Producer: M.A.D. X
Retail Price: £2.99
Author: Binary Design

It is the year 2079, and the decaying, polluted earth values more than ever its precious few acres of unspoiled nature. As a warden, you are responsible for maintaining the health of one such area.

At first all you had to do was some tidying up and the herding of animals, but now things have changed. A distant star has become a supernova, and Wavaren, creatures that inhaboted one of its encircling planets, have found a new home - in your reserve. So your job description has been rewritten to include their destruction.

The reserve consists of forest, ocean islands and rocky desert; these three regions are further divided by force fields into ten areas, with aura energy maintaining their original condition in each. But the presence of Wavaren reduces this energy, and if it ever reaches zero level the area dies. And if three of a region's areas are wasted this way, you've lost.

The Wavaren fly around in an aerial cornucopia of jellyfish, fairy cakes, molecules and rotund craft, showing off and manoeuvring around your small fighter as it skims above the horizontally-scrolling landscape.

Your fighter is equipped with forward-firing lasers - it may take a few blasts before some robot craft succumb - and several blitz bombs annihilate all the Wavaren onscreen.

When some Wavaren vehicles are destroyed, a series of icons temporarily appears and other sections can be reached, your life substance increased, extra bombs acquired or your fighter's power improved.

They never told you environmentalism would be like this when you joined the Green Party.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: slow scrolling, good varied backgrounds
Sound: pip pip!
Options: 'free' B-side maze, Molecule Man (85% Overall in Issue 30)

Though graphically quite good, with neat backgrounds, Energy Warrior has little content Horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-ups are all very well, but unless there's some remarkable feature they can be quite dull and unplayable.
MIKE [40%]

Energy Warrior is a pretty ordinary horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up, quite playable but offering nothing original. There are plenty of landscapes but they're all slightly too easy to complete: it's just a matter of finding a safe place and learning the attack formations, which soon becomes tedious. Graphically it's reasonable, with smooth by slow scrolling and fairly well-drawn and detailed sprites (they're a bit bland, though). The backgrounds are colourful and varied, though slightly garish and each level has its own character and atmosphere. Molecule Man, the B-side game, is much better.
GORDON [50%]

MAD X
£2.99
Reviewer: David Powell

The date: 2079. The mission to patrol and protect the planet Earth (the less bombed bits, anyway) from the invading Wavaren. The task, to seek and obliterate just about anything that moves.

Energy Warrior has loads of levels, oodles of aliens and who knows what else? But despite some stunning graphic effects, there's little variety. The aliens look interesting at first but become predictable after a while, and the game is reluctant to display its status. Oh and the alleged provision for joystick is nowhere to be seen - it's keys only on this one.

I can't quite get over the spiffo graphics, though - absolutely brilliant stuff. Your ship and the aliens float around on one plane, while the background and the increasing levels of foreground move at different rates, giving a really effective feel of perspective and movement.

So all the world may be a stage, but what happened to the script? A repetitive plot, I'm afraid - shoot and avoid, shoot and avoid. Every so often a robot centipede appears, and by shooting this you can collect bonuses - energy bombs, or keys to zap you into another area. Snore city.

Energy Warrior is the first release from Mastertronic's new MAD X label (X for extra old, p'raps?), which gives you two games for the price of one. Backed with the newey as the old fave (Whose? Ed), Molecule Man, all of two years old now, but still the same and still with the original maze designer. It wasn't bad for '86, but it's looking a little gnarled around the edges now.

Honestly though, this is not the value package it looks - unless you're easily seduced by pretty graphics, or you're (ahem) desperate to lay hands on Molecule Man. Well, someone might be.

Label: Mastertronic
Author: Binary Design
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

The Earth hasn't had much of a run, has it? First the dinosaurs came along, leaving droppings all over the carpet, then the Ice Age came along and froze the whole place up. To top it all, Mike Smith decided to become a DJ, so everyone packed up their stuff and left mother Earth forever. Only a few remain. Known as the rangers. They each guard specific areas of the Earth from things that are hot areas of the Earth.

Here then is Energy Warrior first of Mastertronics' MADX games - cassettes with a free game on the reverse. Molecule Man is the B side here and it's pretty bad. Enough of that.

Yes, you in your little spaceship have to fly above the surface of the planet and eliminate the aliens. Easy, you say, just defending a couple of areas. Yes easy, just defending 30 areas, at once. No sweat for the bear, but what about mortals?

Actually it's not that hard. The challenge is there, but it's not very difficult to have a long game. The aliens come in waves, one wave at a time, and you have to shoot them out with the little gun on the front of your craft. The game is viewed side on, as in Nemesis, Defender, etc. Controls are just up, down, fire and left/right to turn your ship around.

The graphics are OKish, with some nice details here and there, but it is the scrolling where the game really comes into its own. Parallax starfields have been seen before, but this is something different. Five layers of backdrop all scrolling at different speeds make this scrolling the best I have seen, easily surpassing games like Uridium.

There you have it, some good reasons to buy it and one very good reason to buy it. Next time you are out buying budget, give it a try. I like it and I'm beggared if SU is getting it back.