Reviews

One of the better early spectrum shoot-em-ups. On WOS, it says this is based on Galaxians but there's actually an arcade coin-op game called astroblaster. You have to wipe out two waves of birds that fly left to right and up and down. Once they are destroyed, you must fly through an asteroid field and then onto the final screen which is a big meteor thing throwing out bombs. Then it’s back to the first screen with different aliens. The graphics are decent for the time and the sound is good with nice firing and spot effects. It’s fast, playable and certainly worth a look if you’re after a spectrum version of this coin-op although it differs slightly.

No not a port of the Sega arcade game but rather a very annoying Galaxians style game.

The part with the falling boulders is a fricking nightmare! It took me forever to get past it and it's very infuriating dying at that same part nearly every time. And if you do get past it you're "rewarded" with a boss-type emeny who fires a million bullets and there's no way to get by him until he disappears.

Man what a frustrating and very unfair game, if you want to keep your precious hair on your head I suggest you look elsewhere.

1983 Quicksilva (UK)
John Edwards and Glenn Flood (inlay pictures)

Thanks Raphie for reminding me of this long forgotten game!
Like ABU says there is in fact an arcade game called Astroblaster released by Sega in 1981, so the info in WOS mentioning Galaxian as inspiration is not accurate, unless AB is by itsef a clone.
Anyway the Spectrum version is different from both games, it is a mixture of both, with some diferences inbetween.
I always found this vertical shooter extremely difficult. The meteor shower is one of the most hard stages I've seen in any shoot-em-up, but it is completely passable.
Very playable, very addictive, very hard, one of the best shoot-em-ups of the early Speccy days.
3,5 stars

I enjoyed this one, I didn't think I would but I rather did. The rock falling part was a particular annoyance but other than that it plays well, it doesn't stutter like most of these early shooter games do and overall it's nicely written and well made. A nice pleasant surprise if I may say so.