Reviews

It's got some great level design, a wicked sense of humour and where other games just haven't stood the test of time it's aged very gracefully thanks to the emphasis on playability.

Looking back though, this really pushed the envelope when it was first released. A lot of good Spectrum games were still written in BASIC at the time and even the machine code efforts were mostly clones of arcade machines with just a few different levels. A game with twenty unique screens, as opposed to randomly generated ones, seemed enormous at the time.

If there's a downside, it's that it can be very unforgiving. Even the Central Cavern isn't that easy to get through for a novice, but once you've cracked it there'll be no stopping you until you've seen the Final Barrier.

An iconic game and deservedly so.

As far as D&D style games go, this is about as good as they got on any 8-bit machine. You choose your team of six characters from various kinds of fighters, magic users and the all-important bard who is vital to the party as your only healer to begin with.

There are a huge number of maps, all quite large, filled with monsters and treasures, and some of the later ones are insanely difficult; designed to frustrate your best attempts at mapping them with spinners and teleports all over the place. As you play, a storyline begins to emerge which eventually leads to a suitably dramatic conclusion.

That said, I'll have to knock a point off as the Spectrum version has lacklustre graphics and no sound making it very much the poor relation of them all. It's also a multi-load from hell, which isn't so bad if you've got the +3 version or are playing it on an emulator, but the tape version isn't for the faint hearted.

Recommended, but only if you've got plenty of time to give it.

A nice game that fuses the genres of platformer and beat 'em up to make something a little better than the sum of its parts might suggest. It's fun to explore the new areas that you can find and fend off occasional attacks from the ninja and Green Yamo along the way.

Despite being a conversion from the Atari 8-bit/Commodore 64 originals, the Spectrum version holds up nicely with some good work on the graphics playing to the machine's strengths.

With only twenty screens though, and nothing of the challenge that Manic Miner offers with the same number, it inevitably becomes too easy.

For those looking for a sterner challenge along the same lines, Saboteur and its sequel come highly recommended.

Coming out a few months after Knight Lore this was yet another case of Ultimate re-using an innovative game engine.

Still, as well as the obvious graphical makeover, the game does have enough of its own character not to be totally lost in its predecessor's shadow. Instead of collecting items to bring to a particular position, there are a whole host of different sockets that need to be filled in with a particular type of plug. This makes small sections of the game easier to complete, but the whole thing is a much bigger challenge. There are a number of other nice gameplay touches that add to the fun, such as remote controlled robots that can be used to clear away mines.

The bottom line is that, whilst it is very much "Knight Lore In Space", it's still enough of a game in its own right to be worth a look.

Following the earlier tradition of Bruce Lee this is a game that mixes both a bit of martial arts and platform arcade adventure. However, where the earlier game rapidly becomes an easy plod, Saboteur has a vast playing area with a warehouse linked to underground complexes via rail tunnels from which you must recover a computer disk and escape via a helicopter. There are some guards who are relatively easy to dispatch and some vicious dogs who will slow you down and presumably set the RSPCA onto you if you try to kill them.

Although not terribly original, the whole thing comes together very well to make one of the most memorable arcade adventures for the Spectrum. With nine levels of difficulty and a large map to explore, there's plenty of replay value too for once you've finished it.

This is a worthy sequel to the classic Quazatron, and retains most of what was good about the original whilst doing away with the notoriously stuttering scrolling and adding an extra touch of colour to the backgrounds.

However, the game still manages to lose a few of the elements that made Quazatron great: the circuit sub-game is gone, replaced by a sliding puzzle one; the playing areas are much smaller being single screen, although there are many more of them; and you don't get to pick and choose your equipment but merely get whatever the robot you defeated had.

Once you've swallowed those three backwards steps, it's not a bad game at all though.

I've got fond memories of playing this Defender clone on my, then new, 16K Spectrum back in 1982 but it's not aged very gracefully.

Most of the features of the original game are in there, although a couple of things missing are Baiters and the ability to inadvertently shoot the humans you're protecting. However, the game is let down by rudimentary graphics; there's a fair amount of flicker, jerky scrolling and everything moves in exact character squares.

So, unless you've got particularly rose-tinted retro-spectacles it's not really worth the effort. Invasion of The Body Snatchas and Guardian II both offer far superior conversions of the arcade original too.

This sleeper hit was one of the initial Firebird Silver releases.

The rules are pretty simple which makes it easy to get to grips with, but like all good strategy games there are certain subtleties that you'll only pick up with a lot of practice; the basic Viking warriors are the bulk of your force and necessary to capture castles, but catapults can be devastatingly powerful with accurate supporting fire and boats, although an expensive gamble, can allow you to outflank opponents and break out of an isolated corner.

Don't be fooled by the primitive graphics and obvious use of BASIC here; this is a fun strategy game, especially so with multiple players.

Track and Field was big in the arcades at the time, and there had already been a few lacklustre attempts to clone it on the Spectrum, but this game blew them all away in terms of playability and graphics.

To be critical, there are a few graphical glitches, a spot of flicker, and Daley himself is white. There's also a lack of variety in the events, most of which involve some serious button bashing which no doubt killed a few keyboards. However, the high jump, pole vault and 1500m do serve to test your skill a bit too.

There were better sports games to come for the Spectrum, but this still ruled the roost for a year or so upon its release.

Whilst the honour of being the very first isometric arcade adventure on the Spectrum goes to the earlier Ant Attack this game was arguably even more revolutionary with a 3D landscape where you could interact with some memorable puzzles involving objects that need to be positioned, moving platforms and the like.

Being a pioneer in the genre isn't all good though and Knight Lore suffers a little from lacking the sort of positional cues that later games such as Head Over Heels add to stop you misjudging the depth. There are also a few nasty moments where even knowing precisely what to do will not necessarily save you from an undeserved death. Mercifully though, neither issue is a game killer and an experienced player can easy restock lives lost from the copious bonus ones to be found.

The graphics are the usual top draw mixture of cuteness and artistry that you'd expect from an Ultimate game of this period, and the neat touches of animation add greatly to the atmosphere of the game.

Nearly all the Ultimate games up to this point are iconic to some extent, but this is one that still stands out as something beyond that. An indisputable classic.

Although Elite likes to pretend that there's a whole universe out there to explore, it's mostly just an illusion, and whether you like the game is largely going to come down to whether you buy it or not. All the planets look the same and once you've seen (and shot) each kind of ship and picked up all the equipment, it's just a long slog to get to Elite status with only the three "secret" missions to relieve the tedium along the way.

Torus did a pretty good job of converting this game to the Spectrum, but the resulting game departs a fair bit from the BBC original and carries their own stamp; on the whole I'd say that it looks nicer, but doesn't play quite so well.

Overall, it's a good game but not quite the be all and end all of 3D space games for the Spectrum.

The influence of the Ultimate games such as Knight Lore is obvious, although Head Over Heels improves on their game mechanics in several subtle fashions; there's little evidence of slowdown in busy rooms and intelligent use of depth cues makes it less likely to completely misjudge the position of objects in 3D space.

Jon Ritman's excellent programming and game design is perfectly complemented by Bernie Drummond graphics which managed to achieve the unique feat of out-cuting Ultimate with some superb design work. It's a big game, and requires much mapping and practice to complete, but it's largely a fair one and well worth the effort.

Head Over Heels represents the plateau of isometric arcade adventures started by Ant Attack four years earlier. That its achievements are largely evolutionary rather than revolutionary shouldn't take anything away from that.

This sequel does a fairly good job of sorting out the flaws of the earlier game, but it's still some way off the mark as far as computer football games go.

Yes, it's amongst the most popular ones for the Spectrum, but against near contemporaries such as Microprose Soccer on the C64 and Kick Off on the 16-bits it's decidedly pedestrian.

Ball control is a bit more intuitive and the computer opponent isn't a complete dead loss, but realistically you're going to need a human opponent on hand to get anything much out of the gameplay.

About as good as football games got on the Spectrum, but that's not really saying much.

This is a decent beat 'em up and a worthy follow-up to the earlier Renegade, and the high point in the series before the disappointment of Renegade 3.

The Spectrum's inability to handle multicoloured sprites inevitably makes it look a bit drab compared to the better fighting games on other formats at the time. Still, even when there are plenty of big sprites on screen it all moves pretty quickly and it's well programmed within the limitations of the hardware.

In gameplay terms it's pretty good too; you've got a good selection of moves and can even work combos on multiple enemies sometimes. However, they're all quite easily dispatched once you work out which moves they're most vulnerable to and you can even go quite a long way on the flying kick alone, so it's perhaps a little lacking in terms of variety.

On the whole it's a pretty good game, and easily amongst the better beat 'em ups, but it just comes across as trying to do too much with a genre that the Spectrum isn't particularly well suited to.

Released just a few years before the Cold War came to an end this game had an interesting scenario; a war in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. It's initially a conventional conflict, although things can rapidly escalate into nuclear Armageddon.

Like many other PSS wargames of the time, there's an arcade sub-game which you will almost certainly just play the once to see how bad it is before disabling it entirely.

Personally, I'd have preferred the space to have been devoted to a multi-screen map, but I'd guess it was just a reality of the day that pure strategy games generally didn't sell.

It's an OK game, passable for its time, but has neither the beautiful simplicity of the likes of Chaos or Viking Raiders or the complexity and historical accuracy of Arnhem or Desert Rats.

This is an early game from Microsphere who later went on to become a household name amongst Spectrum owners with such greats as Wheelie, Skool Daze and Skyranger.

The game is about a rabbit hunting for carrots in a farmer's field. The mechanics of it all are fairly simple; you need to move quickly to avoid being shot, but can only enter squares with the same colour as the one you're currently in.

Sometimes you just can't go where you want to and the game becomes a choice of whether to wait, and risk the farmer's gun, or to scamper off in the wrong direction. The first few attempts are likely to be frustrating, but once you get the hang it's a unique and enjoyable game.

It's not much to look at, but for a 1982 release would have been perfectly acceptable. Not bad for its time.

A nice follow-up to Sweevo's world. There's an underwater theme to everything and a great Rob Hubbard soundtrack, but it's essentially more of the same; a mixture of logical puzzles, atrocious puns and about the usual level of inscrutability you'd expect from Gargoyle/FTL.

Overall, it's not particularly novel and if you've not got a taste for isometric arcade adventures it's unlikely to convert you. However, if you do, it's pretty good fun.

In this early game from Imagine you play the part of an alchemist on a mission to defeat an evil warlock. Rather obviously, you'd stand no chance straight away, so you must travel around, gathering spells and useful items. You've got the ability to transform into an eagle which allows you to fly around, and yes, you do get an opportunity to transmute base metals into gold later in the game.

Despite having some big and bold graphics that have stood up quite nicely, it's not aged too well in terms of the gameplay. Although large for the time, the playing area is easily mapped and it suffers from jittery scrolling. Once you've found where everything is, there are only really a handful of puzzles to solve and as the objects and spells are always in the same places, there's little replay value once you've completed it.

This is probably one of those games where you had to be there at the time to appreciate it much. However, it remains memorable for the new ground it broke at the time.

You're on a rescue mission to save three astronauts on an alien planet. There are several different sections although not too much variety in the gameplay as they all involve some direction finding, occasionally mixed up with a bit of shooting alien predators or avoiding objects.

There's a mishmash of graphical effects used to create 3D effects. In some sections they work quite well, but in others they seem a bit superfluous to the gameplay. For instance, whilst descending into the atmosphere you focus your attention to keep a dot centred in a circle whilst largely ignoring the rest of the display.

All in all, It's a bit of an odd game. There's nothing else that looks or plays quite like it, yet it lacks any special spark to the gameplay that makes it stand out.

Loosely based on the arcade game Puzzle Bobble, but with a few twists, you've got to match up cannon balls in groups of three in order to clear the screen when they fall away. The mechanics are simple, but some of the levels have fiendish design and the random supply of cannon balls means they're unlikely to play the same twice. Learning how to get rid of balls that you cannot use immediately is a vital skill.

The game is presented with beautifully crafted graphics and some superb animation as you aim the cannon; you can see your crew frantically winching it back and forth. There's a catchy AY soundtrack too that will leave you humming it after a few games.

All in all this is a superb game that shows just how much potential there is to create quality new games for the Spectrum even now.

Where you can see most bad games at a glance and know not to bother with them, this little stinker from Mastertronic promises hidden depth, behind a total lack of instructions.

When trying to play the game, you'll almost get to the stage where you think you know what's going on and some random event will happen that either kills you off or throws you into a state of total uncertainty.

This is one of those legendary bad games that's so awful that it almost has a cult following.

In something of an usual move, Imagine software switched from their usual arcade-style fare for this real time strategy game.

You control an army of tanks, artillery and infantry. It's all point and click, but still takes a bit of time to get used to; units need to be resupplied very regularly and, in a bizarre twist, can be lost underwater if you order them to march into the river or sea. To win, you need to either eliminate all the enemy units or capture both their port and HQ whilst defending your own.

Despite a large map, with forest, swamps and hills dotted about it, the action tends to centre around the bridge across a wide river, which forms a natural choke point.

In the long run though there's not much to the game. There's only one scenario, the enemy strategy is the same every time, and the only difference between the two levels of play is whether you can see all the enemy units or just the ones close to your own.

It's definitely not the best war game on the Spectrum, but it was certainly one of the most innovative and influential early ones. Later games such as Arnhem and Desert Rats offer far more detail and realism though.

This is a game that I'll readily admit that I never played back in the day, although I was aware of it on other formats under the guise of Montezuma's Revenge.

The Spectrum port is competent enough. It's a bit smaller, and lacking in the variety and humour of Matthew Smith's games, but it was around early enough on other formats to have perhaps been an influence on Jet Set Willy. Certainly it bridges the gap between the purely sequential platformers and those that allow you to explore at will.

On the whole, not a bad game and I'm a bit surprised that it slipped out almost completely unnoticed at the time; none of the magazines appear to have reviewed it.

In something of a radical departure from their string of innovative graphical adventures, Gargoyle games re-branded themselves as FTL, and went back to their Ad Astra roots with this vertically scrolling shooter.

Graphically, it's a total riot. I don't think anyone had ever considered something so bold and colourful on the Spectrum in this particular genre before. The techniques used are pretty obvious; all the moving objects stick to exact attribute squares, and the outlandish designs and less than aerodynamic shapes are key to the illusion. Meanwhile the backgrounds slide along just enough overlap to cover any bleeding tiles and, although there is still some colour clash, it's all lost in the excitement.

As for the game itself, it's perhaps not everyone's idea of the ideal scrolling shooter. These were largely the days before power-ups, boss levels and so on. It's also relatively short with just four levels to see before you go round them all again. However, the difficulty is pitched such that even these are going to be a challenge that you can't just fly through on the seat of your pants. You've got to learn each section to get through, although there's just enough of a random element with the bullets to keep you on your toes.

Ultimately, it's very much an iconic game; proof that the Spectrum could still hold its own at a genre that, at first glance, it seemed totally unsuited to.

Ultimate's first game for the Spectrum arrived with a big fanfare and showed that a new company was here that really meant business, offering original games of true arcade quality for the machine.

It's a mixture of shooting, collecting and flying action with a few platforms in there to throw in a bit of extra uncertainty and offer a safe haven whilst you plan how to retrieve that trickily placed fuel tank, or just take a breather from the action.

Jetpac crams a fair amount in for a 16K game. There are eight different types of aliens to see, albeit with just five different movement patterns, and four spacecraft. This is essential in giving it that "one more level" factor. It's a game that, if you play it enough, will soon become easy enough to keep going at for as long as you want, but getting to that stage is fun enough.

Ultimate's next couple of games, Pssst and Cookie both offered variations on the theme, but the simplicity of Jetpac makes it more immediately attractive. They went on to better things with 48K to play with, but nobody ever topped this with a mere 16K.

Taking their inspiration from Ultimate's earlier isometric games such as Knight Lore, Denton Designs took a few different directions here. Rather than just have a series of what were essentially single room puzzles, they built up the atmosphere of an extensive prisoner of war camp where actions taken in one place can have a drastic outcome on what happens elsewhere.

This builds up a rather different atmosphere to the game where it gives you the impression, probably mostly illusory should anyone go so far as to look at the code, that even where you weren't looking there were still things going on.

There are a number of ways to solve the game, and you're free to follow any of them, picking up clues as you explore the camp whilst keeping on the right side of the guards.

Overall it's an excellent game; the links to the movie tie-in are tenuous, but one thing that they've both got in common is that they've stood the test of time well.

One of the very first games to be released for the, then new, ZX Spectrum in 1982, this established the legendary character of Horace; a blue blob with short arms, long legs and enormous eyes.

It's basically a Pac Man clone, although the maze is roughly themed after a park, instead of ghosts there is a purple faced guard, who will be joined with reinforcements if you linger too long. You don't need to collect all the dots to go to the next level, but there's a bell you can ring to frighten the guards that serves as a power pill.

Despite a good splash of colour, the game is marred somewhat by jerky movement; everything sticks to exact character squares. There's also some rather poor maze design on the latter levels where you'll need some luck as well as skill to get past the guards.

It might not have been a brilliant piece of programming that stretched the Spectrum to its limits, or a particularly original or well designed game, but it gave us something to play and talk about whilst the Spectrum games industry started to get into gear.

In a manner somewhat akin to a very primitive computer RPG, this game puts you into a giant maze populated by lots of monsters in a valiant bid to rescue the Princess Paula.

However, whilst it looks the part with some decent - if rather slow - graphics for the various monsters, it's not a particularly enthralling game. You'll need a lot of luck to get past the monsters to start with, although trial and error will eventually reveal some of their weaknesses.

Overall, it wasn't very good for its time and hasn't gotten any better with age. The 1983 vintage game Dungeon Master was a lot more fun, albeit without any graphics, and later games like Heavy On The Magick, the Bard's Tale and Bloodwych all built on the basics of the genre much more successfully.

The final part in Level 9's science fiction series The Silicon Dream Trilogy, this text adventure is set in the far future on the newly colonized planet of Eden. The city of Enoch on the planet has rapidly developed into a seemingly Utopian society, although not all is quite as it seems; there are rumours of aliens, secret societies and bizarre goings on in the sewers beneath the city.

As with the previous two games in the series there are a mind-boggling number of locations, although don't worry too much as most of these are algorithmically generated and once you figure out how, it's easy enough getting around. The game is fairly open; you can explore most of the city from the off, although certain areas only become available once you've gained particular item or piece of knowledge. These invariably have a habit of flipping your previous assumptions around in the process.

Taking inspiration from a wide variety of SF and fantasy sources (Farmer, Le Guin and Horwood all get a mention, to name but three) this is a multi-layered gem of a game. Although perhaps lacking the sophistication of an Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls parser, this is nonetheless about as sophisticated as the text adventure got.

For a brief few months, this was probably the best, non-management at least, football game for the Spectrum and, looking through rose-tinted spectacles, allowed you to live out your dreams as a football star on the screen.

That said, it was only by virtue of being the best of a poor bunch; the graphics were rather limited, being built up out of exact character squares, and much of the play - throw-ins, corners, and the goalkeeper entirely - were automated, limiting your skills to running, shooting and occasionally passing.

The game had essentially had its day when the superior, albeit not without flaws of its own, Match Day appeared. However, that didn't stop US Gold re-badging it as World Cup Carnival a couple of years later for one of the most cynical marketing cash-ins in the Spectrum's history.

Appearing quickly after Jetpac, this was Ultimate's second game for the Spectrum. In it, you play the role of a robot who has to protect a growing flower from an assortment of garden pests.

It follows the same graphical style as Jetpac and there are some recognizably similar elements to the gameplay; you wander around the screen, pick things up, and shoot sideways at a lot of baddies. On the downside, they ditched the sensible keyboard layout of Jetpac for the cramped one that characterized a number of the games that followed.

However, there are a couple of nice touches that give it a bit of variety. You've got three weapons to choose from and, depending on the enemy, they might kill, stun or have no effect, so rapidly switching between them is necessary. It all starts off fairly simple, but as soon as you get multiple types of enemy it can become rather frantic.

All in all, another excellent early game from Ultimate, and still amongst the best that you can run on a 16K Spectrum.

An anti-matter plant is about to go critical and you've got to dash to the rescue aboard your hovercraft in order to save the planet. Although graphically very impressive with its multi-directional scrolling and Dune-themed, complete with sandworms, desert-scapes this game just isn't very well balanced.

For the first few sectors you've got to inch forward at a crawl, simply because moving at full speed doesn't leave you with enough reaction time to avoid anything that's in your path - particularly irritating when you come across mines that will kill you instantly - and you'll also come under fire from various directions. Not to worry though, as the early enemies can't hurt you much and even if your hovercraft is destroyed, you'll still get to wander around with a handy jet pack to find another one.

The game basically turns on whether, by luck or skill, you can shoot out a tower and nip through a gap whilst a forcefield is down. Fluff it and lose your hovercraft and, on this level, you'll get swamped by aliens before you can find another one. This all makes it rather frustrating and rather spoils what was a promising game otherwise. Still, at least the title music is nice.

Hot on the heels of Bob Geldof's Band Aid and Live Aid, this compilation represented the burgeoning software industry's response to the African famine. Priced attractively at £4.95 and with the profits going to such a good cause, it was always going to be a winner, but the selection of games made it rather special too.

With a mixture of then recent releases (Gilligan's Gold, Kokotoni Wilf, 3D Tank Duel, Starbike and Spellbound) and old favourites (The Pyramid, Ant Attack and Horace Goes Skiing) there was definitely something for everyone. Only the egregious Jack and The Beanstalk and the lacklustre Sorcery let the second side down a bit.

This was definitely a must-have at the time, and one of the most memorable compilations of the Spectrum's commercial era.

At first glance this game resembles a fantasy version of chess; you've got numerous pieces on a chequered board, a complex set of rules to govern movement and various spells which can be cast to add to the strategic element. However, when a piece is taken it launches into an arcade style combat sub-game neatly throwing out any attempts to easily categorize it.

As a one player game it's fun for a bit, at least once you've gotten good enough at the sub-game not to be beaten every time, but it begins to suffer when you get too good at it; when you're good enough to win nearly all the combat, the strategy element of the game stops mattering too much as you will still almost certainly win the game regardless.

However, as a two-player game between well matched opponents it's got a bit more staying power. The Spectrum conversion comes off a bit weak against the Atari 8-bit original though, so that's probably the one to hunt down if you want to see the game at its best.

Ultimate's third game is basically yet another variation on the first two; Jetpac and Pssst. However, instead of building a rocket or growing a plant, this time you're trying to make a cake.

The problems are twofold; firstly, the ingredients aren't being very co-operative and need to be bashed into the mixing bowl. Secondly there's a creature lurking in the bins, that incidentally bears a resemblance to Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, trying to foul up the mix by throwing the wrong things into the mix.

It's yet another good 16K game from Ultimate, but they started to show signs that they were somewhat prone to rehashing their previous hits to make a new game. Cookie has enough of an identity of its own to still stand out, but only just.

With Ultimate's fourth game they finally broke away from the move and shoot mould with this multiway scrolling driving game. You have to drive across a, fairly sparse and abstract, map of the USA picking up a set of cups, avoiding crashes and making frequent fuel stops along the way.

Instead of blasting away at your enemies, you instead have to avoid them here as two cars will come racing after you and try to crash into you. Making a tight turn or forcing them to crash into the scenery will buy you a little time, but they'll be on your tail again soon. It's quite a challenge to collect all the cups under this pressure, but not an impossible one. The main drawback is that it's all too easy to end up crashing into a piece of scenery as your reactions need to be very quick given the small size of the visible area.

Whilst it was a significant departure from their previous work, and quite an original idea generally, Tranz Am just doesn't quite have the same addictive quality as Jetpac. It's still one of the best 16K games around, however.

Ultimate's fifth game finally saw them move away from the limitations of 16K to make a much larger game that used the full capabilities of the 48K machine.

Where Jetpac was essentially a one screen affair, Lunar Jetman has a massive scrolling play area. There's the buggy, a bomb, a teleport system, and an alien missile base that you need to destroy within a strict time limit. The buggy can also be augmented with a gun, although the trailer on the cover art is purely mythical.

The game also has more realistic physics with added inertia to the controls as well as the gravity effect of Jetpac. This does rather serve to steepen the learning curve though, and this is exacerbated by the limited fuel and the rapid reactions required to avoid aliens appearing at the edges of the screen.

All in all, despite the additions, it doesn't quite come together as nicely as the original Jetpac and where the earlier game held up nicely, the sequel has rather faded over time making it something of a flawed gem.

This was Ultimate's sixth game and one of their most successful. Going beyond their usual fare, up to this point, of arcade style action this game added some adventure elements to the mix. The game has the player trapped inside a castle, needing the key of ACG (in three parts) to escape. There were objects to pick up and use, and you got a choice of character each of which could use its own unique set of secret doors.

The castle had a rather impressive number of rooms for the time which necessitated making a map for the serious players. Finding small keys allows you to open doors and explore a larger area. In turn you'll eventually uncover the parts of the larger ACG key which will let you escape. There is one key in particular which requires a bit of lateral thinking to locate, making it one of the most ingenious puzzles of the game. Elsewhere there are a number of special creatures and items that can either destroy them or keep them at bay.

Once you've figured it all out, it's possible to complete the game in a relatively short amount of time, although there's still plenty of fun to be had in exploring the far corners of the map and finding all the specials. All in all, it's a highly influential game that spawned many clones, some of which were still being released a decade later at the end of the Spectrum's commercial life.

Ultimate's seventh game is largely a rehash of their sixth, Atic Atac. The setting is moved from a castle to a jungle, and instead of finding three parts of a key, you need to find four parts of an amulet. The junglescapes are beautifully rendered in colour, and somewhat reminiscent of those of the artist Henri Rousseau. There's also some beautiful animation of the creatures you come across and of Sabre Man's sword-fighting moves.

Many of the changes haven't been for the better however: There are far less in the way of interesting objects and special locations than Atic Atac, although there are a few subtleties in the way of magic orchids and hints from the natives as to where the amulet parts are located. Instead of losing energy when you're attacked you lose a life and you've also got to engage in hand to hand combat either left to right making it very difficult to go up and down when there are enemies in the way. Almost inevitably you'll get yourself into some situations where you'll lose a life; a curse that would afflict most of Ultimate's later games. However, with some perseverance bonus lives are to be found, and it's still very possible to complete the game.

Overall, it's not quite as good as Atic Atac, and certainly not worth the huge price hike that nearly doubled the price. Still, this is a cut above the bulk of the clones that came from other developers and very much an Ultimate classic.

Released at the same time as Knight Lore, this game also included the same character of Sabre Man. Sticking with the more conventional 2D graphics of their previous games, Underwurlde is a fast moving platformer with a similarly sized map to Sabre Wulf set in a massive complex of underground caverns.

There are some nice graphical and gameplay touches; you can rise up caverns on bubbles from volcanic vents and descend using a rope rather than just having to jump everywhere. Sabre Man can pick up a variety of weapons to combat the assorted monsters along the way, each of which can also dispatch a particular guardian opening up a new section. Unlike Sabre Wulf, you've got the advantage that the monsters can't kill you directly; however they can knock you over and if you fall far enough that will do the job for them just nicely.

But, there lies the game's big flaw; it's almost impossible to avoid being repeatedly knocked over by the monsters and even with a lot of practice, the amount of time you can survive for can be just a bit too random. Rather, you've got to trust to luck and picking up bonus lives to have a hope of finding the exits which lead to Knight Lore, Pentagram and the, never released, Mire Mare.

All in all it's a bit of a flawed gem by Ultimate's, albeit very high, standards. The graphics are great, and the gameplay is mostly very good too, but whether you'll enjoy it depends on how much of being bounced around like in a pinball machine you can handle.

After wowing us with the first couple of Filmation games, Ultimate developed a follow-on engine called, imaginatively enough, Filmation 2. Where Knight Lore and Alien 8 were essentially a collection of single room puzzles, this allowed for a large multiway scrolling maze and even a bit of colour in the backgrounds.

However, the price for this was that it had essentially lost the puzzle element of the earlier games. Rather, all you could do in Nightshade was wander around an absolutely enormous maze, pick up weapons and shoot at things. Once the novelty of the graphics has worn off, this becomes decidedly tedious and the game just becomes a map traversing exercise.

A bit of a backward step for Ultimate in terms of gameplay, despite some innovative graphics.

Following on from the disappointing Nightshade, this was the second and final Filmation 2 game. This was also, apparently, the final Spectrum game which the Stampers worked on and would have made a fitting swan song were it not for the four subsequent lacklustre releases on the label.

With the limitations of the, albeit graphically impressive, engine becoming apparent Ultimate stripped the gameplay down to the basics. You no longer had to hunt to find your enemies, as there were people who would point the way for you, and there was only one weapon; your trusty six shooter. This makes it a much more enjoyable and direct game, but still rather simplistic compared to Knight Lore, and even the earlier 2D games like Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf.

On the plus side though, it's one of the best looking Ultimate games and there are some great graphical touches, such as a panto horse you can use to speed up and protect you from collisions. It's also refreshingly free of the random unavoidable death element that blighted a number of other good Ultimate games.

After two games, Nightshade and Gunfright, using the scrolling Filmation 2 engine, Ultimate returned to the original Filmation engine for this next instalment in the Sabre Man saga.

Coming nearly 18 months after Knight Lore, and up against the likes of Fairlight, Batman, Highway Encounter and Quazatron from other developers, it was no longer looking particularly innovative. There were a few minor tweaks, such as the ability to shoot fireballs, but since this required an extra button there was no longer the directional control.

Once you get over the disappointment that it's yet another Ultimate rehash of an older game, Pentgram isn't too bad. There are some interesting puzzles that will appeal to fans of Knight Lore and Alien 8 who've done those two games to death. However, there was nothing particularly new here and if neither of those games won you over, this certainly won't either.

A multiway scrolling arcade adventure with plenty of shooting and power-ups this promised a lot. However this was the game when, for me at least, Ultimate finally lost the plot.

Where their earlier games had occasionally been difficult, unforgiving and, on occasions, downright unfair at least they always managed to draw you in with spectacular graphics and could be great fun to play when you got the hang.

Cyberun, on the other hand, is sluggish, lacks graphical flair and is unreasonably difficult in a fashion that's not too likely to get you to persevere with it.

Yet another game from the declining era of Ultimate, this fails to reach their previous heights by some margin.

Presented in pseudo-isometric fashion, this game fails to get the perspective right and consequently looks a bit amateurish after the likes of Knight Lore, Alien 8 and Gunfright.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is no better. It's a tedious protect-em-up with neither particularly frantic action or the sort of puzzles that characterized games such as Knight Lore or Alien 8.

Definitely not one of the games Ultimate's legend was built on, this is probably best avoided.

Given that they'd produced little of interest since Gunfright, the final Ultimate release wasn't particularly anticipated when it finally arrived.

However, at least it showed some of the innovation that had been lacking from their previous few games. It finally mixed the puzzle element of the Filmation games with the multiway scrolling of Filmation 2. Alas, with some particularly awful controls it's a serious uphill struggle to get much fun out of playing it, although it's still worth persevering with more than the likes of Martianoids or Cyberun.

A disappointment that a legend had to end on such a whimper rather than a bang, but perhaps the real reason behind the decline of Ultimate was that the Stamper brothers had been concentrating their efforts with Nintendo to start the chapter in their history that would become Rare.

Although more famous for their graphical adventures, Gargoyle Games made a fairly auspicious debut with the is fast paced pseudo-3D shoot 'em up.

The graphics are pretty good, and there's some great use of colour in a genre more typically blighted by monochrome, although this is at the usual price of your spaceship, and many other objects in the game, moving around in obvious character square blocks. The 3D effect isn't totally convincing, with it largely just being a 2D game with some scaled frames for the sprites; the fudged perspective generally just serves to make it really difficult to fire into the top corners of the screen. There's also an irritating graphical glitch that allows you to shoot holes in your spacecraft when moving directly up the screen.

What will most likely have you cursing at it though, is the difficulty of spotting the bullets being fired at you and the slightly suspect collision detection. Still, neither is a game killer and with a bit of practice they can both be lived with.

Although not quite the finished article, and rather inferior to the later Light Force, this at least showed that Gargoyle Games was going to be a force to be reckoned with.

This is mostly a game that I enjoyed playing on the Atari ST but the Spectrum version holds up quite nicely given the limitations of the machine.

The game is almost exactly the same, just missing a scenario, although the graphics and user interface rather suffer in comparison with the 16-bit versions too.

A remarkable achievement from a technical perspective and a great game to play from the days when "Sim" games were a bit more than just glorified interior decorating.

Programmed by Chris Newcombe and designed by Pete Cooke this game had a lot to live up to, coming after Cooke's sprawling 3D epic Tau Ceti.

It's basically Pong in 3D, and there lies both its strength and it's weakness. It's a good game because a well made Pong clone is always good fun, and the 3D element gives it a nice twist. However, like Pong, it's a rather limited game which you're probably going to tire of rather quickly. Especially so if you can't find a second player as the computer opponent is rather easily thrashed after a modicum of practice.

This would have made a decent budget title, but released at full price it wasn't terribly good value. The Light Corridor and Ballblazer are a couple of games take the concept a bit further and are worth a look if you like that sort of thing.

This is one of those most infuriating of games. It entices you in with some attractive graphics, that still look quite good given the limitations of what the Spectrum can do, but is so utterly finicky to play that you can almost guarantee that you'll end up cursing it in frustration when you've finally had enough and given up.

Of course, there's a good reason why the game is so difficult and that's because it's only got 12 screens, a couple of which are pretty much empty with just a bit of scenery you can crash into. With a more reasonable level of difficulty you'd probably be able to master it in the space of a few minutes.

Getting past the second screen, with its regenerating forcefield is difficult enough, but that's only a foretaste of what's yet to come as you'll need pixel perfect positioning and split second timing to get past some of the later screens.

It's a game that I played to a finish more out of duty than because I enjoyed it, and there as always the hope that with a bit of practice it would suddenly become a bit more fun to play. Sadly it doesn't.

Rather than port the excellent Paradroid straight from the C64, and risk an inferior game due to the lack of sprite and scrolling capabilities on the Spectrum, Steve Turner chose instead to re-interpret Andrew Braybrook's classic game. Gone is the scrolling shoot 'em up, in favour of a Knight Lore style isometric game, but the excellent circuit sub-game remains.

The result was nothing less than superb; the game works just as well, if not better, with added subtleties such as the ability to pick and choose equipment rather than take over a droid completely. When I play, I usually stick to relatively modest weapons like the disintegrator, scavenge power units as often as possible, and try to get disruptor shields as soon as I can. You can have a go with the better kit, but expect to burn out quicker as a result.

If there's a gripe, it's that the game has some rather grotty scrolling when you get to the edge of the screen, but that's really just a cosmetic flaw and doesn't harm the gameplay at all.

Overall, it's a game not to be missed. Ranarama and Magnetron are also recommended for their similar gameplay.

This has to be one of the most irritatingly awful games ever written. There are some nice graphics that look as though they might belong to an interesting platformer with a small number of varied levels.

However, by virtue of finicky controls, awful collision detection, and a just generally unfair sense of play, it kills you off for the slightest deviation from the correct path.

Thor should be ashamed of themselves for unleashing this on an undeserving games market, although at least distribution of the game and its two unnecessary sequels is mercifully denied.

After the excellent Light Force, there was much anticipation around this cyberpunk themed second offering from FTL.

The game is quite a novel idea. There are three moving walkways between which you can jump, as well as shuffling back and forth along them. As well as a few innocent bystanders, members of other rival gangs will come along the walkways and attack you. By careful movement you can sometimes evade them, although it's a better tactic to arm yourself with the piles of bricks or other weapons to be found by the side of the Shockway.

Graphically, it's pretty good, although nowhere near as colourful as Light Force with graphics not too dissimilar to the earlier Gargoyle games. However, the gameplay rather suffers from a high level of unpredictability that leaves just a bit too much to luck no matter how much you practice and can easily kill you off very quickly when you're trying to figure out what to do.

Overall it's a nice original idea for a game, and a very well presented one, that just doesn't quite come together when you play it.

Beyond had released a couple of games previous to Psytron but, despite some slick packaging, they didn't look so good on screen and were rather lacking in depth. Such criticisms weren't going to be levelled at Psytron though, as it boasted some excellent bitmap graphics and a ferocious time management game based around the defence of a base under alien attack.

The individual elements are introduced one by one. You've got to first be adept at hunting down the alien droids in the base tunnels first. Next up is the skywatch mode; the centrepiece of the game where you can directly attack the alien spaceships with lasers and the powerful matter disrupter. Futher levels introduce damage control, and resource management via a supply ship. Finally, once you've qualified through all these, you're ready to take on the challenge of defending the base for as long as you can.

It's not the quickest starter, as you need to master the rather dull droid level first before you get much of a taste of the action, and with all the subtleties it's not going to appeal to fans of simple shoot 'em ups.

However, it's very much one of the best thinking man's games, designed to test your multi-tasking skills, as well as your trigger finger. Although it doesn't deliver immediate thrills, it's worth spending a bit of time getting into.

Although not quite the last 16K game to be commercially released (Bazam and Don't Panic both came later for a couple of examples) this was very much the high watermark of gaming on the unexpanded machine.

Although not a terribly original idea, and suffering from an overlong sequence whenever you lose a life, it's very playable platform action; there's the run and jump feel of Manic Miner, but it plays at Chuckie Egg speed, and the level designs are pitched about right with a good number shoehorned into the limited memory available.

Although few people still had 16K machines that hadn't been upgraded at the time it was released, that wasn't a problem as this was giving away little to the 48K platformers of the day.

Released at around the same time as Manic Miner this would be the other candidate for the canonical Spectrum platform game.

They couldn't be much more different though; where Manic Miner is a game of precision movement and timing, Chuckie Egg has you hurling yourself around the screen at breakneck pace. Although there are patterns to be learned, and knowing how to apply the game mechanics precisely to each of the levels is very useful, the fact that you replay them with different sets of enemies makes it much more of a seat of the pants experience.

Although there was eventually a sequel, it unfortunately lost the feel that made the original such a great game, becoming more of a Jet Set Willy style arcade adventure. The original, however, can't be beaten and remains very playable.

One of a number of early 3D games from Micromega, this takes its inspiration from the speeder bike chase in the film Return of The Jedi.

The effect of speeding through the forest is a pretty good one, all the more effective to anyone who had just seen the aforementioned film. That it ran on a 16K Spectrum was all the more remarkable as a technical achivement.

On the downside, there's not really much to the gameplay; avoiding crashing into trees, and shooting at other bikes and the occasional tank or helicopter is about all there is to it. A change of palette allows for night driving stages with lower contrast colours, but otherwise doesn't change the game.

Overall, it's a simple but effective game. It's good for a quick blast, but there's no real depth and not much of a challenge either.

Renowned for their arcade conversions and license deals, Elite perhaps went a step too far with this game. Boasting " technical assistance" from Dunlop Tyres, this rather simplistic scrolling 2D racer has very little going for it.

It's essentially just a rehash of their earlier game Grand National with the horses replaced by cars, but missing most of the subtleties that gave that some entertainment value. Driving down the debris strewn road is rather tricky, and you'll crash a lot before you get the hang of it. Even then, it's all too easy to trap yourself in a position where a crash is inevitable.

This was not one of Elite's finest moments and somehow I don't think the license would have sold many copies of this game either.

Coming closely after the innovative Way Of The Exploding Fist, Melbourne House followed up with this scrolling beat 'em up.

Although in some respects an advance on the earlier game, with excellent animation, backgrounds and a variety of enemies, it's still somewhat less successful. The problems are that there are comparatively few moves available to you, and that where a single well-timed punch or kick would settle a bout in the earlier game, you're required to wear down your opponents with repeated hacking and slashing here.

All in all a bit of a mixed bag; it would probably have been a bit more successful without its more illustrious predecessor to compare to but with Fist already on the market it was rather superfluous.

This was one of the very first games written for the Spectrum by Psion who provided the bulk of the Sinclair software catalogue for the first couple of years. Incidentally, it was also the first game that I bought for my new machine at the time.

Based on the arcade classic Asteroids, it's pretty standard fare and plays just like the original with large rocks splitting into smaller ones and flying saucers appearing from time to time to add a bit of variety. Instead of the vector graphics of the arcade original though, there are sprite graphics which actually look quite decent even if they won't necessarily go down well with the purists.

With much other early Spectrum software being written in BASIC and/or hastily ported over from the ZX81, the slick sprite graphics and arcade action gave something of a hint as to what the Spectrum was capable of.

It's not exactly a timeless classic, but was just what the new machine needed at the time.

One of three games written by Japanese company Hudson Soft for Sinclair, this quietly introduced the concept of what was later to become Bomberman to the Spectrum.

The idea is fairly simple. You wander around a maze and can drop bombs; the bombs explode taking chunks out of some of the walls opening up the maze and killing anything that's in its path. The aim of the game is to use the bombs to destroy the floaters which inhabit the maze allowing you to pass to the next level. If this sounds simple, that's glossing over a huge degree of subtlety that allows you to manoeuvre your opponents into positions that allow you to blast them safely, perhaps through gaps you created earlier. To keep you on your toes there are also auto bomb dropping levels where you've got to keep moving just to stay alive.

This isn't a game without problems though. Control is a bit jerky with some serious slowdown when there's a lot of action on the screen. It's also lacking the multi-player option that made later versions of the game into a true classic.

Overall, a great concept but just not quite the finished article.

With much hype, and presumably after listening to far too much U2 music, Softek rebranded themselves as The Edge. Given the amount of fanfare, there was much expectation around their launch titles of which this was one.

Psytraxx is essentially a clone of Ultimate's Atic Atac with the setting moved from a haunted castle to inside a computer. As such there are lots of things that look like circuits and electrical components around to make up the scenery.

Where Ultimate's game had lots of specials, and each area of the map had its own particular graphical feel, Psytraxx is just plain enormous with over a thousand screens although there's not really a lot to distinguish one from another. There's also the added irritation of constantly having to recharge your weapon.

The game is only a challenge by virtue of it's sheer enormity. I never even attempted to complete it as I knew that boredom would inevitably overtake me well before I even got close to the end.

Elite were no strangers to license deals when it came to marketing their products, but this was a rather different game to their usual fare.

Horse racing isn't the sort of thing that normally translates too well into computer games, and most attempts inevitably turn to the subject of simulating how punters can lose their money to the bookies. However, in a rather refreshing move, we're given a go at actually running the race here.

The controls are fairly complicated; you've got to keep up a suitable pace - not too fast as your horse will tire, nor too slow or you'll be left behind - as well as time your jumps over the fences and control your position on the track as you move up through the field.

Whilst not exactly stunning in any particular fashion, it's a curiously addictive game that there's still nothing quite like. All in all this is well worth an outside bet.

This is a rather lacklustre unofficial adaptation of the classic arcade game Wizard of Wor to the Spectrum.

Whilst it's recognizably similar to the original, it suffers from jerky movement restricted to exact character squares, rather unresponsive controls and a touch of flicker at times.

Whilst mildly playable, and for quite a while the best version of the game for the Spectrum, this is ultimately rather forgettable. Try instead the recent version by Weird Science Software.

One of the first games for the Spectrum, this was a conversion of the old arcade favourite Asteroids.

Compared against Psion's Planetoids, which appeared at the same time, this is rather an inferior game; rather than smoothly moving sprites, everything sticks to exact character squares although everything is drawn in outline to recreate the vector feel of the original.

The most notable thing about this is that it's one of the first Spectrum games to use speech, although due to the memory contention of the 16K machines, it's a barely recognizable croak of "Meteor Alert".

Although something of a historical curiosity, this isn't a game that I'd particularly recommend.

Returning back to the realms of fantasy, albeit rather more Jack Vance than Celtic legend, for their fourth graphical adventure this game saw Gargoyle Games give the system a rather radical overhaul. Alas, despite the promise of several sequels, it was to be their last as Gargoyle would choose to end their Spectrum era with a more profitable line in arcade-style action games under the FTL banner.

Instead of the scrolling backgrounds, the game was divided up into a series of rooms; although perhaps not quite so pleasing on the eye, it improved the gameplay in the sense that it was no longer necessary to change direction in order to look for doors or objects in the background.

Another radical change to the look was that the game had blockier graphics as something of a trade off to allow characters of the same size, but with many more frames of animation. This was used to memorable effect with a much larger cast of distinct characters and creatures than previous games.

Further changes involved the use of text input to control your character; you could use shorthand to enter some of the most common commands, but for a game that still ran in real time, you needed to be pretty quick to keep up sometimes. The game also had a touch of RPG influence in the magic and stats based combat systems.

Despite all the technical innovations, what really makes the game is the atmosphere and puzzles though. It's a much richer experience than their previous games which, although enjoyable, could seem rather sparse at times. There are numerous distinct areas within the dungeon, populated by their own creatures, with a few wandering monsters, a veritable pantheon of demons, and three separate exits to be found.

All in all, this was far and away my favourite of the four adventures. There's the usual mixture of lateral thinking and atrocious puns, but it all seemed so much more logical to me with very little to get stuck on for too long, and the non-linear nature gives you plenty else to have a go at whilst you're trying.

From the ashes of the Imagine "mega-game" Bandersnatch, Denton Designs managed to salvage their work and fashion it into a game that was finally releasable.

There's much that's good; an intelligent control system allows you to walk, fly, pick up objects and fight using a single button joystick for control. The graphics are beautifully rendered with great animation for your character and evoke the atmosphere of Greek classics effectively.

However, the game is somewhat sparse; most of the time you're running around an empty maze and on the rare occasion that you come across a monster, combat isn't exactly earth shatteringly exciting either. There's also a highly illogical layout to the map that stops you from laying it out simply in 2D; I guess this was necessary in order to stop the game from being a simple plod.

This was a bit of mixed bag to start with but Denton Designs would soon go on to impress us with games such as Shadowfire, Frankie and The Great Escape where their reputation is much deserved.

In something of a departure from their, at the time, graphical adventure fare Gargoyle branched out with this light hearted Knight Lore influenced arcade-adventure.

Perhaps unfortunately, everyone else had similar ideas of following Ultimate's lead and there were a whole slew of other isometric games coming out at the same time. It also lacks the elements of jumping and pushing objects around which makes it seem rather limited at first glance. However, it does have some great graphics, some innovative puzzles and a neat sense of humour making it hard not to like.

Not the most original effort from Gargoyle, but still a very enjoyable game. It spawned an expanded 128K version entitled Sweevo's Whirled and a full sequel in the shape of Hydrofool.

After the success of Tir Na Nog it was inevitable that Gargoyle would make a follow-up. Sticking with Cuchulainn they chose to make a prequel set in the Celtic city of the title, where an evil sorceress Skar has captured the charioteer Loeg, and you must regain his freedom.

Although superficially similar to the earlier game, Dun Darach benefits from much improved graphics; as well as Cuchulainn himself, there are a number of other people in the city that you must deal with, as well as shops, banks and casinos. The puzzles are of a similar nature to Tir Na Nog, but mesh more into a single plot rather than a series of sub-quests. One thing that's missing is the combat; you're entirely reliant on your wits this time, although it wasn't one of the earlier game's best features. Although Cuchulainn cannot die in this game, you've still got the potential problem of losing a vital object to a pickpocket or behind a locked door.

Although nowhere near as innovative as Tir Na Nog, this game did a pretty good job of filing some of the rough edges off the system and provided a whole new adventure that was an enthralling challenge to those who took it up.

For their second outing, Gargoyle moved away from the futuristic space-going action of Ad Astra to create a graphical adventure based on ancient Celtic mythology.

The game was built around an animation of a walking man in front of a smooth scrolling background. From this simple, but graphically very pleasing beginning they managed to construct a giant maze of pathways populated by a plethora of characters, with objects to pick up, weapons to wield and puzzles to be solved. The first creatures you were bound to run into were the Sidhe; you could try and fight them but without getting hold of the correct weapons first, your chances weren't great so after a few resurrections you'd soon get the habit of running away quickly whenever you hear or see one coming.

Although offering a hugely atmospheric environment, it was difficult to make swift progress with the game. A common problem was losing a vital key behind a locked door, and having to restart from scratch because of this. The sheer size of the game made mapping a necessity and some of the puzzles were rather obscure to say the least.

That said, Gargoyle succeeded admirably in creating a novel form of graphical adventure; one that they were to revisit several times with ever increasing standards.

Rather than produce a third game based on the Celtic mythology, Gargoyle chose to venture back into space for their fourth game. The game engine is recognizably similar to Tir Na Nog and Dun Darach, but with further improvements to the graphics, and a science fiction theme.

Set in the huge abandoned city of the title, currently occupied by alien invaders the Sept, you play the role of Commander John Marsh who is on a mission to recover the plans for a protective Sphere. Since the Sphere is all that stands between the Sept and an invasion of Earth, you had better succeed.

Despite the change of setting, the gameplay will be familiar to those who have played the Celtic games with a few new additions. After some searching, you can acquire a gun with which to shoot the irritating Sept invaders, although it's never exactly a run and gun game.

Marsport was originally slated to be the first in a science fiction trilogy, with adverts for sequels entitled Fornax and Gath. However, these were never to appear with Gargoyle choosing instead to develop more arcade style games as they were finding their adventures to have only a limited potential in the increasingly competitive Spectrum games market.

Despite a number of technical improvements over the earlier games, this didn't quite grab me as much as them. Marsport, although fairly regularly layed out and without the teleports of Tir Na Nog, is huge and you've got to do a lot of wandering between the, often cryptic, puzzles. It's worth seeking out a few hints to play it through though, as the game does have its moments.

One of the first martial arts titles for the Spectrum, this took a rather different line from most of the beat 'em ups that followed.

The graphics are pretty good with some nice backgrounds and very well animated characters, although they do look a bit flat. There's also the essential two player mode that is the making of any good fighting game.

However, the game plays in slow motion next to later beat 'em ups, there are a limited selection of just four attacking moves and you still need to use six keys.

This proved an interesting diversion for a while until totally eclipsed by Way of the Exploding Fist and later games.

After the success of Shadowfire, it was inevitable that Denton Designs would create a sequel. However, instead of just re-using the same game engine they decided to improve and adapt it to provide something that would also appeal to the action gamers. Four of the original Enigma Team return, the other two presumably having been lost in a crash at the beginning, and your enemy is once again the renegade General Zoff.

Some of the changes are fairly straightforward: Rather than have to hunt through a series of screens to find the icon you wanted, you could just scroll the bottom half of the screen to get to it more quickly. The main difference was that rather than the rather cryptic status display of the original, you get to see the action played out on the screen in front of you. There's even a mind probe icon that allows you to directly control one of the team.

The downside of the mind probe is that it effectively just turns the game into a shoot 'em up allowing casual players to bypass the strategy elements that made Shadowfire so enthralling. Given that the game is also a fair bit smaller and proceeds at a much faster pace, this makes it rather easy to complete in such a fashion. If you can resist the temptation to use it, however, the game offers a much sterner challenge.

All in all, it's not quite what it could have been and in some ways it's lesser to Shadowfire despite all the supposed improvements. However, it's still a great piece of graphical adventuring and the extra attention to detail from Denton Designs, including some memorable music from Fred Gray, just about keeps it in the top drawer.

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.

This follow-up to the popular Summer Games, as the name suggests, took a look at several Winter sports. Despite something of a preoccupation with skating, which features in three different events all of which are rather dull, there's plenty of variety elsewhere with ski jumping, hot dogging, bob-sleigh and biathlon rounding out the line up.

Refreshingly the genre had moved on a little from sheer button bashing, but mostly they're very simple games where you've just got to hit the buttons with the right timing and/or in a regular pattern. Graphically, it's pretty good with some nice backgrounds, but inevitably it suffers next to the versions for some of the other 8-bits where there's more colour and less clash.

It's not a bad effort by any means, and some of the games were quite fun for their time. However, it's aged quite badly as there's little depth to the gameplay.

The Scooby Doo franchise originally started out as a Dragon's Lair-style animated spectacle. However, when this overambitious plan inevitably went pear shaped, Elite drafted in Gargoyle Games to develop a much simpler game to release instead. Scooby must rescue his friends from a haunted castle whilst under near constant attack from ghosts who he can box away with a raised paw.

As a scrolling beat 'em up, it's neither particularly faithful to the cartoon, nor that great a game to play. Although fans of games along the lines of Kung Fu Master might possibly disagree, it certainly lacks the depth typical of most of their games. The graphics are up to the usual Gargoyle standard, however, with some great animation and detailed backgrounds, which is just enough to save the game from total mediocrity. The use of colour is rather minimal after the riot that was Light Force though.

Overall, I consider this one of Gargoyle's weakest games and a double disappointment given that Elite had obviously started out with much bigger plans for the license.

Following the commercial success of Scooby Doo, Gargoyle produced another game for another of Elite's big license deals. Legend has it that, once again, the in-house team was running late with an overambitious concept, and the nearly-finished Samurai Dawn got a swift makeover to plug the gap.

Although essentially another scrolling beat 'em up, they were much more successful in capturing the feel of the show this time, due in part to its more action oriented nature.

You play the role of the sword-wielding Lion-O and, guess what? Your mission is to rescue the rest of the team whilst fending off constant attacks from an assortment of enemies. To add a bit of variety, there are bonus weapons and a flying car you can pick up to help you on your way.

Graphically, it's up there with the best of Gargoyle's games with some excellent background details, animated characters and great use of colour, although this does necessitate rather jerky scrolling.

It's a more successful effort than Scooby Doo, but still a game that felt as though it was missing some of the depth that I'd usually associate with the best from Gargoyle games.

The last of the trio of games Gargoyle wrote for Elite, this is the least successful of them. It's essentially a road racing game with the twist that instead of driving cars, you're in giant trucks. To add to the concept, the game even came with a voucher that allowed you to claim a free Yorkie bar.

It's a competent effort that doesn't disgrace itself, being faced paced with a suitably weaving track effect. However, aside from the truck graphics, there's nothing to distinguish it from any other such game of the period as there's no particular feeling that you are actually driving a truck. If you really want the feel of that, you're much better off with Pete Cooke's Juggernaut game.

So, that's basically it; it's just another arcade racer. Indeed, aside from the fact that they were credited in Crash magazine, there's nothing about the look or feel of it that you'd even particularly notice that Gargoyle Games had written it. As such it seems a bit of shame that they had to bow out on such a comparative low note given the originality and excellence of most of their previous games.

With the runaway success of flight simulators early in the Spectrum's life, programmers eventually tried to spin off the idea into a whole range of other forms of transport; we got helicopters, racing cars, motorbikes, trains, bob-sleighs and in this case trucks.

The concept is fairly simple: Drive your truck around town, pick up various loads, drop them off where they're required, and try not to crash or run out of fuel in doing so. Things are complicated a bit by the fact that your map has no indication of where anything is on it; still, you can always stop off by a phone box to make a call to try and locate one. I'd rather hope that, even in the days before mobile phones and sat navs, that the Eddie Stobarts of this world could do a little better than that, mind you.

Driving around is rather difficult to get the hang of, and you'll need to get lots of practice in before being able to perform tricky manoeuvres like three point turns or reversing into a depot. Going forward in a straight line and taking bends isn't too hard though, especially as there's no other traffic on the road, and with a bit of practice you can soon be zipping around, and might even have to watch out for the odd speed camera. The graphics are fairly simple, but smooth and quite elegantly presented with an outline view of your truck against a solid background.

This probably isn't everyone's idea of fun, but the game was highly original and remains unique, even compared with other truck simulators. It's not a game for a quick blast, but well worth spending a bit of time getting into.

This is one of the early games from Costa Panayi who would later go on to write such seminal hits as TLL, Cyclone, Highway Encounter and Deflektor.

It's a relatively simple affair where everything moves in exact character squares, complicated by a rotate and move control system. You've got to blast your way through a number of walls, avoiding assorted robots on the way to destroy a reactor before it, rather more catastrophically, blows up the world.

Whilst not a terrible game by 1983 standards, this hasn't dated very well and is pretty much just a historical curiosity now.

Unsurprisingly, given the title, this is the follow up to Android One. Where the earlier game was a fairly simple affair, this is much bigger, harder and more attractively presented.

You have to hunt down five worm-like Millitoids in a giant multi-screen scrolling maze within a strict time limit. There's a fairly decent, at least considering when it was written, 3D effect, although again everything moves in exact character squares. The game itself is straight blasting action, although there are some mines that can occasionally be hidden by the 3D effect to avoid that will keep you on your toes.

Overall, it's held up much better than its predecessor, and with much more depth remains worth a look. However, the learning curve is pretty steep and you'll require lightning reactions to get very far with it.

After Android Two had put Costa Panayi and Vortex on the map, there was a certainly level of expectation around for his next game which was further fuelled by some rather abstract adverts.

The game itself didn't fail to impresss, however. You play the role of a tornado pilot who has to fly very accurately at low level to pass over a number of targets, before returning back to a runway to land. Succeed, and you'll get another set of targets in progressively more awkward positions for you to navigate around.

The world is presented in a similar 3D fashion to Android Two, but with much more depth and a greater variety in scenery. It scrolls in eight directions too; although at the character level, it's a good enough effect to work given the speed you're travelling at, and the great use of colour more than makes up for any lack of smoothness.

Where the game really comes into its own is that it allows you to fly freely around the map and take on the targets in any order and from whatever direction you choose; you can even choose to do your own thing and do a bit of stunt flying; there are a couple of bridges you can go under, and power lines and towers to weave in and out of. Whether you want to play the game or just muck about with it, it's great fun.

Following on from T.L.L. this game makes use of the same graphical techniques. There's a much larger game world too, although it's mostly water with just a few scattered islands. Instead of a Tornado, you have to pilot a helicopter and rescue a number of survivors as well as picking up a series of crates. All the while, the cyclone is ripping its way through the islands causing havoc. When it's close your controls become unpredictable and when it's right on top of you there's nothing you can do to avoid crashing.

Although there's a bit more variety in terms of what you have to do, the game doesn't quite have the same visceral thrill of T.L.L. with no bridges or power lines to fly under. The gameplay can become rather frustrating should you find yourself grounded by the Cyclone, or hunting fruitlessly for that last crate which was perhaps hidden on the far side of some island you flew past before.

There are some neat improvements to the game engine, such as the ability to flip the view around, which is essential to locate those aforementioned crates. There are also some other flying aircraft; however, they don't seem to do much other than crash into you, so it doesn't add much to the game.

Overall, it's a reasonable sequel to a great game that just doesn't grab me as much as its predecessor.

After the huge hit that was Knight Lore there was something of an unseemly rush to get other isometric games on the market. Whilst most of these were vastly inferior clones, Vortex instead took things in a different direction with this game.

You play the role of a group of, somewhat suspiciously Dalek-like, Vortons on a mission to deliver a weapon called the Lasertron down a highway in order to thwart an alien invasion

Whilst it retains the puzzle element of Knight Lore, it's missing the ability to jump on and pick up objects. However, it's fast; fast enough to make a good shoot 'em up with waves of aliens coming towards you in need of a good blasting. Despite how much action there is on the screen, there's rarely much evidence of slowdown either.

With only 32 screens, it's a bit small compared to other isometric arcade adventures, however, and the linear nature of the highway doesn't help. Still, what's there is still a decent challenge and there's the nice bonus of a great animated ending sequence when you've done it.

This is arguably the best game Vortex ever produced and a seminal isometric classic. A sequel, Alien Highway, offers more of the same.

Costa Panayi's first game for the Spectrum was an update of his ZX81 favourite Astral Convoy. Although there's some good use of colour and UDGs, there's not a lot of sound and movement is restricted to exact character squares with consequent jerky scrolling.

As for the gameplay, it's a fairly simple protect-'em-up; you've got a convoy travelling through space that comes under from alien spacecraft and showers of asteroids. Don't spend too much time chasing down the former only to let the latter destroy your ships.

It's not a bad game at all by 1982 standards, but it's dated very badly, and in some ways Astral Convoy has held up better. After all, the latter remains one of the most liked ZX81 games, but Cosmos is long forgotten by most Spectrum gmaeers.

Mike Singleton had written a fair few Spectrum games before Lords of Midnight, but nothing near as memorable or as complex.

With this game he created a whole new genre, fusing strategy and adventure together into a so called "epic" with a whole new system of graphics called "landscaping". The latter gave you the character's eye of the terrain rather than just a map view allowing you to see a long way in open spaces but in dense forests, mountains or hills you could be within a few hours of a vast army and not even know it.

Despite a plot that's a thinly veiled steal from Lord of the Rings it works spectacularly. You start with just four characters, but within a few turns you could be commanding an army of thousands. watch out though, as Doomdark's armies are much bigger than any you can hope to raise and only through superior tactics will you ever gain a military victory.

This is one of the most inventive Spectrum games ever made and, not surprisingly, one with the greatest longevity. If you've never given it a go, there's a bit of a learning curve to get over, but it's well worth the effort. Alternatively try the excellent remake; the Midnight Engine. There's also a multiplayer version, M/MU, for those who want to take it that bit further.

This excellent multi-player strategy game was written by Julian Gollop who would later go on to write the likes of Rebelstar, Laser Squad and UFO: Enemy Unknown. Allegedly, Chaos was released before it was completed and, not surprisingly, looks a bit rough around the edges in places. Still, that doesn't matter too much when you get into the game.

There are up to eight wizards in play, any of which can be computer controlled or given to a human player. Each wizard gets a random set of spells, some of which are more useful than others. However, the game balances itself somewhat in that the most powerful spells are relatively difficult to cast; a weak giant rat spell will always work, however the golden dragon might only have a 10% chance. To improve your chances you can try to wait until the cosmic balance shifts towards law or chaos; you can influence it a bit with your choices but might have to wait some time. Alternatively spells can be cast as illusions and will always work; however they can be instantly destroyed with the disbelieve spell, which you can expect computer opponents to use at the slightest provocation.

Aside from summoning creatures, spells can have a variety of effects such as building impregnable castles, magical attacks on other wizards. Of particularly devastating possibility are the gooey blob and magic fire, both of which can eventually swamp the entire map and swallow up opposing creatures and wizards into the process.

If this all sounds complicated, don't worry; it isn't. Unlike most strategy games, Chaos proceeds at a positively breakneck pace and you can get the basics of it within a few minutes.

On the downside, the game isn't totally fair; sometimes you might get taken out on the first turn by a magic bolt, or be given a particularly rotten set of spells. However, over a long session things tend to even out, and particularly successful players can expect to be ganged up against in true Machiavellian fashion by those less fortunate.

Where most computer games are relatively solitary affairs, or at best involve a couple of players, Chaos succeeds admirably as a social game that can be enjoyed by a big group of friends. It's practically unique in that respect amongst Spectrum games which is enough to make it a winner. It's perhaps less fun as a one player game, but those in search of a stern challenge can always try to take on seven high level computer wizards by themselves.

After we'd all been wowed by Lords of Midnight, a sequel seemed inevitable. Following on from the original defeat of Doomdark, his daughter Shareth kidnaps Prince Morkin taking him to the land of Icemark, leaving Luxor and friends on a mission to save him, defeat Shareth and ensure both the futures of Icemark and Midnight.

Mike Singleton wanted it to be much bigger and better than the original game and certainly succeeded in the first part. The land of Icemark boasts 6000 locations and 128 characters versus the 4000 and 32 respectively of Lords of Midnight.

Bigger isn't always necessarily better though; where the land of Midnight feels crafted and its names have a pleasant natural tone to them, Icemark seems so obviously a product of random generation with tongue-twisting names and endless arrays of mountains, forests and plains.

Changes to the game mechanics make it rather different in play too. Where, in Lords of Midnight, you can usually count on finding the other characters in their initial positions, almost everyone in Doomdark's Revenge starts charging off across the landscape from the off. It soon becomes difficult to locate specific characters and your battle plans need to be very flexible; this rather works against employing the same grand strategies that succeed in Lords of Midnight. Where the first game was perhaps a little bit too predictable, DDR is a lot too random. Sometimes a random character will do you a favour by killing Shareth before she even reaches your armies, but it's also very easy to lose an important character like Luxor or Tarithel which can often ruin a promising start; the only thing you can do about it is to save the game regularly while you play.

Graphically, DDR uses the same landscaping technique of Lords of Midnight. However, there are some nice additional touches such as textured skies and changing colours to indicate progress through the day. Revamped graphics for buildings and the landscape add to the differing feel between the two games.

Whilst DDR doesn't always offer more of what was good about LOM, it still stands up as an excellent game in its own right; it's sufficiently different to offer a challenge to even the most experienced players. A third game, Eye of the Moon was promised but never arrived as Mike Singleton got sidetracked by a number of other projects and Beyond were taken over by Telecomsoft. A PC game entitled Lords of Midnight: The Citadel eventually did emerge, but suffered terribly from some poor design decisions that rendered it close to unplayable.

R. T. Smith is a name that's familiar to most people who play wargames on the Spectrum and this is his first published game. Where most early wargames restricted you to a single scenario, often not even based upon anything resembling the real world, Confrontation offers you the chance to recreate just about any conflict in the history of modern warfare on any scale. There are a variety of units on offer from the staples of armour, infantry and artillery to specialist kit such as air support and anti-tank. However, with just a single screen map, you'll still need to use your imagination a bit in most cases. There's one scenario on the tape, and a couple more tapes of ready made ones covering everything from WW2 to the Middle East.

This also isn't the most playable of wargames. Written largely in BASIC, and with a cumbersome interface, it's rather slow and you'll need to constantly refer to the manual when getting started. The character-per-square map graphics can be confusing and aren't terribly pretty either. It's also a 2-player game, with no computer opponent, so you'll need to find someone similarly minded to get much out of it. Back in the day, I could count such people on one hand, whereas there was never a shortage of people wanting a game of Chaos or Viking Raiders.

Although a promising indicator of things to come, and one of the few Spectrum wargames that allowed you to create custom scenarios, this was never brilliant and has aged quite poorly. Anyone who isn't a die hard strategy head should probably skip straight to Smith's next game; Arnhem.

Based upon the Market Garden operation, a daring Allied paratrooper raid to capture a series of bridges across the Rhine towards the end of WW2, this is R. T. Smith's second game for the Spectrum.

Although there are some similarities with the earlier Confrontation, this was a huge leap forward in wargames on the Spectrum. It boasts a large scrolling map with larger, and much clearer, unit graphics. Whilst you cannot make your own scenarios there were five built in ones to play, from a short introduction to a four hour marathon that covered the whole operation.

With a vastly improved user interface, this game is one of the easiest serious wargames for the Spectrum to pick up. You simply issue movement orders to your units with the cursor keys and pick options off a menu; it doesn't really get much easier than that. On the downside, it's still a rather complex game, but at least the effort you need to invest is in things like finding the capabilities of the units you've got and how you can achieve the objectives of each scenario. In many ways the introductory Advance to Eindhoven, is one of the trickiest as you get no help from paratroopers, but have to capture a couple of well defended minor bridges in a short time.

Arnhem also features a computer opponent. It only plays the German side, and uses a fairly simple strategy, although as the battle is an uphill struggle for the Allies it offers a decent challenge. The game is still very much at its best with two players though.

Overall, Arnhem was perhaps the most innovative wargame for the Spectrum, bridging the gulf between early efforts such as Stonkers and the genre as we now know it. Although there were better efforts to come, such as Smith's later Desert Rats and Vulcan, it still remains very playable and is well worth a look both for those with a serious mind for strategic wargames and those who merely like to dabble in them a bit.

Another wargame from R. T. Smith, this recreates the North Africa campaign from WW2. Like Arnhem, there are several scenarios available to you focussing on key battles or one enormous one that covers the entire campaign. The game does a good job with the famous battles of Gazala and El Alamein. Elsewhere, Battleaxe is a relatively easy introduction, at least if you're on the Axis side.

The game boasts some nice improvements to the interface. Instead of ordering each unit move by move, you can now set an objective for them that they will continue to pursue for several turns. You can also move entire divisions as one, which speeds things up considerably. An additional factor added to the game is that of supply; units without fuel and ammunition cannot move far or fight much and it becomes imperative to keep your own units supplied, whilst you can attempt to cut off your opponent's.

Speaking of opponents, the computer is now capable of playing both sides, although the AI does leave something to be desired. It's not so much that it's weaker than that in Arnhem; it's just that the objectives in Desert Rats are much more complex and the computer has little grasp over overall strategy. As such, it's not too much of a challenge to outwit it, on all but the most skewed of the scenarios.

Desert Rats was one of the first strategy games to offer an enhanced version for the 128K Spectrum. Having only ever played the 48K version back in the eighties, it was one of my greatest joys of the emulation era to finally have a crack at the expanded game which also recreates the early battles where the small British force outmanoeuvres the vastly superior numbers of the Italians.

Overall, it's still a classic and moved the genre along nicely from Arnhem, even if it's not quite so revolutionary. There was still some room for improvement, however, and that would come with the next game in the series; Vulcan.

Vulcan was the fourth wargame from R. T. Smith. It concentrates on the latter half of the North Africa campaign, after the events of the earlier game Desert Rats and the allied landings in Morocco and Algiera of Operation Torch. The allied armies now have the Axis forces bottled up in Tunisia, although there's still much fighting to be done. As with previous games there are numerous scenarios varying from short introductory ones to lengthy set pieces.

The most interesting scenario is the battle of Kasserine. Historically, the Axis forces under Rommell gave the, still inexperienced, US first armoured division something of a mauling. However, in the game, it's a fast moving battle with plenty of opportunities for both sides. Other scenarios include the race for Tunis, where the Allies had a brief opportunity to cut off the Axis forces entirely, and the decisive Operation Vulcan, after which the game is named.

There are a number of minor improvements over the interface in Desert Rats, such as the ability to pass over a unit until later in the turn - allowing you to assess the strength and supply of all our forces first - although mostly they share the same features. Additionally though weather and air support become more of a factor. Hidden movement makes it more difficult to plan a strategy and caution is essential for you not to bump into strong enemy units by accident. The computer AI works much better than in Desert Rats as the random factors of the weather stop it being too predictable and the hidden movement serves to mask the worst of its strategic failings.

Overall, Vulcan remains the pinnacle of strategic war-gaming on the Spectrum and, graphics aside, is still the equal of the better PC strategy games today. An exciting recent development was the production of some additional scenarios by hacking the database for the program. These can be downloaded from WoS and include Operation Torch, and the invasion and liberation of Crete.

Moving away from his more usual historical wargames, R. T. Smith created this shoot 'em up where you can design robots and put them into battle against each other.

Although the concept was quite an original one for the time, and the robot designer program is excellent and full of features, the actual game leaves a lot to be desired. As a single player against the computer it's little more than a joke and is rather tedious. It's a bit better against a human opponent, where you can actually put some strategy in and the choices made with the designer become a bit more meaningful. Even then it seems terribly lacking compared to both his more complex wargames, or many a good two player shooter for that matter.

After having pretty much perfected WW2 wargaming on the Spectrum with Arnhem, Desert Rats and Vulcan, R. T. Smith's final strategy game for the Spectrum turned his attentions elsewhere to warfare in the ancient world. The game pretty much does what it says on the box; you get to pick your army from anything from Ancient Egypt up to the latter days of the Roman Empire, and fight against a similar force.

There are five set scenarios that depict such luminary generals as Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal and Atilla. More interestingly though, you can make your own scenarios from scratch using the armies available and a map editor. Unlike in the earlier Confrontation, there's scope for a huge scrolling map and you get a vast array of armies to choose from.

The computer AI is much more advanced than earlier wargames, although it needs to be to cope with the varied scenarios. You can pick whether you want a computer general to fight an aggressive or defensive battle and choose to let it deploy its own units or place them yourself. However, beyond infantry shoving matches its limitations aren't too hard to find. Things still work best as a 2-player game as more strategic subtleties and good use of the terrain can come into play.

The game has a few other issues. Combat resolution and movement is rather simplistic compared to Smith's earlier games; there's also no ability to stack units; it's strictly one per square. The game is an awkward multi-load on the 48K machine, although not so much of a problem with 128K. 128K users also benefit from an extra scenario and the ability to create scenarios with larger maps.

On the whole, it's not quite so great at its specific scenarios as Arnhem, Desert Rats and Vulcan were. However, the editor and the comprehensive database of armies more than makes up for that; unlike the earlier Confrontation, it's still sophisticated enough to make playable scenarios that appeal beyond the hardcore wargamer. It's something of a shame that this was the only game in what was, presumably, intended to be a series. However Smith later resurfaced as one of the developers of the Total war series which can be seen as something of a continuation of the concept.

This was Pete Cooke's first published game for the Spectrum. He'd later go on to great acclaim with the likes of Tau Ceti and Micronaut One, however this is a simple text adventure.

There's an obvious influence from games like The Hobbit with many locations depicted with graphics; however they're simple and take quite some time to draw. The game is generally quite slow being written in BASIC.

There are some interesting puzzles to solve, and a few generous hints, but it's mostly an old fashioned treasure hunt without much of an individual atmosphere. It's all very competently done, but doesn't really have much of a spark to it.

Following on from the earlier Invincible Island this was Pete Cooke's second game; another text adventure written largely in BASIC. It shares the same flaws as its predecessor; the responses are slow and the graphics are quite drab and take a while to draw.

However, the game works much better on account of the scenario. In something of a twist to the usual adventure format, you play the part of a youth on a mission to get out of a dead end town. There's accordingly much dry humour and social commentary to be found as well as a few pokes at the usual fantasy conventions of adventure games.

This was a cult hit and the first sign of great things to come from Cooke.

Cooke's third adventure for Richard Shepherd Software takes its inspiration from Dante's Divine Comedy. You have to pass through the nine circles of hell, guided occasionally by the poet Virgil, past an encounter with the Devil himself to gain your freedom.

It's an enjoyable game to play and the adventure system has been spruced up from the previous two games into something a little more sophisticated. It's also a fair bit faster to play, although the graphics are still rather drab.

The game follows the plot of the epic poem fairly closely, and if you're familiar with it you'll have more than a few hints. However, if you haven't, it does little to create its own atmosphere. Consequently this may come as something of a disappointment to those hoping for another Urban Upstart.

Following up after their excellent flight simulator Fighter Pilot, Digital Integration released another, albeit less realistic, game featuring air combat.

It's set in the thick of World War 2; you're on board a Lancaster bomber on missions over Germany. In the first phase of the game you need to defend your aircraft from attack by enemy fighters. With some good shooting you'll eventually begin a bombing run; these alternate between level and dive bombing which mixes things up a bit. Then there's another phase of shooting at incoming fighters for the return trip. Survive thirty missions and you'll get a shot a a Dambusters-style finale.

For it's time the graphics weren't at all bad with large detailed sprites, a reasonable pseudo-3D effect, and a smattering of colour without too much obvious clash. The gameplay isn't too bad, although fairly simplistic blasting in the style of Operation Wolf for the most part with the bombing runs adding occasional variety.

Overall it's not a bad game, but I don't think it's aged nearly as well as Digital Integration's more realistic simulations. You could do a lot worse for a nostalgic blast though.

Taking cues from Ultimate's classic Atic Atac, but with a futuristic theme, Nonterraqueous is a massive 1000 room arcade adventure. This might seem overly large, however it avoids the pitfalls that plague the likes of Psytraxx and Xavior; you aren't in constant peril of an unpredictable death, or getting worn down by constant attacks. As you move around the giant maze, you'll also come across areas that take on different character with some varied puzzles to solve in order to progress.

There are a few things that will blight your progress, however. One of these is the dreaded photon thruster, which is instant death; with a little practice you avoid them though, as they work to a set pattern. Another is bad psyche, which also you instantly; however it's always in the same place so at least you can learn from your experience with it. Despite its huge size, the game is relatively easy to finish, with an ending that'll bring a smile to the face of users of old Sinclair computers.

This was a nice game that marked a major improvement in standards from Mastertronic who'd developed something of a reputation for putting out any old tat at a budget.

Following on from Ant Attack, Zombie Zombie was Sandy White's second game for the Spectrum. It uses the same graphical style as Ant Attack, exchanging insect enemies for the undead.

Unfortunately, the game is just a bit too simple for its own good. The zombies just shuffle around the city aimlessly until they see you and burst into a frenzy. You've got poison gas that you can blow at them to keep them at bay, but the aim is to creep up behind them, touch them and get them to follow you, and fall from a great height to their destruction. Although you get more and more zombies to do this to, it's the sort of thing that once you've done once you're not going to get a kick out of a second time and it gets dull very quickly.

The graphics are essentially similar to those of the earlier game. In an attempt to add some colour, your character, the zombies and the blocks are different colours although this effect doesn't work too well with the inevitable clash. You can also rebuild the city using a helicopter, although it lacks the ability to create the tunnels and ledges that characterized Ant Attack, so don't expect to turn out any architectural masterpieces.

There's also some nice two channel beeper music and you could even hook up to a MIDI keyboard for an improved version if your electronics skills were up to making an interface.

On the whole though, Zombie Zombie is an interesting oddity; a series of improvements to Ant Attack that don't really add up to much. It's as though, having perfected the Softsolid system, Sandy White just couldn't figure out a game for it. Still, it was only a short while until Ultimate popped up with Knight Lore that really moved the genre on.

This is a real favourite of mine. There was nothing like it graphically at the time - even Knight Lore only came out a year or so later - and it's as much a work of art as a computer game.

Some say that the gameplay is lacking, and they might be right, but I think it's good fun anyway. It certainly worked out a lot more playable than Sandy White's other games, but that's not really saying much. Getting the last few people out alive can be a bit tricky as you've got to do things like run across gaps and jump on the backs of ants. Exploring the city and figuring out what all the buildings are supposed to be is rather enjoyable too.

Another criticism this game gets that I think is a little unfair is that there are too many keys. You only really need to use four of them most of the time and only make an occasional prod at the others. The different view angles sometimes help when you're looking for people to rescue. The grenades are pretty ineffectual for the most part but you might occasional take out an ant rather than blow yourself up with them.

Innovative and fun to play, at least once you've got the hang of it, this is a real Spectrum classic; one of the games that made it a must-have home computer in the early 80s.

This was an excellent, if unofficial, port of the Arcade classic of the same name back in the days when nobody cared too much about the legal niceties of such. It's far better and more faithful to the original than many of the licensed arcade conversions that were to follow.

With nine levels of difficulty it's also fairly easy to customize to something that suits your particular abilities, although the top level is utterly insane. All in all it's fast smooth twitch gaming at its best.

This is a so-so scrolling shooter in the Xevious mode. Although there are a few nice ideas it suffers a bit from an overly complex set-up; there are two basic screens one of which allows you to go on the offensive; attacking targets in the air and on the ground with missiles. The other is switched to automatically when threats get past the bottom of the screen and allows you to make a last ditch defence of your aircraft with a rapid firing cannon.

Ideally you want to stay on the offensive and avoid the defensive screen in order not to lose lives. However, that's easier said than done, and there are fast flying missiles that are particularly troublesome to deal with as well as tanks, aircraft and helicopters. This mixture also makes it alternate between a relatively slow tactical plod and a fast seat of the pants shooter, which sit rather uneasily together.

The graphics are fairly drab and functional, although the scrolling is smooth. Sound is a bit limited in game, but there's a nice rendition of Ride Of The Valkyries on the title screen.

It was a mildly interesting game at the time, coming a fair while before the likes of Light Force, but hasn't aged nearly as gracefully.

This was a great game that marked a significant step on the evolution of the adventure genre from text input games to point and click. It's not exactly Monkey Island, but everything is controlled by a pointer and icons and there are graphical representations of your characters as well as status displays and a map to tell you what's going on.

Your mission is to command the Enigma team, a group of six specialists, aboard a spacecraft owned by their arch enemy General Zoff. Zoff has kidnapped a character by the name of Ambassador Kryxix and is busily interrogate him; you need to rescue Kryxix, as well as capturing Zoff and his spaceship. Time is of the essence as Kryxix holds some dangerous secrets.

The game is straightforwards to start with, using icon control for all functions; they're fairly intuitive, although there are a few screens to get through for some things but the game isn't too hard to get into. It's a difficult game to master though, as Zoff's guards are pretty tough; some of them will take all six members of the Engima team to beat. Zoff himself is a very slippery customer and, should you track him down, it'll require a bit of lateral thinking to capture him.

The Enigma team all have different capabilities and specialisms. Some, like Maul and Syylk are basically just firefighters. Leader Zark is a translator and the only character Kryxix will listen to. Torik is a scout and moves quickly through the map; he's weak, but fast enough to get out of any fights he gets into. Sevrina, featured on the cover, is capable of cracking any locks and, until you equip the team with a set of keycards, is indispensible. Finally, Manto is the most essential member of the team as he manages the teleport capability with which you can transport people back and forth between your assault ship and the enemy spacecraft.

All in all, it was a radical game at the time and still holds up well. Once you've completed it, there's some replay value as there's no set order to the objectives and plenty of places to explore with a few special items tucked away. Denton Designs gained a reputation for attention to detail here with great graphics and slick finishing touches that they maintained with many of their following games. To top it all off, there's a stirring and catchy tune from Fred Gray on the title screen.

Following up from the earlier success of Fighter Pilot, Digital Integration released this helicopter simulation based upon the AH-64 Apache helicopter.

As with Fighter Pilot, the flight model is quite respectable, even by modern standards, and supports things like autorotation and stall turns. There's also a variety of weapons to use such as the laser-guided Hellfire missiles and a powerful chain gun; targets are provided in the shape of enemy tanks, artillery and helicopters.

What really sets this game out from the crowd is the quality of the graphics; as well as the horizon there are mountain ranges, forests, buildings and assorted other details rendered in wireframe graphics at a respectable speed.

Comparisons with Microprose's Gunship, which came a bit later, are inevitable but Tomahawk holds up as the more realistic and better looking simulation, even if the later game has more interesting missions.

Overall, Tomahawk is a shoe-in for the best helicopter simulator but is also a front runner for the best flight simulator in general, although DI's later F-16 Combat Pilot shades it slightly in that respect.

Even by 1983 standards, this golf game from Ocean was terrible. There's a rough top down display of the course in UDGs and a badly animated stick man represents your golfer going through his swing.

Such niceties as irons and clubs have been glossed over and you merely get to pick between 1 and ten; specifying distance and shot strength are done in a similar fashion. Hitting the ball properly comes down to pressing a key at the right time.

There have been some good Spectrum games written in BASIC, but sadly this isn't one of them.

This game has the dubious distinction of being the first licensed conversion of an arcade game to the Spectrum, although this didn't seem so much of a big deal at the time given the huge number of unlicensed ones. You play the part of Quasimodo who must jump and swing on ropes past a number of screens filled with obstacles in order to rescue Esmerelda.

It's reasonably faithful to the look of the arcade game, at least within the capabilities of the Spectrum's graphics. In terms of the gameplay though, it's terribly finicky; pixel perfect positioning and split second timing are required on nearly every screen and it's difficult to judge where it's safe to stand without falling to your death.

I can't say I ever thought much of the arcade game and this didn't really do much to improve my opinion.

This is probably the best arcade racer that ever made it to the Spectrum, although it still rather shows the machine's limitations to stark effect.

Bill Harbison's graphics make the most of what's a largely monochrome affair, with a variety of roadside scenery as well as some neat inserts on the panel. Audio wise it's pretty good too with a smattering of speech and an excellent tune from Jonathan Dunn which cranks plenty of arpeggios out of the AY chip.

What mostly sells this game though is a good feeling of speed, although things can still judder a bit when there's a lot happening at once.

This isn't a genre to which the Spectrum is particularly well suited, but this makes the most of what it can do.

A tactical combat game in the same mould as the earlier Rebelstar Raiders and Rebelstar games, this further refined the concept with an improved user interface, more sophisticated game mechanics and multiple scenarios.

Graphically, it's all you could want from a turned based strategy game with a detailed scrolling map on which the action is played out. There are even some good animated effects when weapons are fired and stray shots will serve to damage the scenery; you can even aim deliberately at some objects to make them explode.

There are five scenarios, plus an expansion pack with two more, which gives plenty of variety. I particularly enjoyed the Rescue from the Mines where a small team must break in to free some prisoners and the combined force escape past a larger force of guards. It's great as a two player game, although the computer opponent is quite decent and there are assorted difficulty levels which you can use to shift things in the computer's favour.

All in all, it's very much the pinnacle of the genre on the Spectrum; the later Lords of Chaos uses the same system with a fantasy theme but has less scenarios. Gollop would later revisit the system to make the game Laser Squad Nemesis for the PC, and its influence can also be seen in his classic UFO: Enemy Unknown.

This game is based around the British Army's Lynx helicopter which has a bewildering array of weapons including guns, missiles and mines and can also be used to ferry troops and injured between bases. In reality the helicopter would only be configured for one of these missions although the game allows you to mix and match loads to make things more interesting.

Other than having a limited number of helicopters and some bases to defend there are no set goals to the game. Whilst there's a risk of an early ending if you don't protect your primary base, once you've done that there's nothing to stop you going off an exploring the huge algorithmically-generated map, going off to hunt enemy units, or running mundane supply missions to your other bases.

In terms of graphics there's a very pleasing terrain effect of the sort that wasn't to make it into true flight simulators for a good few years yet, although rather confusingly the view switches after you turn 90 degrees.

This is a bit of an oddball, neither being quite realistic enough to be considered a flight simulator and being far too complex for fans of arcade style action. However, despite all this it works quite brilliantly and there's still nothing quite like it. Digital Integration's ATF, which came a few years later, is probably the closest in spirit.

An early hit for Mike Richardson, this is a fairly simple Scramble clone with a nod to the, then recent, Falklands War.

You launch your Harrier from an aircraft carrier, fly past a frigate and soon approach a coastline coming under attack from anti aircraft guns and fighters. If you penetrate far enough into enemy territory you might get to attack a town and return to your carrier for a landing.

The graphics are fairly simple with everything fitting into exact character squares and a similarly jerky scroll. Gameplay is hampered by the fact that you only have one life; although you can eject, it serves to end the game.

At the time it was markedly inferior to Penetrator, although it did have the advantage that it ran in 16K. Now that that's somewhat less of an issue it can't be said to have aged too well though. That said, the spirit of the original lives on in the form of a recent sequel, from the original programmer, for the PC with excellent graphics and gameplay.

Back in 1982 this game marked the birth of a new genre, of sports management games, that's still going strong to this day in a recognizably similar fashion.

As you'd expect, Football Manager is relatively primitive, written entirely in BASIC and with only a scant handful of options that allow you to pick your team and manage the club finances. The mechanics are fairly simple; try to pick a mix of defenders, midfielders and strikers, keep up your overall stamina by rotating the squad where necessary and deal with injuries as best you can. All in all, it strikes a pretty good balance between demanding too much micromanagement and giving enough options to keep your interest up.

One of the features of the game is match highlighs, which are animated with UDG stickmen. You'll see a player in a scoring position and they'll take a shot either to score, miss or get it blocked. Crazy though this might sound it actually works and you find yourself willing your players on. Whilst this part of the game is essentially random, you do get a lot more scoring opportunities by making good management decisions and building up a good squad.

Of course, this is far from a perfect game and fans of later examples of the genre will find it all a bit on the simple side. It's also tediously slow in parts, particularly sorting the tables after the results are in, due to its BASIC nature.

This is a reasonable port of Activision's classic racing game for the Atari 2600 to the Spectrum.

The graphics are drab and the game is basically just one long slog of overtaking car after car only broken up with occasional night or fog represented by most of the track being obscured and a low contrast palette.

It wasn't a particularly great game when it first came out and time hasn't done it any favours. Although reasonably faithful to the original, it suffers in comparison against the likes of Chequered Flag and Full Throttle that were out at the time, let alone later games like TT Racer and Chase HQ.

A rare non-license deal from Elite Systems this is a platformer set in a theme park. In typical Jet Set Willy fashion there's a backstory of a disgruntled employee scattering the takings around the park and you having to collect them, but that's just an excuse for running around on all the rides trying to collect the coins.

The graphics are suitably detailed and practically every one of the sixty screens has some neat individual touches, making this game that you'll want to fully explore.

It might not be the most innovative of games but it has some original ideas and is well enough executed to stand out from the crowd; this well worth a look for platform fans.

A fast sideways-scrolling shooter, this was the game that finally moved the genre on from the Penetrator, five years its senior.

The graphics are great with much use of colour in the scrolling backgrounds. Other sprites are single colour but that's used to good effect as it allows pixel perfect movement. To avoid colour clash, enemies invariably travel behind the scenery. It also features some great power-ups and end of level bosses.

The only real drawback is that it suffers from the inevitable vulnerability when you lose your power-ups and some of the later levels are perhaps a little dull in comparison to the impressive scenery of the first, but on the whole it's one of the better Spectrum games if you're after fast arcade style blasting.

An unlicensed conversion of the arcade game Donkey Kong, this was one of Ocean's first hits. It's far from a perfect copy of the original, but still managed to stand out enough from a bunch of inferior clones to be the choice of its time.

Although fairly fast, and being one of the few games of its time to feature smooth-moving sprites rather than have everything in exact character squares, it's got a few bugs and irritating quirks. Jumps seem to be at totally the wrong speed in comparison to normal movement, the collision detection is a bit ropey, and getting onto the ladders has a bit of a knack to it.

Whilst it was pretty good fun for its time, it hasn't really stood the test of time at all. The graphics no longer impress and the gameplay is finicky, bordering on unfair.

Like them or loathe them, this was the game that first started the craze for tie-in licenses, which was to prove a lucrative vein for Ocean over the years even if the games didn't always live up to or even relate much to their subject matter.

You start by collecting the ingredients and the game then becomes an obvious clone of the arcade game Burger Time, and its not a bad one with good use of colour and a few beeper jingles.

Still it's neither particularly original or outstandingly good; just a fairly standard arcade clone that's fun for a few minutes diversion.

This was an original game for its time and the idea still seems a unique one; you control a Chinese man who is balancing spinning plates on top of poles.

There's a steady supply of plates and you've got to match up colours whilst occasionally rebalancing ones that are about to fall. Once you've got the hang of the rather awkward controls it's not too hard and soon becomes repetitive.

Originally a C64 game, the Spectrum conversion suffers from inferior graphics and sound which, let's face it, were about the only things that it really had going for it in the first place. Overall, it's one of the more forgettable games in Ocean's back catalogue.

This is another of those early unofficial arcade conversions from Ocean, this time based on Q*bert from Gottleib. You need to step on each hexagon in a pyramid whilst avoiding an assortment of nasties with only the help of a few floating platforms to allow you to escape when necessary.

As far as Q*bert clones go, it's a very good one; far better than the likes of Spellbound and Pi-balled which came out around the same time. The sprites are cute and move smoothly and there's excellent use of colour strategically employed to avoid clash. More importantly the gameplay strikes the perfect balance between fast enough to keep you on your toes and giving just enough reaction time to avoid being unfair.

It was something of a hit back then and hasn't aged badly at all. It wouldn't have won any awards for originality, and might well have attracted a lawsuit had Gottleib been inclined that way, but it's a very playable game indeed.

Converted from an obscure arcade game entitled Bagman, this game got a new title for home computers. It's a relatively straight platformer that allows you to roam across three screens. There are a few neat touches like moving rail cars and lifts you can jump on to and axes you can use to dig your way through walls.

Again, it's the poor relation of a better game on the C64. The graphics are a bit odd, with some rather blocky bits, presumably to avoid excessive colour clash. Sound is excellent, however, with one of the best in-game beeper tunes to grace a Spectrum game.

The difficulty curve is pretty steep, although with nothing more than a change of colour palette once you've done the first level, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, there's not really much to it and it's a very difficult game to get to grips with; it's worth a look if you're into hard platform games and that tune is worth a listen too.

A license deal from one of Sylvester Stallone's less remarkable films, this has very little to do with it which is something of a good thing as it gave Jonathan Smith a free rein to do his own thing.

Thanks to a rather nifty scrolling routine it plays smoothly at an electric pace and your reactions need to be tip top to survive. Unarmed to start with you need to "use your head" to take out opponents which include all manner of things from armed thugs to prams. Get yourself some weapons, hidden in beef burgers for some reason, though and the tables are turned as you can gun down your opponents with relative impunity for a while. Oh, and you've got to rescue some girl as well.

As you might have guessed from some of the elements in the previous paragraph, this game is very much tongue in cheek; I doubt Stallone himself would have approved, which only makes it all the more appealing.

One of the best scrolling platformers/run and gun games for the Spectrum.

The final insult would probably have been a better name for this last gasp attempt at milking some more cash from a franchise that had been fairly successful up to this point. Where previous Renegade games had essentially been street fighting affairs, this bungs you into a prehistoric pastiche in which your enemies are cartoon cavemen and dinosaurs.

The graphics are fairly detailed, but a bit of a mishmash and completely monochrome which gives a rather messy look to proceedings. The gameplay is a decided step back from the previous games as there's no longer the ability to pick up weapons or play side by side.

Basically, it's thrown away most of what was good about the previous two games and replaced it with a bunch of things that blatantly don't work. One to avoid, especially so if you enjoyed the earlier games.

Coming on the second side of the Horizons tape, this was the first taste of Spectrum games for most people who bought the new machine back in 1982.

For those who had used the previous Sinclair machine, the ZX81, it gave a pretty good taster of the Spectrum's new capabilities with colour, user defined graphics and sound effects; all things that couldn't be done with the ZX81.

Still, it's just a Breakout clone written in BASIC and there's not really much to it; your control over the direction of the ball is limited to bouncing it along or sending it back where it came from.

Overall, it's a game that was played rather a lot in the early days, but is merely of historical interest now.

Yet another pointless arcade conversion from US Gold. The original arcade game, by Sega, is a pretty pseudo 3D shooter with some detailed multicoloured sprite graphics but doesn't have much of a reputation for playing well.

Suffice it to say that the Spectrum version looks bloody awful with mono sprites and a half-hearted attempt to recreate the depth illusion via bars of colour in exact attribute squares. It doesn't work and the simplistic gameplay of the original isn't enough to carry what's left. It's also ludicrously easy; you can master the game in a few goes and each level plays out a set pattern.

PSS made a better job of it with their earlier unofficial conversion, Blade Alley, but even that isn't much to shout about.

Up until this game, Pete Cooke had a reputation for writing off-beat games such as the text adventure Urban Upstart and the HGV simulator Juggernaut. However, he finally made his impact on mainstream gaming with this post-Elite 3D epic.

The backstory is pure Sci-Fi cliche. Rogue robots have taken over a colony planet and you're on a one man mission to reclaim it for humanity by traveling around its 32 cities, gathering a set of parts for reactor rods, and using them to shut down the planet's central nuclear reactor. If this doesn't have you thinking Star Wars, which had already been adapted into a 3D arcade game, you'd need to have been living in a cave.

As such, it's obviously a game that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. As well as Star Wars, the graphics were at least partly inspired by Gyron; objects are flat and the only cue of solidity is the illumination and shading. This was a first for Spectrum games and something that didn't find its way into the mainstream for quite a while afterwards. The greatest influence though was obviously from Elite.

Like Elite, it's an open game; there are no set objectives, other than the rather distant one of eventually shutting down the central reactor to finish the game. Unlike Elite, however, there's an overall structure to the game that's not merely randomly generated; each city has its own particular layout and that makes a difference. Some can be tackled easily, where others require special strategies or equipment hidden elsewhere on the planet.

Unlike a lot of other 3D epics, Tau Ceti doesn't at all play at a plod; it's stood the test of time well and the firefights are every bit as fast and furious as you'll get in a modern FPS or space simulator game. A cautious approach is recommended though, as the cities are laden with ambushes and minefields.

As well as the 3D exploration and combat, there's also another side to the game. You can dock with some of the buildings and a natty WIMP interface allows you access to equipment, maps, stored data, a notepad, and the reactor rods which add a puzzle element to the game.

Overall, this is one of the finest moments in Spectrum gaming. It's a complex game that takes some getting to grips with, but it's rewarding enough to be worth the effort. I've finished it once, but it took a heck of a long time.

Set in the year 2032, the world stands on the brink of all out nuclear war, with a massive proliferation of weapons in many countries. The only possible hope of a peaceful resolution of this crisis lies with the United Nuclear Nations, of which you are the supreme commander.

In this strategy game, you control a bunch of interceptor and eavesdropping satellites, plus a small peacekeeping force. Your main weapon though is diplomacy as you try to play the aggressive nations off against each other, persuade them to disarm and try to contain the wars that do break out before they escalate into nuclear exchanges.

It's all presented very tidily with a WIMP interface and neat functional graphics. The game has a bit of a problem though; it's very difficult to track your progress. The member nations rate you, but seeing as you're constantly at odds with them it seems a bit dubious and even when you think you're doing well a full scale war can break out. At that stage, your interceptor satellites come into play and, with a bit of luck they'll pick off some of the warheads. You can survive a few exchanges before the radiation levels get critical but such incidents become more frequent and less predictable as the game progresses.

As such, it doesn't quite come off. It's worth a go for a bit, but don't be surprised if the lack of feedback and the impossibility of getting all the nations to disarm without shooting off their stockpiles first makes you lose patience with it.

After the big hit that was Tau Ceti, Pete Cooke revisited the same theme with this follow up. The basic idea behind the game is that of training to become a GalCorp skimmer pilot; essentially the role you had in the previous game.

To do this, the game has twenty missions. These are much smaller than Tau Ceti's huge planet spanning play area, but offer much more in the way of variety. Some, such as the aptly titled "If it moves..." are pretty much just plain shoot 'em ups, whilst others will test your navigational, puzzle solving and all round skills. There's even a mission called "Tau Ceti Revisited" in which you take on the challenge from the previous game, albeit somewhat slimmed down.

A nice feature of the game is that you can design your own skimmer. Much of the equipment; jump/door unit, scanner, ADF, target/track unit, missiles, flares, AMMs, etc. will be familiar to those who've played Tau Ceti but there are a few interesting additions such as the delay bombs which allow you to blast groups of enemies or take out heavily armoured buildings. You also get to pick the screen layout of your skimmer, which allows you to place all the viewers and gauges to suit your preferences.

The whole game has a nice graphical user interface; missions, skimmers and other options are all selected using a pointer that you move with joystick or selected keys. At certain points in the game there's a text interface too where you type in commands for the skimmer. A neat touch is that it'll still recognize some misspelled commands e.g. it'll figure out that you meant launch if you type lunch.

The graphical effect in the main game is similar to Tau Ceti with objects given an effect of depth by light sourcing and shading. However, it runs all with a bit of extra zip here suggesting that Cooke had been doing a fair bit of optimization, and this is most telling in the shoot 'em up missions that have none of the simulator-like sluggishness of Tau Ceti.

Audio is fairly limited though; just the occasional click of lasers striking your skimmer.

If all that wasn't enough the game comes with a nice bonus on the flip side of the tape; a Star Map from Sol program that allows you to identify stars and constellations in the night sky, including some of the locations for the game itself. Starry Night Pro it isn't, but it was pretty good for 1986.

Overall, it's a great challenge; even if it takes a little getting into. There's at least ten hours play getting through all the missions and a lot more if you want to hone your scores up to 100% on them. I'd think this about as good as it got for 3D space games on the Spectrum..

Xeno is touted as a future sport. Two players each control a skimmer which they can move around an arena and attempt to bash a puck into their opponent's goal. It's obviously influenced by the classic Pong, and perhaps also Lucasfilm's Ballblazer.

Quite individually, movement is by positioning a cursor in the line of which your skimmer will move. A bad move can quite easily send you off screen, and before you've got the knack you can sometimes spend a few goes flitting back and forth across it before getting back under control. Not only can you hit the puck, but you can also attempt to knock away your opponent's skimmer, adding a tactical element to the game.

Against the computer, the game can be decent fun but it really comes into its own as a two player game that works in a manner that pretty much no Spectrum football game, the likes of Match Day and Emlyn Hughes International Soccer included, ever quite did.

Binary Design were to revisit the concept in their later games Hyperbowl and Vectorball, and all three games offer a slightly different slant with their individual pros and cons.

After having brightened up the budget games scene considerably for a while, Firebird software launched their Gold range of full price titles for the Spectrum with this game.

It's essentially an on-rails 3D shooter; you launch from an orbiting spacecraft, drop down into a corridor running along the surface of a planet, and blast away at some alien Lurgons until your energies are exhausted and you have to return to your ship. A system of "cycredits" allows you access to higher levels.

There are a variety of enemies that you need to take out; the lurgons themselves are fairly easy to deal with but Time Dimensional Spinners and Orbital Saucers can do serious damage to you. At all costs you've got to avoid the deadly Doomships and Argon Magnets which can destroy your buggy with a single hit.

Whilst having a pleasing graphical effect and some great sound effects - the beeper has rarely delivered more satisfying zaps and explosions - the game does get dull fairly quickly. The added complexities of dealing with things like Doomships and Spinners interfere with the twitch blasting and the docking sequence can also be a bit of a pain.

So, not bad for a first effort from Firebird Gold, but this would probably have made a better addition to their budget range whilst they'd have been better off waiting for the more substantial Gyron in the full price stakes.

GLASS stands for Game Lords Alien Strike Simulator and that's a fair description as it's very much a straightforwards shoot 'em up.

The game consists of hundreds of different stages, although they essentially come in three basic flavours. You're either racing along on the surface of a planet - Deathchase style - through a forest of giant cylinders, blasting at aliens flying towards you over a glassy blue plain, or shooting at giant alien spacecraft as they scroll by beneath a chequer-board patterened planet.

Graphically, programmer Paul Hargreaves has used pretty much every trick in the book and the game still looks great, with a real impression of speed, superb detail, and effects like lightning and shading adding to the look. The most impressive sequence has you flying over a chequer-board pattened planet towards a city before launching a nuke, blowing it apart pixel by pixel.

Unfortunately, graphics don't make a game and neither does the huge number of levels either. All three types are essentially very simple to play and don't really develop your twitch skills much. All the while, your shields are gradually being sapped and it's only a matter of time before they run out. You can continue for more goes when you die, but starting the game from scratch sends you through the same levels again, making it rather boring to play.

Ultimately, it's a nice game for a quick blast once in a while, but has no real depth or longevity. Still, it's not as if most modern shooters don't suffer from similar afflictions despite having an even greater level of graphical sheen on them.

Ostensibly a sequel to Ocean's earlier unlicensed Kong, this is another shameless ripoff of an arcade game. This time it's Mr Do's Wild Ride that gets the treatment.

The basic idea is that you've got to run along a rollercoaster to rescue a damsel in distress, whilst dodging the cars coming down at you by sneaking up conveniently placed ladders.

Despite the combined efforts of Nigel "Chuckie Egg" Alderton and Jonathan "Pud Pud" Smith, it's not a particularly great game to play. climbing onto a ladder requires precisely the same knack as Chuckie Egg and, that's pretty much all there is to the game. Get on a ladder, wait for a gap and run along to the next one; once you've got that sorted you'll zip through all four screens in no time. You'll then get to go through the same levels with additional hazards, but about all that means is that the gaps are shorter and you've got to wait longer between them.

Graphically, it's not too bad with some pretty backgrounds and smooth moving sprites; your character even has an absurdly large hat, again reminiscent of Chuckie Egg. However, that's not enough to save what is a rather dull game.

After the release of Academy, Pete Cooke parted company with CRL and moved to new publishers Nexus where he developed a new game that was yet another radical departure from convention. Where Tau Ceti and Academy are set on the surface of planets, in Micronaut One the action takes place in tunnels inside huge asteroid-sized Biocomputers. These have been invaded by a nasty alien species called the scrim.

The life cycle of the scrim is an interesting one; hatching out from invulnerable eggs they crawl slowly around the tunnels as larva before transforming into rapid moving jellyflies who eventually settle down, weave webs and lay eggs repeating the cycle.

combating the scrim is a tricky proposition. Your ship has a single weapon which can kill a jellyfly quite rapidly, if you can catch it, or alternately bash the larvae into submission at the cost of nearly all its energy. The problem then becomes how to replenish your energy and you can do this either by absorbing occasional rogue energy clouds as they pass through the tunnels or going to an Energy Transfer Unit (ETU) to top up.

As if you didn't already have enough to do the ETUs themselves need constant attention as, without intervention, they can either store too much or too little energy putting the Biocomputer at risk. A handy autopilot does a good job of telling you where you need to go, and you receive warnings of ETUs at dangerous levels and webs being spun, but you'll still need excellent spatial awareness to make the most of them.

The graphics have amongst the slickest solid vector effects ever seen on the Spectrum and maintain an excellent speed. A bonus racing game makes good use of this allowing you to take on three tunnel circuits either against the clock or following a pacemaker.

It's a tricky game to get into and hunting for scrim, and then the energy to dispose of them with, can be rather frustrating at times, but the rewards for persistence are excellent.

This is a unique game that there's not quite been the like of either before or since. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, but I'd highly recommend giving it a fair go.

Geoff Crammond had already made a name for himself with the excellent flight simulator Aviator and the realistic car racing game Revs on the BBC Micro but this original 3D puzzler was the first of his games to be ported to the Spectrum.

Being designed around the four colour capabilities of the BBC Micro and C64, the game doesn't quite look at its best on the Spectrum, although programmer Mike Follin did a good job of recreating the effect with shading. Tim Follin, as usual, ekes some excellent multi-channel ditties, albeit very short ones, out of the Spectrum's beeper into the bargain.

Mainly though, it's the gameplay that impresses. There's a nasty creature, the Sentinel, which stands on the highest point above a 3D landscape, slowly rotating and absorbing everything it can see. You can teleport around the landscape, but only to where you can look down on your destination. This usually means you've got to move around the landscape to gain height bit by bit and gradually build up towers of blocks that will allow you to finally look down upon the Sentinel and absorb it.

With 10,000 algorithmically generated levels, there's plenty to keep you busy, although you don't need to complete all of them to finish the game; depending on how well you do at a level you can skip several of them. Indeed some levels seem impossible and you might have to backtrack to an earlier one and finish with a different score to progress.

Overall, whilst it's full marks for the concept I'd give the faster and more colourful BBC Micro version the nod over the Spectrum one, although it's a game worth experiencing whatever format you choose.

Released back in the early days of the Spectrum this game was something of a minor hit. The rather dubious plot has hen-pecked husband Henry sneaking out of the house for a night on the tiles under the nose of his axe-wielding maniac of a wife, who gives the game its title.

It's something of an uneasy mix of text adventure and arcade-style games. I use the latter term loosely as it's all written in BASIC with consequent slow speed and usage of UDGs. The text adventure parts are handled a bit better, but only just; it's still quite slow and there aren't many locations or interesting puzzles.

All in all, it's hard to imagine how such a sexist mess of clashing genres with such poor execution could ever have appealed much outside a market that was starved of quality games. Ah well, I guess it'd be ripe for a port to the Wii...

Arriving at about the same time as Frank Bruno's Boxing from Elite and Knockout from Alligata, this was one of the first boxing games to hit the Spectrum in the wake of the arcade success of Punch Out.

It's got some quite pretty graphics for its age, and was easily the looker of the three games with some nice animation, albeit almost entirely in monochrome.

However, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Whilst most Dinamic games have reputations for being extremely difficult, this is one of the exceptions. After a few minutes play you're pretty much bound to figure out a trick that'll see you win every fight, and it just becomes a procession.

It's not too bad for five minutes of fun, but I'd recommend going for Frank Bruno, or the later Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing instead, if you want something with a bit more punch.

Carrier Command was the big hit of 1988 on the 16-bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computers; a mixture of strategy and simulation where you command an aircraft carrier along with it's wing of Manta fighter planes and Walrus amphibious assault vehicles. The game's main selling point was its 3D graphics which were fast and detailed for the time.

The plot is simple, but the game is complex; your carrier is up against a rogue computer controlled one and you've got to take it out by any means possible, whilst managing your supply network across a chain of islands, and extending it by capturing enemy ones. Your Manta fighters can carry missiles, bombs and lasers, and the Walrus AAVs, although capable of carrying weapons, are largely given the job of capturing islands and establishing bases. Whilst there are autopilot controls for sending the assorted vehicles to particular locations, it's totally hands on when it comes to combat giving a balance of twitch and strategy skills.

As could only be expected the Spectrum version of the game was inevitably cut down, although considerably less so than the C64 one which was essentially turned into a 2D scrolling shooter. However, the 3D graphics survived more or less intact on the Spectrum version. Reduced to monochrome it was never going to look as good as the original, although the use of shaded textures helped it retain a reasonable amount of clarity. Perhaps most obvious is the slower frame rate; still not too bad for a 3.5MHz 8-bit computer doing the work of an 8MHz 16-bit one.

Elsewhere it's a pretty faithful translation, with the same basic strategy and objectives. You can either play a cat and mouse game to try and take out the enemy carrier's base by continually cutting its lines of supply, or try to assault it head on; the latter option can be very tricky as it's a lot more powerful than yours and can use all its weapons and Mantas at once.

In some respects the gameplay is even slightly improved on the Spectrum. The gaps between the islands, are smaller and it took less time to travel between them. Some of the brute force strategies for capturing an island - such as standing off and blasting away at the command centre with cruise missiles - are no longer possible, meaning that you had to use more skillful means.

So, on the whole it's an excellent game and the Spectrum version sensibly makes the most out of what the machine is capable of. However, I'd still recommend trying out the Amiga and Atari ST versions to appreciate it at its best.

After the rave reviews that greeted Wheelie and Skool Daze, this helicopter-based 3D shooter got something of a lukewarm reception for Microsphere. The plot is fairly simple; in an Orwellian future, a group of drones called the watchers are making everyone's life a misery by enforcing all manner of petty laws and it's your job to hunt them down and take them out.

Graphically, it's pretty good. Perhaps coming after Gyron, the combination of towers and balls in 3D wasn't going to wow anyone as much, but it's every bit as slick as its predecessor and gives a fair impression of speed into the bargain.

The one little fly in the ointment is that it's all to easy to decorate your windshield with some ugly cracks. Flying into a watcher will do it, bumping into the ground too hard will too, and crashing into one of the buildings will sometimes add several. Even if you lose a life, and you inevitably will quite often when you're starting out, the cracks persist until you either finish the level or end the game.

That said, once you get the hang of it, and keep crashing down to a minimum, it's a fun game of hunt and shoot. At the lowest levels the watchers are quite pedestrian and you can easily stalk up behind them to take them out. Once you've got into the game a bit though, they're zipping around as fast as you can fly and your reactions will be sorely tested. Your helicopter also has limited fuel that you'll need to replenish by landing at one of five stations. There's no map, just a flashing indicator, so you've got to pick them out by the patterns of the buildings around them.

On the whole, I think this is an underrated game; it might be nowhere near as innovative and intricate as Skool Daze, but it's still every bit as original an idea and great fun to play too.

After a selection of generally unmemorable early releases, Virgin games relaunched their brand on the Spectrum with a much stronger game from Charles Goodwin, who had previously worked on Valhalla.

It's a sprawling arcade adventure with 240 rooms, about the same size as Ultimate's Sabre Wulf, but set in a futuristic factory; airless, with low gravity, and inhabited by a mixture of wacky robots most of which will try to kill you. Starting off with just a gun and space suit, your first objective is to pick up a nearby scooter that'll enable you to move around more freely. From then on, it's off to the master control room to shut the place down, but not before you've solved a few puzzles to pick up more equipment vital to the mission.

Graphically, the game is a riot with nice colourful graphics for its time, but that's obviously dated by massive amounts of colour clash and some noticeable flicker.

Despite some decidedly unfriendly collision detection, the game is pretty good fun to play and, although I never quite managed to complete it, I had fun exploring the factory, finding special locations and solving most of the puzzles.

All in all, a pretty good game, despite its flaws.

One of the first games to be released for the, then new, ZX Spectrum this was quite possibly the first example of sprite graphics on the machine and a foretaste of things to come.

Otherwise, it's just a fairly simple Space Invaders clone that runs at a slow and steady pace. Anyone with even the most rudimentary twitch gaming skills ought to be able to turn out a rather enormous score with their first few attempts, after which they'd most likely get bored with it.

Still, in an era of ZX81 ports and cobbled together BASIC efforts, it was a clear cut above the competition and marked out Psion as one of the quality brands in the early years of the Spectrum software scene.

Most of Psion's games can be categorized as competent but fairly laid back. Despite doing a couple of token arcade games for the Spectrum's launch, they'd largely specialized in mind games and simulations. However, they created one of the best fast action sports games here, from programmer Steve Kelly, who later went on to greater fame as a founder of the Bitmap Brothers.

The graphics are simple, but very effective with neat animation and some nice attention to detail with ballboys running out to fetch when you hit into the net.

The game itself it works fairly simply too; you run about the court and try to swing your racket at the passing ball to return it over the net. When you start out, most of the time you'll miss and there'll be a few frustrating games whilst you learn to get the timing right.

Then, eventually, once you've started being able to return the few balls a few rallies will break out, most of which you'll probably lose. Finally, something should click and your timing will suddenly get good enough to position the ball, and the game suddenly becomes brilliant fun as you get the computer opponent doing the chasing and can dictate the rallies. It also makes for an excellent two-player game, although ideally not where you share the same keyboard.

All in all, it's a classic that's been the blueprint for pretty much every tennis game since.

Back in the day, this arcade port was one of the few games to get a 97% rating in Crash magazine; the highest ever to be awarded to a select few games. Looking back now though, you'd have to wonder quite what the reviewers had been smoking at the time. Realistically, it's a pale shadow of an arcade game, with fast moving colourful sprites and dual stick controls, that was never going to work well on the Spectrum.

Programmer David Perry and graphics artist Nick Bruty did a pretty good job with the tools available to them. It's still a very colourful and attractive looking game, albeit that is only achieved for the price of making everything move in exact character squares; adding a certain jerkiness that you wouldn't associate with the arcade original.

Similarly, there are some gaping holes in the gameplay that just weren't there in the arcades. For most of the levels you can just hide in a corner, avoiding most of the enemy, whilst blasting away to success. And, with only a few screens to get through, that success can come pretty quickly.

Ultimately, it's at best a flawed gem, which flatters to deceive graphically, but totally fails to recreate the look and feel of the original. Taken on its own merits, it's a half-decent blaster, albeit a short-lived one.

This was a decent adaptation of the traditional board game released early on in the life of the Spectrum. It later re-appeared as an Interface Two cartridge and found its way into the bundle of games given away with the Spectrum during 1984, so tends to be one of those games that everyone has seen.

It plays a decent enough game at the lowest level to challenge a novice player, and you can select from various levels to give it a bit more thinking time if you're of intermediate standard. The interface is clean and function and it's easy to follow the progress of your games.

There are better Chess games out there for the Spectrum, particularly the excellent Cyrus II, but this wasn't at all bad for its time and still brings back a few fond memories.

Based on an old favourite for the ZX81, Mazogs, this was one of the early Spectrum hits for DK'Tronics.

You control a stick man in a maze populated by monsters, the aforementioned Maziacs. You need to locate some treasure, indulge in some fights, preferably armed with a sword, and make your way to the exit. Some prisoners will show you the shortest route, but they won't be too concerned about whether it's safe or not.

The graphics are a bit simplistic but well animated, particularly the fight sequences. The game does show its ZX81 heritage with the blocky movement though and the original is arguably more charming.

Also, the random maze layout can vary between trivial and nigh impossible from game to game. Still, it's a neat little effort that still stands out for the original touches.

Part of the initial Sinclair Spectrum software ranged launched in September 1982, this compilation from ICL didn't exactly get things off to an auspicious start.

First up is Martian Knock Out, a rudimentary artillery game. Once you've figured out roughly how much power you need to send your missiles flying through the invading fleet of spaceships, which takes about thirty seconds, it's a bit of a cakewalk.

Race Track is a simple 2D driving game with the obligatory downward scrolling road. Again, you're unlikely to get more than a minute's fun out of it.

Labyrinth is the best game on the tape, although that's not really saying much. You have to sneak through a maze past some predictably moving guards to reach a treasure at the centre. You're up against the clock but the time pressure is hardly harsh and the game is unlikely to last you more than fifteen minutes before you've worked it all out.

Skittles is the last of the bunch and is basically just a streamlined version of Martian Knock Out. Pick your lane, knock down a bunch of skittles and repeat until you run out of turns or knock the lot down.

In short, it's utter rubbish even by 1982 standards. Luckily, Psion came to the rescue and provided the Sinclair software range with a bit of backbone with the likes of Space Raiders, Planetoids, and Hungry Horace.

After making the debut release for the Sinclair Spectrum software catalogue in Games 1, ICL decided to follow it up with the imaginatively named Games 2. As per the earlier release, there were four programs on offer:

Galactic Invasion is an obvious rehash of the earlier Martian Knockout with a few graphical tweaks, plus you're firing in the opposite direction. Once you've figured this out, there's really nothing to it.

Drop A Brick describes what you'd probably have done had you parted with hard cash for a copy of this tape in 1982. However, the game itself is a poor Breakout clone, massively inferior to Psion's Thro' The Wall, which everyone would already have had via the Horizon's tape. A singularly pointless effort.

Silhouette similarly replicates the functionality of the Draw program on the Horizon tape, albeit being even more useless. Again a bit of a waste of time.

Train Race provides the closest thing the compilation gets to a saving grace. It's a simple betting game with some cheerful and chunky graphics; the sort of thing you might have actually bothered to save to tape had you typed it in from a magazine listing.

Alas, it's nowhere near good enough to offset the other three games and ICL somehow managed to come up with something that was even worse than Games 1 here.

After releasing two of the least impressive games compilations, ICL came back for more with this third tape. Yet again, there are four games:

Mind The Meteors is that old chestnut where you fly through an asteroid field trying to avoid collisions with them. In a slight twist from the usual format, you travel left to right and there's no scrolling. However, other than that, it's pretty pointless.

Daylight Robbery is, perhaps, a phrase that comes to mind when you consider the price of this tape. However, it's a surprisingly decent game being a twist on the Pac Man format where you have to make off with some bags of cash from a maze under a time limit whilst the guards hunt you down. Sure, it's in BASIC and slow as heck, but there's actually some fun to be had as you work out the best routes and how much cash can be made off with.

Battleships is, again, surprisingly good; a faithful adaptation of the board/paper game. Not quite a substitute for the real thing, but being a single-player game it doesn't have to be.

The Invisible Invader, sadly, slips back to ICL's usual standard. You just have to follow the directions given on the screen to find the aforementioned invader, and the graphics are particularly risible.

So, two half-way playable games and a couple of wastes of time makes this a big improvement on the previous ICL compilations. It's still not great, but you could have done worse by 1982 standards.

The fourth ICL games compilation pretty much follows the same route as their earlier efforts. Four more games, all ZX81 ports, written in BASIC:

Docking the Spaceship is a very simple game, but still quite a playable one. You've got to manoeuvre your spacecraft around the back of a space station and inside to the docking bay. It'd be a doddle were it not for the half-decent treatment of momentum that adds a touch of fun to the proceedings.

Journey into Danger is a simple RPG. You travel through a maze looking for monsters to slay and treasure to pick up. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour and you'll need to run away from fights where the odds are against you, but to maximize your score you've got to take a few chances especially when time is running down and you need to head for the exit. It's quite a decent game by 1982 standards and the one I spent more time on than all the other ICL games combined on the ZX81.

Invasion from Jupiter is, essentially, a turn based shoot 'em up. If this sounds like an awful idea for a game, you're quite right.

Escape rounds out the bunch. It's got you running around dodging a minelaying monster. There are three hidden exits, but you'll only find them by running around at random and hopefully not dying. It's not awful, but it's still far from brilliant.

With an utter diamond in the rough in the shape of Journey into Danger, and a couple of other playable games, this is far and away the best of the ICL games tapes. It's still nowhere near as technically proficient as the Psion games though and has dated far worse.

After releasing several compilation tapes of games, ICL rounded out their initial range with this tape containing just one.

Star Trail is certainly the largest of their games. It's the only one that needs a 48K machine and indeed it uses pretty much all the memory available to BASIC.

The game itself is, as the name suggests, a copy of the old Star Trek mainframe game. A few of the names have been changed, presumably for copyright reasons, although there are still Klingons and Romulens (sic) to fight.

It's fairly well featured; you've got long range and short range scanners, torpedoes and phasers, starbases to dock with for supplies and a ship's computer with features like a galaxy map.

In some ways though it's a little too faithful to the source, with a display and command system that's more suited to a terminal than what the Spectrum can manage. That said, so long as you can put up with its cumbersome interface, there's a fairly deep and involving game to be had.

Although not bad for an early effort, it was soon eclipsed by superior games like Mikro-Gen's Star Trek and Silversoft's Starship Enterprise.

Around six months after releasing their initial bunch of lacklustre games, ICL decided to enter the fray once more with this release.

Despite an inlay and backstory that dresses this up as something of an action game, presumably in the wake of the Iranian embassy siege, it's basically a bog standard 3D maze game.

Oh, and it's a very slow one. Screens take several seconds to draw and you've got a lot of moves to make at the higher levels. Even compared to other 3D maze games written in BASIC, it's particularly slow.

ICL went on to do some more educational software for the Spectrum, but this was their final game release; they weren't missed much.

This was another of the Psion titles that launched Sinclair Research's Spectrum software line in September 1982. It also received a second push as one of the launch cartridges for the ill-fated Interface II.

It's a fairly straight Asteroids clone, but with sprite graphics rather than the vectors characteristic of the arcade machine.

The gameplay is pretty solid too. The Asteroids break up satisfactorily when shot, and the occasional saucer flies across the screen to add to the fun. Momentum is handled in a realistic fashion that makes the necessary moving and shooting a touch tricky until you get the hang of it. There's an interesting bug in that if you hide in the corner behind the score, you become invulnerable.

The flip side of the tape held Missile (not present on the Interface II version) which was one of the earliest games to feature 3D vector graphics on a home computer. That novelty aside, however, it's a poor game with sluggish controls and dubious collision detection.

However, on the strength of Planetoids, this was one of the better launch titles and it generally remained the game of choice amongst Asteroids clones. Purists looking for something like the vector graphics of the original may prefer Jon Ritman's Cosmic Debris though.

This was pretty much the jewel in the crown of the initial range of games for the Spectrum that were launched by Sinclair Research in September 1982, and, although we might be a bit more complacent these days, it was a true wonder that an inexpensive computer could offer such a realistic experience of flight.

It's a port of Psion's earlier game of the same name for the ZX81, but greatly enhanced using the superior colour graphics and sound of the Spectrum. There's a fairly realistic set of navigational aids too, such as the ILS, compass, altimeter, and a set of radio beacons you can tune into.

There are a couple of runways to see and a typical flight will involve taking off from one, flying around for a bit, and landing at the other. For scenery there are a few lakes. There are also some mountains that you can't see, but you can still crash into them if you're flying too low.

The flight model isn't too bad and is a lot less arcade-like than later games. Complex manoeuvres such as rolls and loops are possible, although there's an irritating quirk in that your compass has both a 0 and 360 heading on it.

I don't think the game was ever truly surpassed. Subsequent flight simulators tended to offer a less realistic flight model and the thrill of air to air combat instead, although there were occasional games like Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot and F-16 Combat Pilot that offered a bit of both.

One of the earliest releases for the Spectrum was this port of a text adventure originally written for the ZX81; replete with text in all capitals, it's not exactly an enhanced port, but it's written in machine code and quite fast and otherwise well presented. It, alongside three other adventures from Artic, eventually found its way into the official software catalogue Sinclair Research in early 1983.

It's quite a small game, with just a smidgen over 20 locations, but it's no pushover. The map is extremely convoluted and you can rarely track back from going in one way by its opposite compass direction. There's also the obligatory maze for a game of this vintage, although at least the game offers a helpful clue as to how to get out of it.

Another frustration is the game's limited vocabulary. The old adventure standards of Look and Take aren't accepted, at least not in their usual contexts; I remember it taking a while before I figured out that you had to Get objects and R (for Redescribe?) would tell you where you were.

The game's plot veers from the mundane to the ridiculous, with most of the map not exactly resembling the mysterious alien planet the title suggests, yet with some downright illogical puzzles. You'll need your disco skills to get past a forcefield, for instance.

Whilst the game was certainly something of a classic for its time, it's not aged gracefully and looks poor next to even some of the more mundane Quilled games that arrived in the following years. More recent converts to adventure games will certainly wonder what all the fuss was about here.

Following hot on the heels of Adventure A: Planet of Death (well, on the ZX81 at least, as the Spectrum versions appear to have all been released at around the same time) this was the second of the Artic adventures.

It's a rather larger and more sophisticated game than its predecessor but still retains many of the flaws of the earlier games; the parser is a simple verb/noun one with limited vocabulary, the location descriptions are terse, and the puzzles frequently illogical. A couple of nods to its ZX81 ancestry are a hidden advert and the ALL CAPS text.

On to the plot. You've discovered an Inca Temple in the Peruvian jungle and have to gain entry, loot it of its valuables and get back to the outside world. It's your standard adventure treasure hunt, basically.

The game is fairly easy to play; there aren't too many instant death traps, and you only need to find, and escape with, a single treasure to finish the game. However, you can still go back and try to improve your score; interestingly there doesn't seem to be any way to escape with all the treasures as you're limited in what you can carry.

Whilst not a true classic of the genre, this was a reasonably good game for its time. Like most of the Artic adventures it rather pales next to the games that arrived in subsequent years.

Battlecars was an highly ambitious attempt to port a tabletop car duelling game to a home computer format from developers SLUG, who'd earlier given us Apocalypse and later went on to do Talisman.

The idea is that you create your own fighting vehicle using an editor written by Julian Gollop who'd later go on to great success in his own right. You've a choice of different chassis, engines, armour, etc. and can arm up with weapons from lowly machine guns to high powered lasers. Additional passive weapons include things like mines, smoke and oil which can be dropped into the path of unsuspecting opponents. Your cash is limited, so it's important to design a balanced vehicle, or at least one with strengths you can play to.

You then pick a choice of three venues. There's a racetrack, the open arena of the Autodrome, or the mean streets of Slug City. Ideally it's a two player game, although the computer can sub for the second player if you just want a straight race or a duel in the Autodrome. It's not a terribly sophisticated opponent, however, and can easily be outmanoeuvred.

Despite the grand concept, the game rather suffers from some unsophisticated programming. There's on a small window on the action for each player, the scrolling is slow and jerky, and the controls are bizarre. Each player has an entire half of the keyboard on which only a single key can be pressed at a time; if this seems like a bit of a nightmare to get to grips with, you're not wrong. I can only presume that it was done this way to avoid the inevitable matrix clashes when more than two keys are pressed at once.

Combine this with a sluggish multi-load, and you've got a rather difficult game to get into. However, it can still be an ultimately rewarding one, especially if you can find someone else prepared to give it a go with you.

Another of those early games from Imagine in 1983, this is notable for being Ian Weatherburn's first published game.

It's a rather straightforward shoot 'em up where you control a roaming robot who is always moving forwards but can turn and slow down a little. The object on each screen is to collect four fuel cells which power the teleporter that'll take you to the next level.

The graphics are fairly nice, for its time at least, and the aliens change from level to level, but other than that things remain pretty much the same and it's just a question of how long you can last before your limited supply of energy is finally sapped.

It's not a bad game for its time, but hasn't dated well and is no classic.

This is one of the first games I picked up for the Spectrum and, apparently, also Don Priestly's biggest ever seller. Yes, it seems to have sold more than the likes of Minder, Trapdoor, Popeye, etc.

Anyway, it's a fairly simple affair. You control an anti-tank gun aimed at a bridge, whilst enemy tanks cross from right to left. There are four lanes across the bridge, and you need to control the elevation of your gun so as to pick off tanks on particular lanes. You gain points for hitting and destroying tanks, but lose them if they can cross the bridge.

There are two ways you can hit a tank. One to the turret will immediately destroy it, and this is very difficult with a moving tank due to the delay whilst your shells are in the air. However, a hit to the hull will merely disable it. You can then finish off the immobile tank with a hit to the turret at your leisure. However, you've got to be a little bit careful as the damaged tank can still return fire.

There's a somewhat strategic element to the game as tanks will stop behind destroyed or disabled ones, making them easier to pick off. Destroyed tanks will eventually be blasted out of the way, but anything behind a disabled tank remains a sitting duck. A favoured tactic of mine is to disable a tank in each lane, and then take out the ones behind with turret hits. I can then camp out at the left side of the screen when waiting for more ammo and no tanks will get across the bridge.

Although decidedly primitive when compared against later Spectrum games, this was rather good for its time and remains one of the more enjoyable 16K games.

This is a conversion of the arcade game from the Vektor Grafix team, who also handled the earlier Star Wars and later would go on to work on Fighter Bomber.

There are four stages to the game. You start with hunting down the Empire's probots before they can report back the position of the rebel base. The next stage has you hunting down the massive AT-AT walkers; you can either destroy them with a, tricky, head-shot or go for the tactic seen in the film and wrap around their legs with a tow cable. For the third stage you blast off into space in the Millennium Falcon to duel with some tie fighters. The final stage has you running through an asteroid field to escape the Imperial forces.

The graphics are a fairly faithful re-creation of the arcade look with coloured vector graphics. There's a bit of clash and things don't move quite as smoothly as the original, but it's still a very respectable performer for a Spectrum game.

On the whole, it's a very high quality re-creation of the arcade game, but I think it suffers somewhat in comparison to other vector graphic shooters on the Spectrum that were around at the time. The movement is all pretty much on rails, and consequently all you get to do is point your weapons and shoot.

As such, it's a decent game for a quick blast, but not even on a patch with the likes of Starglider, Tau Ceti and Starfox which have a lot more depth to their gameplay.

No, it's nothing to do with Star Wars, but this is another of those games from 1985 where Mastertronic were just starting to turn the corner from a churner of cheap tat to putting out great games at a bargain price.

The plot is fairly simple, you must fly through space to five mines and shut them down in order to save the Empire. Since parts of the fifth mine are inaccessible until you've shut down the first four, you've got to tackle them first.

The flying through space part of the game is the weakest bit; the 3D effect isn't very convincing and totally goes out the window when asteroids that were zooming towards you suddenly start to slide across the screen at random. Avoiding them isn't too hard though and eventually you should arrive at one of the mines.

Getting through the mines is tricky and requires a bit of study. Generally you'll find a safe spot to perch in where you can watch the droids moving around in their repetitive patterns before making a dash to the next safe place. You've got to shut down a number of cores in each mine and then it's off through space again to the next one.

On the whole, it's a rather flawed game with multiple parts that don't gel together well. Still, it wasn't that bad for a couple of quid back in the day and was a lot better than most of the fluff that had preceded it on Mastertronic's budget label.

Somewhat bucking the trend of the remainder of Activision's early releases for the Spectrum, this is a creditable conversion of the Atari 2600 classic.

In it, you control a man equipped with a helicopter back-pack, laser gun and several sticks of TNT. Your mission is to rescue several trapped miners from deep inside caverns. There are numerous nasty creatures inside the mine (hence your laser), and walls that obstruct your passage (hence the TNT.) Just to add to the fun, there's a modest amount of inertia to overcome with the backback, so just hovering is tricky and the art of hitting the thrust button just before you lay a stick of TNT is something you've got to master early on.

As you progress deeper into the game you'll come across additional obstacles, such as lava pits - with the occasional floating raft - and lamps which, if touched, will black out the room you're in. Naturally some of the rooms force you to do this as you enter. Fuel and laser power are limited and the latter needs to be conserved on some levels as you've not got enough TNT to blast all the walls and need to exhaust it on them instead.

All in all, it's not the prettiest game on the Spectrum, but the gameplay is thoroughly faithful to the original and that's what matters most.

Originally made under the working title of Blood 'n' Guts, Quicksilva managed to acquire a film license just before release, hence the change of name. Also hence the fact that it's not really got that much to do with the film other than involving miniaturized people inside a human body.

It plays like a typical multi-screen arcade adventure, and the plot is simple: You're trapped inside someone and need to find eight parts of a midget submarine hidden in various places, and assemble them in the brain so you can swim out through an optic nerve. The human body is mapped out in a passably anatomical fashion - if you overlook a few liberties - and you can blast away at fat and collect white blood cells and release them at enemies to unlock new areas. Occasionally, infections will break out somewhere in your host's body and you'd better go and fight them off as you'll stand no chance if they die.

The game holds special memories for me, as it was part of a competition to find the best games player in the country at the time and I got to the finals. I didn't win, but I had a nice day out and got to meet a few minor celebrities.

That aside, it was never quite a classic as, setting aside, the likes of Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf had already done much the same thing better. Still, it's not aged too badly and remains a good bit of fun.

Sandy White's third and final game for the Spectrum was a departure from his earlier Softsolid games Ant Attack and Zombie Zombie. Instead, we were treated to the first example of shaded 3D vector graphics on the Spectrum.

And they look very impressive too; you run through a maze of corridors until encountering a "universe" which contain three crystals. One of these will transport you to another universe, one to a nearby section of maze, and the third will reveal a robot part. There are seventeen parts to the robot and you need to collect them in order.

And that's pretty much the game; unlike the earlier Softsolid games it's not like it even really needed to be in 3D. Also, it becomes pretty obvious that your path through the corridors is pre-calculated, as are the animations of the crystals and robot parts.

Ultimately this leads to a rather unsatisfying game that's a bit of a grind to play and without the elements of exploration and experimentation that made the earlier games fun.

That said, its graphical style was to prove highly influential with a number of other games soon adopting shaded vector graphics, such as Starstrike II and Driller.

After Psion's Flight Simulation had set the early running for the genre, Fighter Pilot was the first game to come along and offer some serious competition to it.

And serious it was, in that instead of a light aircraft in the earlier game you got to fly a supersonic jet powered F-15. However, unlike many later flight simulations, this is no glorified shoot 'em up. Instead, you've got to put in some serious training just to land and take off again, let alone get to the stage where you can take part in aerial combat.

In terms of realism it gives the Psion game a good run for its money too. There's a reasonable attempt to model the effects of the different flight surfaces and the controls respond in a semi-analogue fashion where the longer you hold down a key the more severe the response is, allowing you to perform delicate adjustments with a series of short taps. This is in contrast to later simulations like Spitfire 40 and the Microprose games where you bank in obvious 15 degree increments.

When you finally get around to it, air to air combat is a tricky affair. You've got to set your flight computer to the right mode, locate your opponent on the map and fly to the right altitude. Once you've managed that you can locate them visually and manoeuvre into position to fire your cannons. This is by no means easy, and there's a training mode where the enemy aircraft fly straight and level which is worth using to get the hang of it before you take on an enemy that'll try to fight back. Strangely, for a simulation of a modern jet fighter, there are no air to air missiles, which seems something of an omission.

Visually, it's not really up there with Psion's game which had some lakes dotted about for scenery. All you get, aside from the runways, are the occasional square or pattern of dots. The cockpit and map graphics are nice, but that doesn't really make up for the Spartan visuals outside the plane.

On the whole, like Psion's game, it's one that appeals more to those who want a realistic feel to their flight simulators, rather than the mission-oriented combat that would typify later games. Digital Integration themselves would later release F-16 Combat Pilot, which did a similar job on the 16-bit machines and was itself back-ported to the Spectrum.

Starting life as a magazine type-in game, after a bit of tarting up, Conquest was one of the launch titles for Cheetah's short-lived software label. It's fairly typical of the sort of strategy that we got in the early days of the Spectrum. I suppose you could think of it as an early, and rather primitive, forerunner to the likes of Civilization.

There's a fairly nice-looking single screen map of Europe and the Mediterranean, around which you get to build your empire, although it looks a lot pretty once you start expanding across it a character square at a time. You start out with a single legion and, as you occupy more territory, you'll accumulate more of them. However, you'll have to deal with barbarian uprisings, rebel legions, civil wars and at the highest level plague.

On the down-side, the game is written in BASIC and consequently rather slow. This is most apparent when the plague breaks out as it can take a couple of minutes per turn to resolve. Still, so long as you avoid the plague, by not playing at the top level, it remains reasonably playable.

It's not a bad game to play if you've got a bit of patience, but it hasn't exactly aged gracefully and there are some much better games along the same lines; Dark Empire and Annals of Rome are a couple that spring immediately to mind.

Whilst its predecessor had been pretty much a straight clone of the Star Wars arcade game, Realtime decided to break new ground and come up with some more original ideas for this game.

Firstly, it broke new ground graphically, being one of the first games to use shaded 3D vector graphics, rather than the wire-frame look of its predecessor. I, of the Mask might have beaten it to the punch by a few months but, whereas that pretty much ran on rails Starstrike II has something much more approaching a proper 3D environment.

The game itself has multiple stages. You start in your support module and can pick which of several systems to attack and then individual planets. Agricultural ones are the most lightly defended, with Industrial and Military being progressively more difficult. After a brief flight you can choose whether to attack the orbiting space station; this just takes a few well placed shots and you can dock - Elite style - for a bonus, which makes the next stage easier.

Moving on, you then have to fly through the force field surrounding the planet picking your way through holes in them whilst fending off attacks from emplacements. After that, you have to dogfight with a number of enemy fighters, and get a chance to replenish your dwindling fuel supply. Once that's out of the way, you can commence your attack run on the planet's surface which is reminiscent of the trench sequence in Star Wars. The final phase sees you flying through an tunnel strewn with obstacles towards the reactor. Its then back to your support module to refuel and pick off another planet, and there are plenty of them to keep you busy.

These differing sequences add quite a lot of variety to the gameplay, although it has to be said that some of them are better than others; the dogfights seem a little sluggish in comparison to games like Elite, and Realtime's later Starfox. However, in balance, the tunnel sequence is nothing less than superb playing at an electric pace, with the remaining sections generally quite well balanced too.

Overall, it's a game that's aged fairly gracefully and, even if you won't be wowed by its graphics in the light of what we've seen since, there's still got to be a certain element of wonder as to how they managed to get a Spectrum to it; as best as I can tell, there's a certain amount of corner cutting going on compared to the likes of Driller, but that's only to be expected in a game that runs considerably faster than one frame per second.

Obviously inspired by the protests at the Greenham Common airbase, when cruise missiles were deployed there at the height of the cold war, this arcade adventure was a bit of a hot topic when first released.

You control Annie, a pacifist complete with CND flag, on a mission to stop President Raygun (spelling no doubt intentional) from launching a nuclear attack. Your only weapons are little hearts you can fire at the assorted enemies to spread the love. Watch out for the Iron Lady, obviously based on another divisive politician of the era.

The game hasn't really stood the test of time in any respect, but might still appeal to the nostalgic as a curio of eighties culture, when Armageddon could really have been but four minutes away.