Producer: Martec
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Programmed by John Wilson from original idea by Simon Nicol

Latest data from the Institute of Advanced Research indicates that there are more than one or two undiscovered planets in the depths of the solar system. The government of the future refuses to concern itself with such outdated issues as cultural exchange, though.

Each potentially intelligent race is potentially hostile; best to blast them now and think about it later.

The mission is undertaken by a solo monochrome pod, equipped with a single laser, which journeys at high speed through a whirlpool of stars. At the beginning of each round bonus objects are belched up from the junkyard of 23rd century space. Calculated collision tactics equip the dextral pilot with a range of technical improvements: rotate motors plus autofire, speed up thrusts, missiles, extra lives and bonus points.

As the ship hurtles through the void the pilot encounters a series of gyrating comets, plus planets which grow in size as they approach. As their size increases, so does their immunity to laser fire and they also become increasingly difficult to avoid. At this stage contact means instant death.

Successful extermination of all the heavenly bodies in each round gives the triumphant pilot instant access to the next set of bonuses and another, even more dangerous, planetary system.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: poor and simply designed foreground ships with a swirling background of stars
Sound: 'exhilarating' 128K tune only

Mega-Apocalypse is anything but mega! It's really just a glorified asteroids game with a bit of space invaders thrown in for luck. The graphics are badly defined and your ship is difficult to control at first. The planet section has about the best graphics with craters showing on the otherwise green blobs, but to cheer all the screens up there is a fabulous display of swirling dots simulating a starry sky. There's no shortage of things to listen to with a constantly playing tune and sound effects over the top of that. It's just a pity the game isn't a bit better with more things to do.
NICK

Mega-Apocalypse and mega-hard! if there's one thing that Martech's latest game has got it's addictiveness. It may be lacking in graphics - which are poor and flickery at the best of times - and sound - absolutely none on the 48K (all shoot 'em ups need effects for atmosphere) - but it does instill that gut feeling that you can't be beaten by a game of this (poor) calibre. If you're thinking of buying Mega-Apocalypse then don't expect the flashy graphics and smooth animation of other versions: It's very basic and not really worth £8.99 considering the lack of content. Still, it should keep you glued to the keyboard for some time.
PAUL

Revelling unashamedly in the sadistic pleasure of bombing and blasting through the space is a pleasure which most shoot 'em ups stifle in a 'save the world' scenario or quite simply fail to provide. Not so Mega-Apocalypse. The action, enhanced by the exhilarating soundtrack, is fast, frenzied and immediately addictive. Perversely the presentation itself isn't at all polished: the swirling movement of the stars has to compensate for lack of colour and complexity, while collision detection is occasionally messy. The apocalypse is not altogether as mega as the advertising claims but it does deserve something more than just mild success.
KATI

Martech
£8.99
Reviewer: Richard Blaine

I was glad to see this offering - Mega Apocalypse, which has an unassuming little name that trips easily off the tongue, and makes no claims about being an accurate simulation of anything. No, the cassette insert is a lot like Your Sinclair's editorial team: brutal and short (just a joke guys, honest...). No frills, no poncing around - 'You have been selected to explore the universe, boldly seeking out strange and exciting new worlds. If you find any, your instructions are quite clear. BLAST THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' I may not have got the exact number of exclamation marks right, but you get the general drift.

Once it was all loaded, I was a bit disappointed. Id been expecting something well mega, and the first screen was a let down. Your triangular ship is up against three rocket ship type thingies, which have all the stamina of soap bubbles. You can move up and down and left and right on the screen, although you can't change the direction your ship is facing - not at first anyway. Even so, if the idea was not to kill these first targets, it would be more challenging!

Anyway, once through this first screen, you're up against the attack of the killer planetoids. Three or four of these first appear as tiny specks, which get progressively bigger as they bounce around the screen. They can't harm you until they've become fully sized planets with craters on - if they run into you then, you're dead meat. You can kill them with one shot when they're small, but the bigger they get, the more damage you have to do to destroy them.

Then its onto the rocket ship type thingies again, plus some cometoids which blow you apart if they get anywhere near you. This screen is a lot more challenging: in fact, its blimmin' frustrating, especially as the comets seem to have been programmed to follow you around the screen! in addition to the thingies and the cometoids, you also get some strange shaped blobs, and these seem to give you extra powers when you hit them.

In the screen that follows - back to the baby planetoids, only they grow faster, or seem to - my ship seemed to have been equipped with special thrusters that meant I could rotate it. Unfortunately, they didn't come with instructions on their use, so I spent ages cartwheeling around the screen. I finally worked out that it had something to do with the fire button. Every time I fired, I rotated 45°. Every so often, I also managed to pick up something which gave me a continuous fire capability - very useful, but I do wish I knew what I did to deserve it! Thinking about it, it may not have been the blobs at all, but the rocket ships...

Anyway, the next screen pits man against a fully grown planetoid: I can't tell you what comes after that, as I haven't been able to outwit the lump of rock yet. It's not easy, dodging something the size of Ceres (the largest of the asteroids, you know), in an area the size of a TV screen. I suppose I could get a bigger TV screen.

And that, as they say, is that. First impressions - that this one is a dud - are misleading: it grows on you as time goes by. I found myself getting quite into it after about half an hour, even though my score went down the more games I played. But it doesn't have the grabbability, so, normally, I would predict a reasonable but not astounding future for this one. But it is a conversion of what is apparently an immensely popular game for the CBM64, and I have a suspicion a lot of people are going to ignore rather bland graphics and somewhat turgid gameplay, and just buy it so they can see what their mates with Commies have been wittering about.

Label: Martech
Author: John Wilson
Price: £8.99 tape, £14.99 +3 disc
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

You can give games a flashy title, you can give them wild and exciting plots, you can even cover them with expensive packaging or jam, but you can't hide the fact that a shoot-'em-up is a shoot-'em-up, no matter what it's dressed up as. So why bother dressing it up at all?

I mean, there is nothing more annoying than going down to my local software dealer to buy the latest game, Slaughter of the Weeble Wobbles at some exorbitant price, only to get it home and find that all the claims of it being the most wonderful great, terrific game etc, are not true and it's simply a poor Defender clone after all.

I have to say now, I love Mega Apocalypse to bits because it tells you exactly what it is. It doesn't promise you the chance to rule the galaxy. It doesn't tell you about the millions of different sprites and screens in the game. It tells you that it's a shoot-'em-up and a good one at that.

Mega Apocalypse is similar in many ways to Martech's earlier offering, Crazy Comets, in that it has the same game objective. You still have to fly around space shooting anything that comes near and generally clocking up some very high scores. The game is set over a multitude of levels and as you can tell from the screenshots on this page, all are completely different (oooh, little bit of sarcasm there). OK, so originality of gameplay is not one of the strongest points in the game, but who needs originality for a game this good?

You fly a little diamond-shaped craft (which, incidentally, looks like a reject from Elite, but enough of this nitpicking). You fly it around a single screen for each level, but when it comes down to it, the playing area is quite large. The only area you can't move to is a line 1 character block deep at the top of the screen, which holds all the information about lives, score, etc. The original Commodore version of Mega Apocalypse had excellent moving backdrops, and these have been transferred very impressively to the Spectrum. The starfield background is completely animated, with the stars spreading outwards (as in a lot of 3-D space games). Then the whole starfield spins around the centre of the screen, which is all very clever, but very hard on the old brain.

The movement of the planets is fab. They start as little blobs and then grow into huge planets which bounce around the screen, usually after some contact with you. By the way, contact with most objects in the game causes death, so be careful.

One major complaint about Comets was that it was too hard in the way tat you could only fire upward. However, Martech has listened very closely to the grapevine and come up with a rotate facility, which allows you to manoeuvre your ship in any of the 8 directions available, which is bloody handy. Nice one Martech.

Upon loading, you are greeted with a small piece of speech which tells you to, "Get Ready," in a very indistinct American accent. At least I think this is what it says; it took me a long time to realise that it was speech and not a digitised sound effect of a heavy smoker blowing his nose (not very pretty).

But the music, the music! This is something else. David Whittaker has created a zappy new tune with a hint of Crazy Comets behind it. It's wicked.

Generally then, a wonderful game. I think everyone will like this one. basically because it's an addictive blast and one for which you don't need much brain power.

Spectrum £8.99

PLANET CAREFULLY

Released on the Commodore 64 late last year, Mega-Apocalypse enjoyed a great deal of acclaim as a superb update of Crazy Comets. The scenario, then as now, is refreshingly direct - travel through space, find strange new worlds and destroy them.

Divided into two sections, in the first you add equipment to your ship by crashing into some objects, while avoiding collisions with the comets whizzing about the screen. In the second alien worlds whirl around in dazzling combat manoeuvres attempting to collide with you. When they first appear in the distance, the planets can be despatched easily, but growing nearer, they require numerous hits to destroy them. At a level's end a mega-planet must be disposed of before the next level can be reached. Another equipment screen follows and the whole cycle is repeated Other nuisances are comets which appear without warning at the edges of the screens and large planets that can materialise anywhere.