Producer: CRL
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: Wise Owl Software

Yet again space is taken over by an invading enemy fleet. As usual, you are the only one who can take them on and save your civilisation from a fate worse than a wet Wednesday in Worthing. In a rare touch of realism, you have a limited fuel supply.

First encountered are the small fighter ships that buzz like an angry swarm about their mother ship. Your craft can rotate around its axis and move forward, sometimes colliding with enemy ships - and as long as your shield survives, this quickly crushes them, though it can knock you off course.

After you've carved a pathway through the enemy fleet, the awesome mother ship glides into view and can be destroyed with bombs from your limitless supply.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: attractive and imaginative
Sound: occasional booms

Death Or Glory is an average shoot-'em-up. The graphics are pleasant (excellent shaded background, twinkling stars), the limited sound is enough and there's some fun to be had, despite difficult controls.
NICK [58%]

This could be rewritten as Death Or Boredom. The graphics are OK, the nasties aren't too nasty, the scrolling is alright, but talk about aimless missions... this isn't so much a shoot-'em-up as an actionless bomb-'em-down.
BYM [20%]

Death Or Glory has brilliant graphics, with some nice bas-relief, strangely jerk-less scrolling and the odd cute alien. But there's virtually no gameplay. Dispersing pretty bits of metal around space is fun, but the enemy force is pathetic; you're more likely to fall asleep than get killed.
BEN [29%]

CRL
£8.95
Reviewer: David Powell

Welcome to the Magical Mystery Tour, where there's little magic and heaps of mystery.

On opening the double-pack (single-cassette), I suspected Death Or Glory was a budget-price game (at best) bumped up to full price with the level of documentation you'd only expect for something as complex as, say, noughts and crosses. The insert was blank on the inside and the story on the back was less informative than an election manifesto. And yes, talking to CRL's PR dept confirmed my worst tears - this was indeed an £8.95 game and the version I had was the same as the one you'll find in the shops.

With a joystick (the keys are awkward and not redefinable) I found that forward is thrust, back is brake and the fire button, while nothing actually gets fired, needs to be pressed to destroy each piece of the mothership, netting a cool 1000. But colliding with the pesky aliens (the only way to destroy them and often ineffective) gives you a paltry 200+ score.

Since you can rarely avoid their missiles, your shields don't last very long, although as I managed to clock the game on my second attempt, even the most recent convert to gaming should perform respectably on this one!

Be warned that without a Kempston interface on a 48K Speccy, the ship behaves rather erratically (especially when entering high scores). Oh yes, and the game's total rubbish!

Label: CRL
Author: In-house
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jason Roseaman

In the void of space an alien invasion fleet heads towards the island planet (island planet??) of New Stratford (well that explains it).

Out on his simple conundrum survey a lonely spacedozer pilot stumbles across a hoard of android fighters. He quickly decides this is his chance to save his planet (not to mention to be a hero) and he drives his dozer straight into the droids and the fleet with the battle cry of Death or Glory.

My first attempt was quite amusing. I took control of my spaceship and pressed the Fire button straight away. Nothing happened! Pulling back on the joystick I managed to thrust the ship forward and with the 360° control it wasn't long before I came across the invasion fleet itself. I tried Fire again whilst above it and voila! Yes, a chunk of it disintegrated. It looked like a bug but, apparently it's the function of the spacedozer, destroying anything in (and under) its path.

Soon, after flying around destroying everything in sight, I wondered exactly how you get on to further levels. After all, this is a scrolly scrolly shoot-'em-up. Suddenly - boong! - I'd been transported into somewhere else.

Funnily enough it looked very similar to the first set of screens, except green.

There is nothing really to complain about with Death or Glory. It has neat graphics, nice movement and quite an original theme. The only thing I wondered was why the Rambo-style weapons cache was missing. Maybe the way you can eat the scenery is actually a bomb underneath the ship which can be dropped but not seen?

Oh well, who cares. It's quite fun anyway.