Hi-Tec Software
£2.99

Classic shoot-'em-up action straight from the oldest arcade machines! Guardian II is a space invader game featuring a fast horizontally scrolling landscape as you attempt to rescue people stranded on the ground. This kind of gameplay was all the rage in the early days, similar to the excellent Scramble type games.

Graphically it's very simplistic: small aliens fly about each level shooting tiny bullets at you - so tiny you can easily mix them up with the starry background! One thing that annoys me is the keys the programmer has chosen to control the game, they're impossible! It's even worse on joystick!

Guardian II is highly addictive: one for arcade freaks everywhere. A word of advice though, read the instructions first: in my first game I started to massacre all the earth people - they weren't too pleased!

WHAT A BARG!

Summertime, summertime, summer, summer, summertime! Hurrah - summer is here! And what better way to celebrate the advent of sunny, carefree days than by locking yourself in your bedroom and playing a load of Speccy games? With the seemingly unstoppable spread of budget software, we here at YS thought it would be quite a wheeze to sort out the brass from the dross. So take your seats and upset your neighbour's popcorn as JON PILLAR whisks you with shameless bias through a roundup of the best £3.99ers around.

SHOOT 'EM UP GAMES

1. Guardian 2
Alternative/Tragically, never reviewed!
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

The simplest and most addictive game around - no surprise, as it's a near-perfect conversion of Stargate, the sequel to Defender. Just fly around a scrolling planet protecting your chaps from a horde of hyperactive baddies inhumanly playable.

CHEAPY OF THE MONTH!

Label: Hi-Tech
Author: In House
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: Various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Vooomph! Like a bolt from the blue, Hi Tech software blasts onto the budget scene with Guardian II, one of the best budget games I've seen in years.

Based on arcade classics of yesteryear Defender and Stargate, Guardian isn't bogged down with convoluted plotlines or complicated sub-games.

Alien fiends are attacking the earth and snatching innocent humans for their own grizzly ends. Being the last surviving starpilot with a fully intact spaceship, you must skim above the planet surface, wasting the aliens and ensuring that all of the humans are safely returned to the ground.

The bulk of the alien population - in the early stages at least - are Raiders. These are the guys that snatch the humans wandering the mountains. At the start of each stage, a set of aliens hyperspace in and gradually head down towards their victims.

Since each level is about five scrolling screens long, you won't be able to keep track of all the bad guys without thorough examination of the invaluable scanner at the top of the screen.

Even if a Raider manages to snatch a human, all is not lost. The weight of their quarry slows them down and they can only make a slow, vertical ascent. It's at this point when the big points are to be had. Shoot out the Raider, catch the falling human and plonk him down. If he falls too far, the impact will kill him.

Once they reach the top of the screen, though, they turn into ferocious Mutants, hell-bent on your destruction.

Should all your humans buy it before the end of a level, whether through alien snatching, falling to their deaths or whatever, the alien forces will prevail, and you'll be cast out into hyperspace to face a swarm of Mutants. Chances of survival are slim.

Kill all the aliens on a level and you're confronted with the next attack wave. Each alien has a specific duty. Some glide around and drop bombs, others contain spores which home in on you, others simply chase you into the ground.

Okay, so we've got a pretty tight scenario, but you've already got a thousand space shoot-outs, right? What's the difference here?

Playability. Pure and simple. The controls are quite complex; up, down, thrust, fire, reverse, hyperspace and smart bomb. And to begin with trying to catch the falling humans seems impossible; you keep overshooting and missing them entirely. However, once you get the hang of gunning your ship through ever-more densely populated screens, reversing, blasting, jumping and swerving, picking off the aliens, the level of satisfaction soars.

Hi-Tec
Spectrum, C64, Amstrad £2.99

Climb aboard your Mk fighter craft and stop the Mutants from killing the last few remaining humans left on Earth by blowing them to kingdom come as soon as you see them. If a Mutant manages to pick up a human and carry him off the top of the screen that man is lost and things become even tougher, with more aliens around to capture less people. A wraparound radar at the top of the screen plots the position of your ship and the enemy craft, and once all baddies are destroyed you move to the next, harder level.

Guardian II is a fast and furious clone of the ancient Williams coin-op, Stargate (sequel to Defender), possessing all the qualities which give fans of such "Classic" shoot 'em ups the screaming ab-dabs. The sprites are small but whizz around the screen very quickly, and playability is first-class; in other words, if blasting is your bag, rake together those pennies and purchase immediately!