Producer: Nexus
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Paranoid Software

Hades, evil emperor of the dying planet Sodini, having heard that ten Earth colony ships have been despatched to a distant corner of the Universe, decides to ambush the fleet, enslave the colonists and sell off the vessels for scrap.

But Colony ship number seven suffers a computer malfunction, and arriving at its destination - the Orion Nebula - two years ahead of schedule, continues with its mission regardless. To the colonists' surprise the nebula is occupied by a Hades mining fleet, named 'Hades Nebula' after the Emperor.

Alerted to their presence, the mining fleet attacks. Colony Seven has but one choice - to send out their only form of defence, a single-pilot terran fighter, against the entire hostile fleet.

The confrontation takes place over the vertically scrolling surfaces of a planet and a battle cruiser. The colony's craft is under constant attack from Hades star-fighters and ground-based insectoid tanks.

The fighter's speed, weaponry and shields can be improved by blasting specific ground installations and collecting the equipment pods which they contain. This equipment then automatically attaches and activates itself, making the lone ship a force to be reckoned with.

The ultimate goal is to destroy as many around installations, fighters, mining craft and ground ships as possible within the single fighter's five incarnations.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor
Use of colour: monochromatic blue or yellow and black
Graphics: nice bas-relief, but slow, jerky scrolling distracts
Sound: ordinary spot FX
Skill levels: one
Screens: two scrolling areas

The bas-relief graphics in Hades Nebula are its only saving grace - apart from that it's a very average product. The screen scrolls at around three pixels a time making it jerky enough to be off-putting. The ship is tea large and sluggish to be able to dodge the countless enemy missiles coming from every angle. Although it's possible to build up your firepower, losing a life takes it all away, making it all seem rather pointless. It's also annoying that the score line obscures part of the screen, it may look good but doesn't help in actually playing the game.
RICKY

This game is just far too hard for my liking. Even as an above average Hades Nebula player I found the game very restricting and not much fun at all. The first rule of writing any game is to give players rewards, so they will persist. The only reward in this game is flicking back to the title screen - no 'game over' message, no 'level x' message, and not even a little jingle. Due to these major flaws Hades Nebula not only lacks in atmosphere but also falls down over addictiveness. Nice name shame about the disappointing game.
PAUL

This suffers horribly from the Slap Fight syndrome, it's hard to tell what the hell's going on - unlike Slap Fight, though, there isn't much of a game here. At the start your craft moves so slowly that it's hard to get far enough to pick up extra speed. When you do, things get a little more playable, but not much, as at speed you simply can't distinguish the alien bullets from everything else. Strangely it's fairly addictive, but all in all Hades Nebula isn't worth the eye strain.
BEN

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Make a mug of cocoa and stick yer tired feet on the coffee table ("Get them off" oo-er- mum), as Duncan MacDonald guides you through the spooky world of budget games.

Nexus
£2.99
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

This is yet another VSS (vertically scrolling shoot 'em up), and I expect you all know by now what the means: keep alive for as long as possible, avoid all the flak that's aimed at you and shoot everything that moves. The name of the game is points.

There's no shortage of VSS's at budget price, so it's comparison time: Hades Nebula is a cross between Moonstrike, Xarax and Xevious. Like Moonstrike it's monochrome, but like Xarax and Xevious it's a mite jerky. Unlike all three, the playing area is a full screen wide. The graphics are quite big and detailed - so it's nice to look at - but I found the action a little bit too slow. If you absolutely adore VSS's then get it, otherwise, well... that's you decision!

Re-release/Original score 7

Nexus
£7.95

The year is 2124, and it isn't a good year. The Bromley Colts lost the FA Cup, and everything is either running down or running out. The boffins at WEC (World Energy Committee to you) have formulated The Plan (dan dan dan) to fix the problem. They've decided (after a lengthy session down the Dog And Duck) that the solution is to send ten massively enormous space craft to various parts of the universe to hunt for energy...

Well, when was the last time some cockamamy scheme like that succeeded? There's usually some baddy who likes nothing more than putting a spanner in the works, and this is no exception. The baddy this time goes by the name of the Emperor Hades. From his fortress on Sodini, he sent forth a mighty space armada, their one task - to wipe out the ships, send the crew for slaves and sell the scrap to 'Onest Joe for a tidy sum.

Nuff said. The plan worked, but one ship survived. And this is where you come in, 'cos the ship needs your help...

This is a shoot 'em up in the good ol' Lightforce tradition, though I rather think that game is a smidgin better. Not in the graphics department, though, 'cos Hades Nebulas graphics are great. No, the thing that's gone is the speed. The game is so slow that all the enjoyment's been taken out. You can dodge the baddies with ease, thereby giving you a fairly easy run through the game as you pursue the elusive high score.

It's not so bad, though not so good either. Another standard shoot 'em up, nothing to write home about, but something to pass the time with.

Label: Nexus
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Hades Nebula begins as one of those yellow sort of games.

Broadly-speaking it's Lightforce, only in two-colour.

The common complaint in the SU office when we first saw the game scrolling was, "That's not very fast is it?"

But that's not necessarily a bad thing in this instance. Most scrollies start off with one or two aliens, easy to hit, minimum amount of fuss about dying, that sort of thing. But not Hades Nebula. As soon as your craft materialises (in a rather fetching manner I thought) you are set upon by myriad mutated mine carts.

Well, I presume that's what they are. The mutated mine carts are followed by exceedingly wobbly water boatmen, who are really out to kill you. And there are an awful Jot of them. Which is why it needs to be so slow.

On the way there are various pods that you can pick up to give you extra weapons speed and so on, so you can zoom about a bit more and fly into a few bullets. You are going to need good reflexes and a sharp eye to get away from all the enemy fire, but anyone who plays a lot of shooties will already be well equipped with such skills.

What you're probably not well equipped with is the ability to see yellow bullets on a yellow background, or blue bullets on a blue background. Yes, due to a slight difficulty in separating one colour from another completely identical colour, ordinary human beings may find they have a small amount of trouble seeing the bullet that gets them up the bum.

Hades Nebula is surprisingly addictive, mainly because you become determined to avoid those rogue bullets and prove that your eyesight is not that of a mentally defective mole.

All right, so the scrolling is jerky and the game's very yellow, but you're not going to hold that against Nexus are you? (Well, perhaps just a bit)

Label: Gamebusters
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Hades Nebula is just another attempt at a Slapfight sort of game, and just like the others, it doesn't work quite as well as it might. The main problem is, though the ground is two colour, it's very heavily detailed, which means that it can be very difficult to spot enemy ships and, more importantly, enemy bullets. The extra weapons are few and far between, and most of the time I found that I didn't actually spot them until they were going off screen. The scrolling is slow and ever so slightly jerky, which means that though it's almost unnoticeable, it does play on the eyes after a little while.

Apart from all these bad points, Hades Nebula will have you coming back for more. It's very addictive So addictive that even I said. "No mum I'm not going to bed. I want to have another go at this," and that's something I don't say very often at all, is it?

Not a bad game, all things considered, but there are a lot better budget SEUs around. Good for a few days, though.