Producer: Artic
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code
Author: J. Ritman

Suddenly from the outer reaches of space, a dot appears on the scanner of your fighter craft. As you tear forward, the dots grow until you can clearly see them in 3D form. Prepare for combat! Your trembling finger reaches for the firing button. You pull across to avoid an enemy fighter as it whistles past you in its kamikaze attack.

The inlay intro for this game is quite prosaic in comparison with many, and becomes justified when you see the graphics. Dimension Destructors is a sort of 'Battle Zone' game in space, and employs three dimensional graphics very reminiscent of Artic's earlier 3D Combat Zone. The object is quite simple, use the directional keys to line up the approaching enemy fighters (hollow pyramid and diamond shapes) in the central cross hairs and then zap them with your laser. This fires twin bolts of energy which converge a distance ahead in the cross hairs.

The title card is very bright, well drawn, and the credit card and points/hiscore table is very effectively done in scrolling letters which run off into the distance in perspective, rather like the titles for Star War movies.

COMMENTS

Control keys: QWERTY up, ASDFGH down, O=left, P=right, bottom row fires
Joystick: Sinclair, Kempston, Fuller
Keyboard play: very responsive and easy to control
Use of colour simple
Graphics: effective 3D, good title cards
Sound: reasonable and continuous
Skill levels: gets harder
Lives: 4 shields, 5 lives

The graphics are fairly simple but well animated in 3D and the enemy explode into chunks battle zone style. I found it quite exciting to play and I think it's one of Artic's best releases yet. The titles and hi-score are very impressive, if a little slow.

At last, a good 3D shoot em up - shame you move so slowly! The various enemy craft have different flight tactics. If you're good enough you will find out where the enemy fighters come from. The graphics are fair to good. It's difficult to play and in the end I found it a little bit boring, probably due to its difficulty.

Perhaps the lack of a landscape makes this game less spectacular than Artic's 3D Combat Zone, but it is much faster to play and so more fun. The graphics are simple and somewhat colourless as you might expect with hollow 3D, but they work very effectively. The control response is very good, one of the easiest cockpit view games to control I've ever seen. Very playable, but perhaps not massively addictive.

Producer: Artic, 48K
£5.95 (2)
Author: J Ritman

3D Combat Zone in space describes this game quite well. The pyramidal-shaped enemy craft form in clusters and swoop towards you in very effective hollow 3D. You line up the onrushing enemy in your sights and blast them to kingdom come with your twin-firing lasers. The graphics aren't very colourful, but they work very well and the ship control is pin-sharp in its responsiveness. Top marks for the Star Wars like intro and titles. Exciting to play but perhaps not massively addictive. Reasonable control keys, joystick: Sinclair 2, Fuller, Kempston. Gets progressively harder the longer you play, rated above average to good, overall CRASH rating 68% m/c.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: Optional
CATEGORY: Arcade
SUPPLIER: Artic
PRICE: £5.95

This one has an amazingly unoriginal theme. You control a space ship and your aim is to destroy attacking alien craft before they hit you.

But don't switch off just yet. The novelty here is that you're presented with a view from the cockpit and you actually see the alien ships getting bigger as they zoom towards you.

Now that 3D is all the rage, Dimension Destructors isn't a bad effort. It takes a while to get used to, but you do eventually start to feel you're inside a space-craft.

I found myself ducking once or twice when the attackers flew a bit close overhead.

However, the amount of memory needed to simulate 3D imposes considerable constraints. The attacking craft are simple line drawings and you don't get anything like the variety of attack waves possible in 2D games.

Verdict? it's different, but I think you could get bored with it fairly quickly.

Dimension Destructors was written by the author of Tank Battle, a 3D Tanks game, which rather suffered from a severe lack of speed. These 3D techniques have been harnessed in a more adventurous project in Dimension Destructors. Apparently, you are in the lonely but peaceful reaches of the vast unexplored regions of outer space. Suddenly, a dot appears on the scanner screen of your flight craft. As you thrust forward the dot grows until it is a 3D space craft. With nowhere to run and some unexplained reason for believing that the occupant wishes to destroy you, you can either move to avoid it or attempt to hit it with your laser. These alien ships are reasonably tame - they only try to collide with you head-on. As time goes on, more vicious aliens which actually fire at you join in the fight.

Dimension Destructors is compatible with Sinclair, Kempston and Fuller joysticks which is a definite bonus as a joystick greatly enhances the game. Why it is called Dimension Destructors I do not know - where are you destroying time or any other dimension? Nowhere in the instructions/story does it say why the aliens want to exterminate you: aliens do seem to get a very rough deal as far as computer games are concerned! If we are not careful someone will start an ALF, Alien Liberation Front and go around letting all those poor green monsters out of Space Invaders machines!

Verdict: The 3D graphics are some of the best I've seen (bar those of Rommels Revenge and QS's new Tank Battle game). They are fast and reasonably smooth and the whole game is definitely hectic. Though easy to play at the outset, it gets harder and harder as your ability increases. The concept of the game is simple and slightly similar to one or two of the Atari games but overall it is excellent. Dimension Destructors is highly addictive - a game which must be played "just one more time" and very good value.