Activision/Software Studios
£9.99 cass only

The background story to this game is basic: the diabolical Forth Empire is building huge fortresses on the five planets in the Junos system. Once the jewel of the galaxy, Junos, Veheor, Malkland, Orthea and Ashutar have been reduced to ashes, and as a brave pilot you must abort the evil empire's building plans.

The game starts with a representation of all five planets. You can flip through each one and select which you want to tackle. The Forth Empire have heard about your presence, and send everything they have at you. Varied spaceships, gun turrets and even military robots vie for the honour of stamping your card, but you come prepared. Twin laser cannon fire constantly, whilst a seemingly unlimited supply of missiles can be unleased when a 'lock on' cursor appears on the enemy craft.

In the arcade Galaxy Force's speed was controlled by a lever, on the computer a keypress does the same job, and you need to fly jolly slow when entering the fortresses if you don't want to lose several layers of paint by moving at warp speed. Contact with enemy laser bolts or the sides of a cave wall knock down energy levels, but extra energy can be earned throughout the game. Nonetheless, remember you only have three continue plays. Reach the end of a cavern and the enemy control center presents itself for destruction, and it's onto the next planet to continue your rampage.

The arcade Galaxy Force II is an amazing game, but it isn't the speed of the graphics that impress me. The hydraulic chair is the star and not to be savoured after a meal. On the Spectrum the game lives up to speed expectations, my only slight niggle being that although the game is monochromatic the chequer board patterns are a bit of a strain on the eyeballs. If, like me, you're a fan of the coin op, check it out.

MARK [78%]

Oh wow! Another great arcade favourite of mine. I spent a fortune on this. You just can't stop stuffing the cash in... well, until it's all gone! All the excitment of the original has been successfully converted onto the Spectrum, with detailed sprites and scenery plus the speed that makes the game a joy to play. Sound is another strong point. There is a great tune and plenty of effects to keep your ears a waggling. The one big let down in Galaxy Force II: the multi-load. I can't stand them as you may already know, and this spoils some of the good qualities. You can still have a good time zipping in and out of the rocks and crashing at high speeds though. Galaxy Force II is a good conversion of one of the best arcade machines around. Take a look for yourself!
NICK [80%]

Activision
£9.99 cass
Reviewer: David Wilson

Snik! I fastened my helmet securely under my chin and finished my pre-flight instrument check. I fired my engines and waited for the stomach-churning moment when my Galaxy Force fighter would be dropped from the mothership. Ahead lay the unknown... a whole planet teeming with hostile aliens and guarded by fleets of star fighters. Yep, getting sandwiches for the YS team in the year 2090 is no mean feat!

Blimey! That was exciting, wasn't it? Oh all right, please yourselves! Anyway, ever since the first Star Wars movie, there's always been something rather appealing about the prospect of piloting a spaceship at breakneck speed down narrow canyons and blasting all and sundry? Activision must have thought so too, 'cos here it's latest release, Galaxy Force, a scrolling-into-the-screen shoot-'em-up which allows you to do just that!

It's based on the Sega coin-op of the same name, uses sprites, and was programmed by the same team responsible for Afterburner. Bearing this in mind, and the fact that the arcade versions played very much alike, you won't be surprised to bear that Galaxy Force is also very similar on the Speccy.

There are five missions for you to perform on five planets, each offering different graphics and aliens. Each planet has different sections including the planet surface, a canyon, a tunnel and finally the alien nerve centre. As in Afterburner, you have infinite cannons and missiles. A circle appears on a target when a missile locked on, and then its just a case of pressing the ol' fire button, only an this occasion you can shoot three or four missiles simultaneously! Unlike Afterburner however, if you take a hit, or prang your wings on the canyon walls, there's no damage sequence (or burning wing-tips as in the arcade). Instead, your energy figure rather unexcitedly turns red and is reduced. Neither are there any of those rather yummy 360° rolls, but that's 'progress' I suppose (he says philosophically).

There's some groovy ground detail ranging from solar flares rising from the checkerboard planet surface to ground-launched missiles and horrid triffid type plants which ensnare your ship causing heavy energy loss. But beware, your monochrome sprite is hard to see against some of the more colourful backdrops. Also the final base is a bit of an anticlimax - I mean, your missiles lock on automatically, so you just lob a couple in and it's all over bar the shouting!

So that, in a nutshell, is that. Basically, it's Afterburner in space. The gameplay is very similar, which is no bad thing, but the best new bits, like high speed zig-zagging through tunnels, are somewhat diminished by the absence of any visible damage to your ship. Add this to the fact that each level multiloads and you'll see why this doesn't rate for me as high as Afterburner itself.

Label: Activision
Author: In-House
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: Various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

The good news? Well, the Galaxy Force coin-op is a top-notch space blast choc full of merciless aliens, spacecraft, threedimensional action and excitement. The bad news is that the Spectrum version is dreadful.

While it's technically very clever, it's unfortunately virtually unplayable.

Power Drift, from the same stable, which we reviewed last month, faced similar challenges and obstacles and managed to overcome them.

The problem with any game of this type, is that coding large, three-dimensional objects on the Spectrum is a very tricky business indeed, and once the programmer has managed to emulate a feature of the arcade game - let's take the scrolling ground for example - it's very difficult for them to opt not to include it. Often a more simple effect would have been clearer. Similarity to the original is paramount, and it often has a detrimental effect on the gameplay.

As a result, the 3-D objects in Galaxy Force are large, patterned and heavily detailed, as are the backgrounds. Put them together along with some colour and what do you get? A visual atrocity.

Since your mission is to shoot as many bad guys and enemy installations as possible, while flying down narrow canyons and through dangerous laser-riddled gateways, it seems downright exasperating that at the most tricky times, when there's most going on, you simply can't see where you are on the screen or what you're flying over.

As you fly through space, with your lasers continually (automatically) blasting, your computerized laser sighting equipment will highlight targets. Time to loose one of your homing missiles. Away it goes, taking out its target and leaving a plume of smoke in its wake.

As you bank left and right, climb up and dive down, the flawless perspective of the world around you shifts and stretched accordingly. The biggest test of the programming efficiency comes when you're flying through the maze of canyon-like walls. The speed is maintained admirably, and you can move around in your albeit tiny free space quickly and accurately, but the basic and all-defeating truth is that you can't see any of it unless you squint like mad and turn the colour off.

The bad guys are big and highly detailed, but because of the problems explained earlier, this is no longer a virtue. They have unfair camouflage.

No doubt, there will be lots of people who will maintain that it's a fab conversion, and the visuals don't really matter so long as the gameplay is there.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.95, Diskette: £14.95
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.95, Diskette: £14.95
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.95, Diskette: £14.95
Atari ST £24.99

THE FOURTH DIMENSION...

The Forth Empire are running riot and as a member of the Space Federation you must stop them. But this is nothing to the fact that The Empire are building the strongest fortress of all time; a base from which they will multiply and expand. You must stop them!

Your system, Junos, is split into five planets: Velteor, Malkland, Orthea, Ashutar and Junos itself. First choose which planet you wish to defend first, then hit the thrusters and you're off...

Your offensive weaponry consists of a laser gun and an unlimited supply of homing missiles. Each planet differs in climate, so whilst one is a lush green paradise, another is an icy hell hole or a barren wasteland.

Your mission for each planet is the same; battle your way across the surface and then dive through the tunnel and destroy the fortress.

As with the arcade version, it's no use zipping through at warp speed, this is a sure way to scrape all the paint off your ship and get killed. A speed indicator is thoughtfully provided and its use is recommended. Alongside it are indicators for shield power and energy level (which can be replenished).

Galaxy Force is one of the best hydraulic arcade games around. Unlike Afterburner, Activision have done a terrific job in transferring speed and playability onto the home computer.

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO SHOOT-'EM-UPS PART 1

Where'd we all be without shoot-'em-ups, eh, Spec-chums? Well, we'd all have much smaller games collections, that's for sure! Join MATT BIELBY for an epic blast through nearly a decade of firepowered Spec-fun...

Blimey! The complete guide to shoot-'em-ups, eh? A bit of a mammoth task you might be thinking (and you'd be blooming right! It's taken me absolutely ages!). It's so blinking gigantic in fact that we've had to split it in two to save the whole ish from being packed to the gills with ancient shooty-shooty games and very little else!

So how's it all going to work? Well, this issue we spotlight those hundreds of games where you control a little spaceship, aeroplane or what have you, while next time round we'll be wibbling on for ages about those blasters where you command a man, creature or robot - things like Operation Wolf, Gryzor, Robocop (the list is endless, I'm sorry to say). Yes, I know it's a bit of an arbitrary way to divide the whole subject up in two, but it's the best I could come up.

Anyway, if you 're all ready, let's arm the missiles, oil the cannons, buckle our seatbelts and go kick some alien ass! (Or something.)

SO WHAT EXACTLY MAKES A SHOOT-'EM-UP A SHOOT-'EM-UP?

Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's a game where simple reaction times count for (almost) everything, and the actual shooting of various baddies constitutes the major part of the gameplay. It's just about the oldest form of computer game going (Space Invaders was pure shoot-'em-up, for instance), short of mad Victorian chappies crouching down inside big wooden cabinets and pretending to be chess machines. It's one of the most enduring forms too - hardly an issue of YS goes by when we don't review at least a couple of newies, and it's the rare arcade-style game (sports sims and puzzlers excepted) that doesn't include at least a small shoot-'em-up element in there somewhere as part of the gameplay.

But back to the case in hand. What we're talking about here are the pure shoot-'em-ups - games where the wiping out of waves of aliens or other baddies is everything (though let's be fair, the violence in most of these is very abstract and minimal). They easily divide into four major types, depending on how you view the action. And you can read all about them over the page.

THE FIRST EVER SHOOT-'EM-UP

Goodness knows - Space Invaders is the obvious answer, but most of the other early arcade games were shoot-'em-ups too - Defender, Asteroids, Galaxian and the rest. To find out what made it onto the Speccy first, well, we'll have to look back in the vaults and see what we come up with, shan't we?

Right, here we are with the very first issue of Your Spectrum (later to evolve into Your Sinclair), cover date January 1984. Flick to the review section and we have two Space invaders-type games, both from long-forgotten Anirog Software - Galactic Abductor and Missile Defence. The second issue (Feb 84. believe it or not) brings us such delights as Xark (Contrast Software), a Defender-type game and Alien Swoop (a Galaxians rip-off), while in issue three had Bug Byte's Cavern Fighter (a tunnel-based jobbie, like an early version of R-Type).

Hmm. Let's go back a bit further, shall we? All the early computer games mags were listings based (ie had lots of crap Basic games printed out line by line over oodles of pages, as if Program Pitstop had run rampant over the whole mag!) so we might find something in there. Believe it or not find something in there. Believe it or not, I have the very first issue of the very first computer games mag in the country sitting right here on my desk, cover-dated November 1981. There's only one Sinclair game in here (for a ZX80 or 81 - a Speccy forerunner - and taking up a whole 2K!). It's called City Bomb, and it's a sort of shoot-'em-up. Apparently you're in a plane at the top of the screen and have to bomb the city beneath you, flattening out a landing strip so you can put down safely. Thrilling stuff, eh? As for commercially available stuff, it's all lost a bit too far back in the mists of time to be sure. Still, shoot-'em-ups started emerging for the Speccy pretty soon after the machine came out, certainly by the end of '82. Throughout 83 people like Quicksilva and Bug Byte were churning out Space Invaders, Asteroids and Scramble clones advertised as 'being in 100% machine code and in colour' too, so perhaps it was one of those. Exciting stuff, eh?

RATINGS

In the great YS Guide To... tradition, for a one-off-only special occasion we've adapted our normal rating system to accommodate the shoot-'em-up theme. Here's how they work...

Alien-Death-Scum-From-Hell Factor
Are there oodles of inventive, nasty and extremely difficult-to-kill baddies all over the place (including the biggest, meanest muthas ever at the end of each level) or do you end up fighting a fleet of Trebor Mints?

Shopability
Are there oodles and oodles of well-thought-out and spectacular weapons available to pick up and use, or do you have to make do with the same crap little peashooter throughout the game?

Copycat Factor
Unusually, the lower the score the better here. Basically, is this exactly the same as every other shoot-'em-up ever (in which case it'll get a high score for being chronically unoriginal) or does it have something innovative and special about it to set it apart from the crowd?

Visibility Factor
Does everything make a degree of sense in Speccyvision, or is it all a jumbled mass of pixels, with bullets, missiles and even little spaceships winking in and out of view willy-nilly?

Galaxy Force
Activision

Yeow! Another recent 'impossible to convert' coin-op, just like Afterburner only, erm, even impossibler. Nice chequerboard planetscapes, but I've carefully picked a shot where you can see what's going on here - enter the tunnels and what was spectacular on the Sega original becomes a bit of a 'only play wearing dark glasses' jobbie. Ho hum.