Producer: A & F Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.75
Language: Machine code

A & F are probably most famous in Spectrum games for their hi-scorer platform game Chuckie Egg which still sits in the CRASH than even now. It's been quite a while since that came out and the latest release, New Cylon Attack is a conversion from the BBC and Electron micros. The game was said to have set new standards for space games on the Beeb, and one critic went as far as to say that the only problem with it was that there was nothing to criticise (thereby reinforcing the fallacy that criticism implies bad comments).

New Cylon Attack is a 3D space battle in which you must defend civilisation from the attacking Cylon ships. The aliens have discovered the route of your mother ship and are out to destroy it. As an interceptor pilot you are launched from the mother ship to fight them with your laser guns.

The screen display is largely filled with the 3D view of space. Centred in the view is a squared gun sight with vertical and lateral moving bars for fine sighting. The sights move with ship movement. Laser bolts are seen as round blobs hurtling out from either side of the screen towards the large and solid aliens.

Other screen information shown indicates status of shields, lasers and fuel. The lasers use energy and take time to recharge, failing to fire until replenished. Fuel and shields are replenished by docking with the yellow coloured mothership - an automatic process if you line the sights on it. Although fuel may be replenished by docking during an attack wave, shields are only replenished when a wave is defeated. But during the docking aliens may attack the mother ship.

Apart from the multifarious alien craft there are other celestial bodies about, planets with moons, signposts pointing to Mars, comets and many stars. A radar above the viewscreen indicates the positions of attacking aliens which are just out of visual range, while the mother ship is a yellow flashing dot. Well they thought it was great on the Beeb - how about the Spectrum?

COMMENTS

Control keys: user definable, needs four directional and one for fire
Joystick: Kempston catered for, others via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive - watch out for 'inertia' effect
Use of colour: playing area is black and white, simple usage around
Graphics: good, fast moving, large and work well in perspective
Sound: very good
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3 fuel lives and percentage of shield damage
Screens: many attack waves
Special features:

A & F's New Cylon Attack is a 3D cockpit game using graphics which are more solid than the type used by some similar and recent games. The game is very playable but it only involves shooting Cylons - unlike other recent 3D space games like Dark Star and Starstrike, which have more things to do. But Cylon Attack is not exactly like them in the truest sense - it's basically a cockpit shoot em up, and it's a good one at that.

It's nice to be able to get away from the 3D wireframe that so many recent games have been specialising on and have solids for a change. I must say, I still prefer solid graphics, and these are nice big and detailed graphics that work well in perspective. This is not just a space shoot em game with your task to eliminate every alien in sight - this game contains more things such as rotating planets with rotating moons circling them, meteorites and asteroids as well as other various classes of space ships which cannot be shot - one of the most recognisable being the USS Enterprise! I am pleased to see A & F keeping on the Spectrum scene as they don't seem to have produced anything for the lest six months. Good sound on this game is also a welcome feature. I found the game very playable, but maybe a little wearing on the addictive qualities.

There's something a bit old fashioned about New Cylon Attack, not surprising perhaps, as this is an older game from another machine converted to the Spectrum. Not that the old fashioned quality is a drawback, because the graphics and speed are very much up to date, and what you get is a good, zappy shoot em up in the Timegate tradition. Good sound effects add to the atmosphere as well as dashes of visual humour in some of the debris occupying space with you. I did find that the game a limited appeal after a while, which affects its addictivity a little, but definitely one for the shoot em up brigade.

Roger: Having always thought that 'Cylon' was something they made cheap shirts out of, I was disagreeably surprised to find it cropping up as yet another alien life form. Here we go again, striving to protect the wholesomeness of one's mother ship.

Launch and landing sequences, and onscreen instrumentation (including radar and cockpit sights) complement protective screens and lasers that gradually expire from over-exposure to malevolent cheap shirts. As one would expect, these garments are cleverly disguised as spacecraft, getting bigger as they get nearer.

That, more or less, explains the pretension towards 3D graphics, in which case I can only wish there were more - dimensions, that is. Such a facility would at least allow me to exploit the space/time continuum and slip off for a swift half whilst Spectrum and Cylons play 'shootie-bangs'. Computers have no feelings. Neither have shirts. 1/5 MISS

Ross: This didn't quite live up to my hopes that it would be a good 'blast everything that moves' game, but it wasn't that bad. 2/5 MISS

Dave: Nice, big, smooth graphics are the main feature of this game. I didn't find it very addictive, but 'shoot 'em up' fans might think it's fun. The background graphics are great. 3/5 HIT

SPACE, THE FINAL..?

Memory: 48K
Price: £5.75
Joystick: Kempston

The age old game of Star Trek has been resurrected to bring to your screens New Cylon Attack, from A'N'F Software.

Following the successful BBC version of the game, New Cylon Attack now boasts improved graphics and playability.

The storyline is familiar and brings to mind scenes of a portly Captain Kirk at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. You are pilot on board a supply ship carrying reinforcements to a distant planet in a war-torn galaxy.

The game portrays the sights of your laser gun in the middle of the screen with moving crosshairs. By moving these you are able to pinpoint the Cylons as they fly at the mothership.

As well as the radar scanner there are a few other instruments which need constant monitoring including fuel situation, the state of your lasers and shield strength.

Your tanks may be refuelled during the game, which involves wandering round space looking for the mothership to dock on to. No fun with empty tanks and as often as not your fuel will run out just as she is in sight.

The graphics aren't astounding and the sound fairly average. New Cylon Attack is not the most original game but it is by no means the worst.

Spectrum 48K
£5.75
Shoot-'em-up
A'n'F Software

In isometric perspective - 3-D to you, mate. This is what it says on the inlay, but I'm not convinced. No swopping through cosmos like Codename MAT.

Vou just stooge about left and right, up and down, peppering the oncoming hordes with laser bolts. Not very colourful, not very 3-D.

A&F Software Lrd
Unit 8 Canal Side Industrial Estate
Woodbine Street East
Rochdale
Lancashire
PRICE: TBA

A and F software (using the motto 'Nulli Secundus', which for you non-classicists stands for 'Second To None') have produced a 3D Space Battle for the 48K Spectrum called New Cyclon Attack.

The claim that it has insometric perspective in 3D is perhaps questionable, but the game is played in 3-Dimensional graphics and is of the Star Wars standard.

The Cyclons are sending wave after wave of attacking fleets. Each time a new wave appears, you are launched from your Mother ship and after each wave has been destroyed, you need to dock in order to refuel.

There are various instruments positioned at the top of the screen, detailed as follows. A radar, giving full information about the approaching wave attack, a shield strength gauge (there is an automatic safety shield should you come under fire, but this obviously deteriorates in strength depending on use), laser status and fuel status.

There is a sight in the centre of the screen with climb and turn indicators, enabling you to position the laser beam to any position on the screen in the attempt to clear each Cyclon wave.

Some nice added touches, the ability to save/load the high score table, the ability to redefine the keys and detailed screens with satellites, planets, shooting stars etc. all go forward to make Cyclon Attack a first class arcade game with excellent graphics and realistic sound.