Producer: Konami
Retail Price: £7.95

The inhabitants of the planet Nemesis are under attack from the forces of Bacterion. You command a protecting squadron of three space fighters in a brave attempt to destroy the invading fleet. To succeed in your mission you must pass successfully through four sections - forest, space islands, an alien graveyard and the interior of a Bacterion battle cruiser. The Mother Ship at each section's end must be destroyed before you and your squadron can pass onto the next.

Your craft flys up, down backwards or forwards. As your space craft progresses through each section you come under attack from Bacterion craft, surface walking tanks and cavern emplacements. A direct hit from an alien ship or missile causes the loss of one of your three ships.

For initial protection your craft carries only a cannon, but as opposing attackers are destroyed, illuminated credits are occasionally released for collection. Each successive credit gives an increasingly powerful additional feature - extra speed, air-to-ground missiles, double (a cannon enhancement), laser, multiple fire unit and a defensive shield. As this is done an appropriate icon is illuminated at the base of the screen. Up to four speed bursts and air to ground missiles, two multiple fire units, a single shield and either lasers or double air-to-ground missiles can be carried. When a feature has been added to the space ship's armoury the icon becomes inessential. When a ship is lost all the features that it has gathered have to be collected once again.

COMMENTS

Control Keys: definable, up/down, left/right, fire and select required
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2
Use of colour: fairly colourful, some clashes but not serious
Graphics: small with adequate detail
Sound: average title tune, good spot FX
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling play area over five levels

This is a disappointment, but having seen Konami's Jail Break, I'm thankful that it's not totally abysmal. The presentation is awful, response to keyboard input on the title screens is much too slow and the redefine key option leaves a lot to be desired. The gameplay is laughably different to that of the Arcade original, this is a shame as the feeling of the machine has not been captured in the Spectrum version. Without this feel, Nemesis is just another shoot 'em up and for near eight quid not a cheap one.
BEN

Nemesis had the sort of appeal in the arcades that cost a lot of people a lot of ten pence pieces. However, the Specm conversion seems to have lost all the appeal of its big brother, and its lack of playability loses any of the original's addictiveness. The ship is very unresponsive to quick key presses, and collision detection is very suspect. The visual effect is ruined by the stupid scrolling stars in the background - they are very hard to distinguish from the bullets.
PAUL

Gosh... Transmuter's twin brother! Nemesis however, is a touch less playable than its cheaper rival. It's a pity that this conversion by Konami is so poor, as the arcade original was both fun and addictive. The graphics are reasonably good, the backgrounds and enemy craft are nicely designed and animated, but it's a pity that your ship flickers so much. Essentially, the game is no more than an overly difficult. overpriced and mostly unplayable shoot 'em up.
MIKE

The Hit Squad
£2.99 re-release

Far away, in a long lost galaxy is the planet Nemesis, a peaceful world that never did any one any harm, a world of Volvo driven. Now it's under attack from its old enemies. A nasty race from sub-space star cluster Bacterion. The only way to save the planet is to use the prototype hyperspace lighter, the Warp Rattler, piloted by you. You must duel to the death with the evil Bacterions and save Nemesis.

Nemesis is very 48K! Compared to some of today's shoot-'em-ups it looks like a piece of home grown software. The sound is the first thing that hits you: the squeaky tune is hilarious and the effects are not much better. The format is classic shoot-'em-up. You encounter a couple of waves of aliens then enter the cavern to battle it out against walking thingies and even more evil. At the end of each level you reach a big nasty to be destroyed. One thing Nemesis had when it first came out that all the others didn't was the chance to increase your weaponry. By collecting pods the aliens leave behind you can go up the scale at the bottom of the screen and when you come to a weapon you like you select it to add to your ship - amazing.

This is not a bad shoot-'em-up but has not stood the test of time very well. It may look terrible compared to today's efforts but if you're short on cash and after a bit of blasting fun, you could do worse.

Konami
£7.95

Tarantara! It's finally here! Gordon Bennett, it took long enough. But after countless reprogrammings it seems that the mammoth task of jamming last year's fabbest arcade shoot 'em up into 48 cheesy old K has actually been achieved. Well, nearly.

All the original features are there, bar the amazing graphics - much as you'd expect. As you're flying along on your mission to save your planet from the avenging Bacterion forces, you have to pick up enemy capsules (usually awarded for pranging a whole group of fighters) which when collected give you certain extra powers. Missile, for example, gives you, yes, a missile, which drops down to the bottom of the screen and wipes out anything down there.

Laser gives you a much sharper, more powerful weapon (oo-er) which scythes through your enemies, but is often less versatile than your bog standard shooter. Double doubles your firepower, although it's incompatible with Laser ('tis one or the other, old chum). Option deposits an extra lump on your ship which also fires at aliens, and so on. As the game goes on, of course, it all gets much more complicated.

Like the arcade version, the Speccy Nemesis is very fast and very hard. The ship is highly manoeuvrable and the aliens whiffle about like nobody's business, knocking you out before you really notice. In fact, the collision detection is the game's single major flaw. To avoid the usual problem, Konami has you destroyed about half a sprite before you thought you'd hit anything - a bit irritating to start with, but you get used to it.

Otherwise it's a faithful, no-frills conversion. The graphics have suffered by necessity, but it you can accept that you have a Speccy in your living room, not a four-ton three megabyte arcade machine and a lifetime supply of 10p pieces. Nemesis is well up to expectations. A deserved hit for Konami!

BARGAIN BASEMENT

This month, Bargain Basement is brought to you by YS's two (almost) resident heart-throbs (or so they keep telling us) JONATHAN DAVIES and RICH PELLEY. Hoorah!

Hit Squad
£2.99
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

I have little patience with games where I get killed at the same point (usually near the beginning) every time I play it for about six months. So Nemesis is fortunate to be getting off lightly. It really is horribly difficult, mainly due to the speed at which everything runs.

In case you re not familiar with the smash hit number one chart-topping etc, arcade game, erm, there is one. And this is the conversion of it. It's as standard a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up as they come, with all the usual add on weapons, giant end-of-level nasties and all the rest of it. While the original was slick and very lovely to look at, the conversion has a very Spectrumy feel to it, which means slightly jerky sprites and numerous short-cuts with the graphics. All the same, it's very playable (apart from being a bit too difficult for its own good) and, like so many budget re-releases, makes a tasty little barg.

Label: Konami
Author: In-house
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

It was a hit in the arcades, is it a hit on the Spectrum? Konami did a good job with Jailbreak (reviewed elsewhere this issue) but Nemesis was a game with such a powerful mixture of high speed and stunning graphics it always seemed the more difficult conversion task.

Nemesis for those who have never seen the coin-op is a highly advanced eighties permutation of that old seventies classic. Scramble in which you, lone space cruiser, weaved your way through ever narrower and more twisted caverns dodging assaults by alien ships and ground bases that lobbed things at you.

Nemesis is about piloting your space cruiser around a series of landscapes (technology has gone beyond mere caverns). There are still assorted spaceships blasting away at you and ground objects attacking you but the size, variety and sheer viciousness of the opponents has increased exponentially (that's a lot).

Space cruisers look pretty much as they always did in such games, but as you play Nemesis you soon realise that graphics have come a pretty long way from the days of little blocks with bits on the top. In Nemesis, there are gun emplacements that walk, giant skeletons which rise ominously from the tunnel walls and enormous alien battleships that fire missiles, volcanoes and an assortment of peculiar objects bizarre in the way that only computer programmers know how.

It isn't all a matter of flying as fast as you can. Not only is it sometimes vital to vary your speed to get past obstacles, but sometimes you just don't have a choice. At certain points the program 'stops'. At one point you find yourself trapped betwixt a couple of volcanoes spewing surprisingly cylindrical lava, you just have to grin and bear it. At another point you have to attack an enormous spaceship which will not let you pass.

There are chances in the game that increase your fire power from the piffling little laser you begin with. In some sections of the game, you'd better have exactly the right weapon or Blam! - time to hand over the ole battle cruiser ignition keys.

The programming is pretty good, but the big problem with moving lots of shapes all at once, some of them very big, is smoothness. All things considered the amount of jerkyness is absolutely minimal.

The gameplay, fairly easy to begin with and horrendous at the finish. Funnily enough the quality of the graphics roughly matches the difficulty of the level i.e. the really stunning stuff comes, almost as a reward, towards the end of the game.

An unashamed shoot-em-up but an excellent conversion of the arcade game and, in places, graphically excellent - check out the alien creatures that rise and fall and the gruesome faces that drift around the screen. Scramble for the present day.

Label: The Hit Squad
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Lee Davidson

Guess what! Yes, an Earth-like planet is being attacked by the space star cluster of Bacterion. And who's the mug who's got to save everybody? Right again, you! As you may have guessed by now I'm talking about the game Nemesis, re-released at £2.99 by The Hit Squad.

The planet Nemesis is being attacked by a band of meanies called amoeboid Bacterions (nice name eh?) and as expected everyone is in danger of being killed. So you must launch an attack on the meanies in a ship called the Warp Rattler, which at first is equipped with the most pathetic weapon known to mankind. Some aliens when killed drop pods which when collected will help you select a better and more powerful weapon or shield. The extras that can be gained range from speed, (which you don't need as the ship goes too fast anyway), through to a double shot, attack satellites (which move with your craft and fire in unison), to a laser - a line of energy which kills most things instantly!

After powering up your weaponry and reaching the end of the level that you are on, you meet one of several end of level meanies. The graphics for these are better then any of the other sprites in the game and their arsenal of weapons is greater.

The graphics to the game are about as well defined as a squashed hedgehog in a snowstorm and about as well animated. Your ship looks more like a paper aeroplane then an awesome fighting machine and the enemies' bullets blend in with the background to look like stars which is very annoying as you constantly find yourself asking why you died. The backdrops are bland and repetitive with only the occasional gun turret in a wall to break up the monotony. I hope that higher levels will have more to offer then the ones that I can reach but a bit more practice is needed to reach any of them.

The title screen plays a rasping tune and naff spot effects are heard whilst playing. The game does have its good points too. It's extreeeeemly addictive but hard, making it challenging and a game that is going to last you for a while. It's one of those games with that rare 'just one more go' feel to it. I couldn't stop myself sneaking back into the games room for another go!

Whilst the graphics and animation are lacking in appeal the overall game is however brilliant! It's one of the most addictive games that The Hit Squad have released to date. An old but classic game. It's great.

Hit Squad
Spectrum/C64/Amstrad £2.99

The computer conversions of Konami's now-ageing coin-guzzler Nemesis received widespread acclaim when it was released several years ago, and it's getting a new lease of life with this budget re-release.

The aim of the game is pure and simple - fly from left to right and blast seven shades of shinty out of anything that moves, collect power-ups along the way, and destroy the end of level spacecraft.

Alright, so Nemesis is starting to show its age (it was released in 1987), but as a budget blast, it's dashed good value for money.