Producer: Mikrogen, 16K
£5.95

One of the weaker games with three skill levels and attackers more resembling invader aliens than anything else. The rate of continuous fire is wrong for the slow attack patterns, robbing the game of any excitement. Works with Mikrogen II joystick. Machine code. One or two player games.

Producer: Mikrogen, 16K
£5.95

One of the weaker games with three skill levels and attackers more resembling invader aliens than anything else. The rate of continuous fire is wrong for the slow attack patterns, robbing the game of any excitement. Works with Mikrogen II joystick. Machine cods. One or two player games.

Memory Required: 16K
RRP: £5.95

I suppose it's a reasonable copy, but where is the fuel and the mothership? The graphics are simple but quite fast and there is a choice of three speeds. Rate of fire is too fast, making it easy to exterminate the swooping hordes. You can use a Mikrogen II joystick - if you've got one. I didn't think it was worth the price asked.

CHRIS PASSEY

I remember this one coming out and thinking it wasn't bad at the time, although it doesn't have the arcade originals details. The graphics are reasonably smooth but I thought the aliens looked more like Invaders than anything else. Another drawback is that by remaining stationary you can still get a respectable score! One or two player games.

LLOYD MANGRAM

MACHINE: Spectrum 16K
PRICE: £5.95
FROM: Mikro-Gen
PRICE: £5.95
FORMAT: Cassette

As you will no doubt realise from the horribly twee way that Mikro-Gen has spelt the title, this is simply the Spectrum version of Galaxians, a second-generation Space Invaders, which has been around for quite a while, and which has been implemented on numerous machines.

Galaxians (okay, Mikro-Gen, if you insist - Galakzions) are simply Space Invaders that refuse to stay in their nice neat formation, insisting instead on swooping down at you from awkward angles and at inconvenient times.

Mikro-Gen's Galakzions are hardly fearsome beasts - in comparison to some I have seen, they are positively sedate - and there is nothing really new in this program to add life to what is becoming a somewhat tired and dated concept.

In fact, I seem to recall a ZX81 game (from Artic, perhaps?) in which the attacking Galaxians were quite awesome - they were certainly harder to deal with than Mikro-Gen's aliens, even though Artic used the limited ZX81 graphics. This version has the advantages of colour and sound.

But if you feel that no home is complete without a Galaxian game, then I guess this'll do until something better comes along.

There's a choice of speeds - fast, normal, or slow - and the option of using Mikro-Gen's own joysticks. I tried the Kempston stick without success, then hooked up the AGF programmable joystick, which worked a treat.

In fact, this game is slow enough for keyboard operation - keys 2 and 4 move you left and right, while 0 fires. There is also the facility for one or two-player operation.

'Competent but uninspired' would seem to be the fairest verdict.

Producer: Mikrogen, 16K
£5.95

One of the weaker games with three skill levels and attackers more resembling invader aliens than anything else. The rate of continuous fire is wrong for the slow attack patterns, robbing the game of any excitement. Works with Mikrogen II joystick. Machine code. One or two player games.