Reviews

A variation on Scramble, Penetrator provided hours of entertainment for me when it came out and can still provide some enjoyment now.
It took about 5 years before any horizontal SEU could seriously challenge Penetrator on the Spectrum.
The level editor also gave the game an extended lifespan.

Before the Spectrum even existed, Penetrator started life as a game for the TRS80. Based on the arcade hit Scramble, you flew over a 2D scrolling landscape and came under attack from missiles. Radar stations on the ground would track your progress and, unless you could destroy them, improve the accuracy of the missiles. If you could progress through four levels, you'd get a crack at the enemy missile base.

The Spectrum version improved vastly on the rudimentary graphics of the TRS80 with smoothly moving sprites and a wireframe landscape. You also got a pretty fireworks display if you could destroy the missile base.

A particularly neat touch was the inclusion of both a trainer and an editor. The former allowed you to practice any of the levels individually (including the fifth with the missile base although the option isn't displayed on the screen) and the latter let you change the landscape as well as the position of the missiles and radars on the first four levels.

Despite being an early release, this remained the definitive scrolling shooter for quite a few years until the arrival of games like Zynaps and R-Type. However, with the unique feature of the editor it never went totally out of favour.

This is a rare classic that truly stood the test of time.

Very good scramble clone this. A pretty early speccy game, and one of the first to show what a 48k machine could really do.
Plays pretty well, sounds great, and the ability to build your own levels, and the firework display, kept me coming back for more.

Penetrator was one of the first games I ever played on the ZX Spectrum.

The game was a smooth scrolling Scramble type game scrolling from right to left.

The game had you has a cyan spaceship which could fire missiles and drop bombs at targets on a jagged terrain.

The aliens were basically missiles, radars and a funny looking face type space-craft in the later levels. From memory I think there were four levels with a training mode and a design your own level mode.

The more radars on the screen made the aliens missiles more accurate and the game was fast paced and very playable.

The game didn't have joystick compability with the Kempston joystick until Kempston bought out a tape which converted it to work. I remember the keys were odd to play the game but once you got used to them it worked ok!

Worth playing even today!

One of the best shooters that has ever existed if a little too hard for me.

Nice sound , nice graphics , nice atmosphere , nice movements , nice landscapes, nice fx , nice colours ... everything is nice in this masterpiece.

The title screen is one that catched my imagination from the beginning and that impressed my memory all over the years.

Penetrator is a masterpiece of 8-bits early software.

Our spaceship can shoot two sorts of bullets which makes it all much more complex and fun. Destroy the enemy´s radars and rockets and leave no trace ...

I don´t give this gem a 5 because, as I said before, it is just too difficult for my taste. Otherwise Penetrator got all the qualities for being awarded with a 5 ... : )

4,5 for me .

1983 Melbourne House (UK)
by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler

This game is a real bomb, and it starts magnificently with fireworks, at the time one of the most impressive fx's anyone had seen.
And who cares if the graphics are simple and outdated, who needs fancy graphics when what makes you play a game it's is playability?
Superb action, great sound, the years go by and it's still addictive. You just cant go wrong with this shoot 'em up.
Who needs 'R-Type'?

Great game with a mix of good sounds, simple but effective graphics and a great gameplay. An excellent conversion of the classic arcade game.

This would be a competent Scramble clone were it not for the excruciatingly bad controls. Whoever heard of a scrollling shoot-em-up where the same key acts as forward and fire! The pit at the end of the red stage is also terribly difficult to hit, considering that bombs do not follow a straight direction but seem to fall erratically.

I always thought Penetrator was overrated as everyone else seems to rave about it, and I don't. The absurd key choice is an example of plain bad game design.