothing to do with Star Wars and has little to do with flying through space in a cool looking ship taking on the might of the so-called Empire. In fact, you were on the side of the empire who were actually 'the good guys'.

As the story in the inlay went...
'Three intergalactic wars during the past millenium have weakened the Empire which is now fighting to regain it's power and status. A rebel colony of mutants have taken over an old warship and are seeding the galaxy with deadly space mines in an attempt to gain control over the Empire. You have been selected to pilot the miniature space craft 'Air Wolf 2000' and must enter the massive space mines to disable their control cores. Unfortunately, you have limited energy, so during your trips to the space mines try to avoid contact with the meteorites and stay on course (centre of the radar scanner). Inside the mines you must control your own robot and can only survive by understanding the movement patterns of the service drones. Select which of the five mines to tackle first but beware of the fifth, it is linked to the other four and you need to conquer these first to open all channels.'

The Empire Fights Back Loading Screen

As you can see the aim of the game is fairly simple, you must fly through space to five mines and shut them down.

Parts of the fifth mine are inaccessible until you have shut down the first four meaning you have to shut down mines one to four first.

What you have is an arcade game which consists of multiple mini-games.

Flying through space was portrayed via a very poor 3D section which looked pretty cool in the static images on the cassette sleeve. Seeing those graphics move soon shattered any space-bound asteroid dodging illusions you may have had though!

Getting through the mines is tricky and requires plenty of patience. To get through the mines you need to find a suitable bolt-hole from where you can observe the enemy droids moving around before moving to the next suitable hidey-hole.

 Once you shut down the core it's time for a cuppa before heading on to the next mine. Shut down all five and you have won the battle, no doubt to return home and be given a medal by an attractive princess in front of hundreds of troops and a couple of old timers.

The garish mine in The Empire Fights Back

GENRE: Arcade Game
RELEASE DATE: 1985
RELEASED BY: Mastertronic
DEVELOPER(S): Clive Brooker
PRICE: £1.99

Classic Arcade Action:


Classic Games, Arcade Games and ZX Spectrum Games

ZX Spectrum Game - Earthlight - ZX Spectrum retro game

ZX Spectrum Earthlight
Good old Pete Cooke and Ian Ellery who had previously collaborated on excellent 3D arcade games such as Academy and Tau Ceti came up with another winner for the ZX Spectrum yet again with this classic arcade game.

Pete Cooke was known as a 3D specialist and would port the Commodore Amiga classic game Stunt Car Racer to the ZX Spectrum in 1989.

But enough of the incidental information, Earthlight was released in the summer of 1988 by Firebird software to high praise and numerous accoldades.


As soon as the game loaded up you just knew it was going to be good. The nice 'earth rise' loading screen came to life. The games title 'shimmered' as a nice roll-over effect moved from left to right across each letter. All in all, extremely cool.

Moving into the games option screens saw something very similar to a mouse pointer to choose start levels, control method and so on. Once again, pretty smart stuff (especially for the ZX Spectrum) and a little bit ahead of it's time.

The impressive title screen in this classic arcade game:



Anyway, like any good arcade game - this one had an imaginative back story.

An alien named Slaatn was on a routine intergalactic garbage collecting mission. Without warning he was drawn off course by a strong force coming from the direction of Earth and was forced to make a hasty emergency landing on the moon. The Slaatn had landed.

Alone on the airless world, Slaatn had only one chance of escape: Neutralise the moon's box transmitters and eliminate the offending force field. If only Obi-Wan had been around to do this for him....

The game took place over four levels, each of which was divided into eight zones. These zones could be tackled in any order. For some reason the moon's surface was a smooth chequered pattern - but it was pitted with the odd crater and other obstacles.

Planet earth could be seen hanging in space in the background, smoothly rotating at a speed that meant a day would last around two seconds!

Anyway, using a stolen saucer like craft you had to skim the moon's surface and collect each and every one of these box transmitters. Your craft could move left and right and had a nice and quick top speed. The screen would smoothly scroll as you skimmed along - with impressive parallax perspective as you went.

Your craft could also increase and decrease in height which was useful for avoiding tall structures on the surface. It was also equiped with a finite supply of missiles - and you needed them to take out enemy craft which were out to stop you. Colliding with an alien craft or a structure on the surface reduced your ships shields - and if the shield was fully depleted then you lost one of your three lives.

But the real trick to this game was the 3D effect. You could move the craft 'in' and 'out' of the screen - meaning you could move further 'away' from your own viewpoint. The ship decreased in size perfectly as you moved away - and increased again as you moved 'towards' your viewpoint. You could pull some pretty impressive moves as you skimmed along, climbing and weaving in and out of the moon's obstacles.

To clear a zone you had to collect all the transmitters and clearing all eight zones meant you moved to the next level. You always had to keep and eye on fuel though as running out meant the loss of a life...

On Release:
When Earthlight was released ZX Spectrum gamers were impressed with the polished presentation, the games options (you could configure the game by changing level colours etc) and the fact that it was something a little different. The parallax perspective effect was brilliant and the fact that you cold move in and out of the parallax 'area' added depth (no pun intended) to the gameplay. Requiring brains as well as brawn, Earthlight proved that good games were still being made for the Speccy in 1988. At £7.95 is was great value for money too.

The test of time:
This classic game is still playable - no question. Once you get the hang of the controls you realise what a fun game it is. Here in Spectrum games your humble reviewer here has been playing it regularly for the last couple of days. Because you have to think a fair bit and conserve your fuel and missiles it hasn't dated as much as some other shoot em up's from the 80's. A nice and playable arcade classic.

Come on, it's a marvellous night for a moon-dance. Let youself get carried away by a moonlight shadow. Take a giant leap...

We recommend getting hold of the real Sinclair hardware but if not then download a ZX Spectrum emulator and download this game. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

GENRE: Arcade Game (Shoot em up)
RELEASE DATE: June of 1988
RELEASED BY: Firebird Software
DEVELOPER(S): Pete Cooke and Ian Ellery
PRICE: £7.95 - UK

Impressive programming in this classic arcade game


Arcade Games, Classic Games and ZX Spectrum Games

ZX Spectrum Game - The Empire Strikes Back - ZX Spectrum retro game

ZX Spectrum The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back was another wireframe 3D arcade game released by Domark for the ZX Spectrum.

The developers of the game were the famous name in 3D gaming, Vector Grafix, who had also developed the Star Wars arcade game on the ZX Spectrum.

For people who were familiar with the original Star Wars game, Empire was created in a similar style, using the settings of the movie within the game.

As nearly everyone in the world (and in Galaxies far far away) are familiar with the movie, there is no need to dig deep into the plot details. Especially considering Empire was the best of ALL of the Star Wars movies eh? ;-)

The Empire Strikes Back on the ZX Spectrum took place over four levels which roughly spanned the movie.

On the first level, you took control of a landspeeder and flew over the surface of the ice planet Hoth. Imperial probe droids were scouting around and you had to destroy them and any transmissions they relayed (viewed as wireframe 'signals' rising skywards). The probots would shoot back at you, and any fireballs hitting you would deplete your shields. Blasting enough droids would move you onto level two.

The second stage had you piloting a snowspeeder once again. This time you had to take down Imperial walkers (both the AT-AT and AT-ST types) using the same methods used in the movie by Luke, Wedge and co. It took a fair bit of practice to fly through the legs of the walkers and deploy your tow cables to entagle their legs and bring them down. Success in stage two moved you onto stage three.

Stage three now had you flying the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the Millenium Falcon. Manning the laser cannon you had to blast away at the swarms of tie fighters that were intent on blasting you straight back to Correllia. You had to shoot away at the enemy tie's and their fireballs and ensure that the Falcon was not destroyed. Keeping the Falcon intact led you into....


The asteroid field. Lazer bolts were ineffective agianst asteroids, so you had to use your piloting skills to weave in and around the rocks. Any collision would deplete your shields, so fancy flying was the only way to survive this. The aim was to make it to the large rock (as in the movie) and to safety. Once this had been achieved the four levels were completed and the game would start again with the difficulty level increased.

There were bonuses to be had during the game; extra points could be earned by destroying a specific number of enemy targets and letters were also awarded along with the bonus points. If you managed to spell out JEDI then you were given invincibity against all enemies for a period of time.

On Release:
When The Empire Strikes Back was released on the Speccy it was nothing new in concept - there were plenty of good wireframe arcade games already for the ZX Spectrum. However the graphics were pretty smooth and the large imperial walkers were pretty impressive. The game appealed to fans of 3D vector graphic games and fans of the Star Wars movies. Empire was fun and playable and was regarded as a good movie tie-in, which was not always the case with official licensed games. £9.99 was a tad steep, but official licensed games usually got away with charging a little extra.

The test of time:
Here in the land of Spectrum games we reckon that The Empire Strikes Back is definately a product of it's era. By the late 80's vector graphic arcade games were commonplace and this title did not really stand out from the crowd. However, the game is very simple to play, and can be quite fun. It is pretty easy to work your way through the four levels, gathering the bonus and JEDI powerup is the real challenge. The Empire Strikes Back is a good way to fill in a spare bit of time. Not quite a classic game - it is decent enough.

So, stick on the movie and give this one a go - but remember the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.

We recommend getting hold of the real hardware but if not then download a ZX Spectrum emulator and download The Empire Strikes Back for the ZX Spectrum. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

GENRE: Wireframe arcade game
RELEASE DATE: July of 1984
RELEASED BY: Domark
DEVELOPER(S): Vektor Grafix (George Iwanow)
PRICE: £9.99 - UK

Luke gives Chewie a Han in classic arcade action:

Classic Games, Arcade Games and ZX Spectrum Games

ZX Spectrum Game - Exolon - ZX Spectrum retro game

ZX Spectrum Exolon
This classic game was yet another quality release by Hewson Consultants - who were becoming one of the leaders in pushing the limitations of the ZX Spectum further and further.

One of their previous game Technician Ted had been a great technical achievement, and this game with it's large colour graphics and smooth animation proved that more and more could be squeezed out of the humble ZX Spectrum.

Exolon was an arcade game with a difference.



Exolon Loads Up

 The aim of the game was to fight your way (from left to right in classic arcade fashion) through four levels of 25 screens, making a grand total of 100 screens to conquer.

The alien world you were placed in was infested with rotund attackers released from 'birth pods', homing missiles, exploding mines, accelerating space lice and crushing hydraulic plungers.

For protection (and for killing!), your character carried a blaster to destroy the lesser thin-skinned aliens and the laser-beam barriers.

Great use of colour in Exolon

You were also armed with homing grenades that were able to destroy stronger creatures, machinery, obstructing pieces of landscape and a pulse bomb that disrupted enemy security systems (rather like an EMP). It was all classic arcade game weaponry.

Blaster ammunition and grenades were replenished on the loss of a life, but extra ammunition could be collected from supplies that were lying around the landscape.

For additional safety and kill-a-bility, walking through a dressing unit 'clothed' you in an armoured exoskeleton, giving you have extra blasting power and protection against ground mines and even some aliens.

If you were wearing this suit on the completion of a level your bravery bonus was decreased. It was worth it for the fun to be had in this 'super suit'.
Teleport pods were also dotted around the screens allowing you to 'jump' to higher ledges and collect various items. This also made for more than one route through some of the screens - it was up to you to find out which way was the easiest.

With 100 screens to fight through, this title was a tough nut to crack... A classic arcade game.

On Release:
Exolon was praised highly when it came out in July 1987. Gamers marvelled at the large and well animated main character and the colourful and imaginative landscape. The homing 'fire and forget' grenades were pretty cool too, and the optional exoskeleton you could use was brilliant. It was awarded a Crash Smash award which usually helped games to sell more copies. Fans of shoot em ups and arcade games loved it. The price of £7.95 was more than reasonable for a game of this quality.

The test of time:
Here in the land of Spectrum games we reckon that this game should be regarded as a classic ZX Spectrum title. It is still playable, and firing the homing grenades almost brings out the same level of amazement from when you first saw it. The varied colours (with little attribute clash) are a site to behold. Raise a toast to Hewson and Raffaele Cecco.

We recommend getting hold of the real hardware - but if not then download a Spectrum emulator and download Exolon for the ZX Spectrum. Alternatively you could try and play it online.
Give it a go, it is Exol-ent

GENRE: Platform Game (Arcade Game)
RELEASE DATE: July 1987
RELEASED BY: Hewson Consultants
DEVELOPER(S): Raffaele Cecco, Nigel Brownjohn, Nick Jones
PRICE: £7.95 - UK

Our man blasts through the alien world in this classic arcade game:

Classic Games, Arcade Games and ZX Spectrum Games