Producer: Reaktor
Retail Price: £4.99
Author: Tony Crowther (The Byte Engineers)

We all know what Killer Rings are - large fried doughnuts in space, generally attacked by a menagerie of toads, bunny heads, flop-eared whatchamacallits, and orbs. Some of these approach in a series of attack waves from the top of the screen, whilst others move in an unpredictable fashion from any screen direction. Others, if they pass off the screen, scroll once more into view from the other side.

The killer ring has three lives, lost on contact with another occupant of the screen, or the pulses that they fire. All the attackers can be destroyed, though they require sustained hits, and their death throes award you points, with bonuses added when sufficient numbers have been destroyed.

When the required number of attack waves has been destroyed the killer ring is confronted by a spaceman sifting in a hovering craft. The defensive underbelly of the ship can be blasted through and the spaceman killed. With this done, the killer ring returns to take on the first attacking wave once more.

For added difficulty, the vertically scrolling antimatter beam can be activated, which nullifies the killer ring's initial blast, and must be pierced before the blaster can reach its targets.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursor keys
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor
Use of colour: monochromatic (a colour on black)
Graphics: large and well defined, but simple shapes
Sound: no 48K music, but excellent 128 tune, average spot FX
Skill levels: two
Screens: seven attack waves to go through ten times

Oh wow! A updated version of the original Space Invaders game. Shoot-'em-up games have always been a favourite of mine, but I can't say this had very much appeal. The alien's are a bit nastier and the sound is very much improved, but that's about all. Amazingly, though, it still has loads of addictiveness, and gave me lots of hours of fun, but I think the thrill of this type of game has become a little cob-webbed.
GARETH

Killer Ring is really just a glorified Space Invaders game, with a Phoenix style bit thrown in. The graphics are quite well defined but when a huddle of monsters stay in one place it's hard to pick them out. The colour is monochromatic but it has a mufti-coloured title screen. The best element is the sound by WE M.U.S.I.C. - it's fantastic. This game would be more suited to a budget price, but it isn't that bad.
NICK

Although there have been some changes since we were last there, the aliens have got meaner and bullets have become a newfangled laser, it's immediately obvious where Killer Ring's roots are firmly planted. I liked the improvements over the old style Invaders, especially the music, and Killer Ring can be very addictive if you've got a worthy competitor to hi-score against.
PAUL

Label: Reaktor
Author: Tony Crowther
Price: £4.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Bats get a bad press. Quite unfairly they always get put down as nasty, flitting about and squeaking a lot. 'Praps that's why they're the enemy in Killer Ring from Reaktor.

Killer Ring is the sort of game to bring a spring to my step and joy to my heart. Remember Space Invaders? Dull, ploddy, but jam-packed with aliens to kill and nothing else. No radars to scan, no fuel-gauge to check, just simple blast, blast, blast. Well, Killer Ring is remarkably similar to that - or Phoenix - except with bats. A lot of them. And it's very fast.

You begin to realise just how simple the game really is when you check out the instructions on the packaging. There aren't any. What you do get is a recipe for K-Ring cup cakes, and very tasty they are too.

The message is simply, an happily: if it moves, shoot it. If doesn't shoot it anyway.

So I joyfully pressed the Fire button and got on with th serious business of bat hunting. And they weren't anything like your ordinary average vampire. These bats fly in waves, preceeded by an Anti-Matter beam, which must be shot through in order to hit anything at all.

As the game claims to get harder each time you play, even when you're on Idiot Level, if you don't can't hack it first time around, you're certainly not going to get much further each time you play. (Personally I think this is just a ruse to make you think you're being really clever when you manage to get past a wave.)

After many, many, increasingly hard waves, you'll reach a spaceman, and the simple requirement where he's concerned is that if you blow his heart out you'll get lots of points and win the game.

Killer Ring is beautifully simple to play. Just stay put and Fire at will. The odd bullet, or perhaps it's a bat dropping, will come your way, but, on the earlier waves at least, these are quite easy to dodge. What you may find disconcerting at first is the enormous amount of bat debris that flies about the place, but don't panic. Bat entrails may be a bit on the unpleasant side, but they won't damage you in any way.

You'll find yourself represented by a gun-sight sort of object, which fires beams from the top and bottom. The odd bat will get past you and fly down behind you. Leave it until it comes up, round and above you and then give him one right on the nose. That'll take care of him, and allows you to progress to the subtleties of the next set of bats.

The graphics are nice an simple. All one-colour - again a very similar sort of effect to Invaders. The bats - which look a bit like frogs (but then I never was very good at biology) - break away from the rest of the bunch one by one and circle round, in a fetching manner, wings outstretched, evil grins on their little faces...

But I digress. What we've got here is a nice straightforward game with continuous shooting and some good music and sound effects too. One happy reviewer.