Reviews

Bi-Horizontal Space Shooter placed in a series of monochrome worlds where it's almost impossible telling bullets and aliens
from the background. Watch your back: some of the nasties look like suppositories. Collect coins
left by the destroyed aliens in order to gain power up's. Bonus interlude among the levels.
2,5/5


128k version has improved sound.

This is a game I was always intrigued by back in the day. I remember seeing the ad for it in CRASH! But never actually seeing any screenshots of the game, or ever reading a review for it. I forgot about it for 30 years, and the memory faded into obscurity somewhere in the dirty dark pits of my subconscious....That is until today.

I was messing around with the infoseek on World of Spectrum, and I saw the inlay artwork for this game, and thought to myself I remember seeing that in CRASH! years, and years ago, but never knew what it was about.

My thirst for knowledge was about to be slaked by bitter truth....Never expect a game you thought looked interesting 30 years ago to live up to your expectations....

Upon loading I was greeted with poor presentation, and no idea what was going on I hammered lots of buttons, and the game started...froze. I pressed space which was the fire button, and things started happening. Fortunately for me the keys were O,P,Q,A, and SPACE by default, so instant accessibility at least. I was curious the game instantly reminded me of Sega's Fantasy Zone....and that is where it went wrong.

The enemy Behaviour patterns reminded me of Sega's Fantasy Zone, the backgrounds reminded me of Sega's Fantasy Zone.

So basically this game is what's classically known as piss poor budget game quality Fantasy Zone rip-off of Sega's Fantasy Zone. I knew instantly looking at the backgrounds style of blockiness, and cruddy dithering that I was looking at lazily ported graphics from the C64 version.

The enemy bullets are basically bubbles, at first I collided with one as I thought it was a pickup that had been dropped for shooting a wave of enemies, and died. When I did discover the pickups they look practically the same, but they're not filled, these after you grab a few give you a powerup. The powerups don't last too long, but after getting the same one 2 or 3 times a balloon type thing with a "B" on it floats down from the top of the screen, just like the shop does in GFantasy Zone when you pick up a certain amount of money.

Now I did a little research after I found this game my brain forgot, and noticed on the ad that the game even boasted the "Wide Beam" as a powerup, this is what's classically known as the "Boss Killer" in Fantasy Zone. So I'm thinking to myself alright cool. You have 8 pics on the bottom of the screen which represent powerups I think, the last one is a big ship, that looks nothing like yours. I was wondering if it's once you collect a certain amount of powerup things the boss appears? Nope I'm assuming it's the extra ship...

I fly up into the B I mentioned earlier, and I'm taken to the bonus stage, so I see lots and lots of what looks like the enemies shots coming at me, so I start shooting, my shots are destroying them, and my score is rising, so I just keep going. With how inconsistent this game is, I was wondering if I was supposed to collect them? But since my shots were destroying them and I was gaining points, I just kept doing that. After what seemed like forever it just stopped, and "Level 2" started.

Now I'm feeling disappointed, and glad I never actually got excited about this game back in 1987 because if I had of I'd have been REALLY FUCKING ANNOYED!!!!!

This game is total bollocks! They ripped off a great game took all that was great about it and turned it into a budget game that just so happened to cost £8.99. Coupled with the fact that the backgrounds as mentioned above are crap cut n' pastes of a fucking Commode game boils my piss no end! What's funny is as well if you look at the CPC version they barely even tried to hide the fact they ripped of Fantasy Zone, the ship on that game looks practically the same as Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone.

What annoys me all the more is now that I think back I think the Speccy could have done a pretty functional version of Fantasy Zone if they'd adopted the Master System versions style, and done away with the vertical scrolling, and just stuck to bi-horizontal.

I may be being harsh since I've waited 30 years to play this game, but probably not, there's a lot of hidden gems I missed on the Speccy from years gone by, that I think to myself "I can't believe I missed this first time around! I'd have loved it back then!".

So no sympathy for this fucking shit! Terrible game, lazy C64 graphics, so really from their track record Reaktor Software hasn't really done anything different. Infact screw what I said about this being Budget game quality, this should've been a magazine Covertape game, that's a little fairer, but still a bit too generous really!

The cassette inlays boasts "a psychedelic experience" but it's nothing more than a pretty lackluster shooter to say the least. Not much charm, not much enjoyment, not much fun. And they were charging £9 for this as well, ouch.