Producer: Silversoft, 16K
£5.95

This is a much better game than Silversoft's 'Ground Attack' and is a good version of the classic 'Defender' of arcade fame. The animated graphics are neat and the sound amusing. Control keys are much better placed than in GA as well. Climb, dive, thrust, reverse, hyperspace, smart bombs and laser all help you protect the humanoids from the marauding alien craft. Features an excellent long range scan. No joystick facility. M/C.

Producer: Silversoft, 16K
£5.95

This is a much better game than Silversoft's 'Ground Attack' and is a good version of the classic 'Defender' of arcade fame. The animated graphics are neat and the sound amusing. Control keys are much better placed than in GA as well. Climb, dive, thrust, reverse, hyperspace, smart bombs and laser all help you protect the humanoids from the marauding alien craft. Features an excellent long range scan. No joystick facility. M/C.

Producer: Silversoft, 16K
£5.95

This is a much better game than Silversoft's 'Ground Attack' and is a good version of the classic 'Defender' of arcade fame. The animated graphics are neat and the sound amusing. Control keys are much better placed than in GA as well. Climb, dive, thrust, reverse, hyperspace, smart bombs and laser all help you protect the humanoids from the marauding alien craft. Features an excellent long range scan. No joystick facility. M/C.

Memory Required: 16K
Price: £5.95

Silversoft's games Orbiter and Ground Attack are probably the best Spectrum versions of the arcade games Defender and Scramble.

I have been receiving ZX Computing for about a year now but am amazed to have never seen Silversoft's Orbiter reviewed. So, now I have chance to tell the readers what a fantastic program it is!

It's nearly exactly like the arcade game 'Defender', You have to travel in your ship across the hilly landscape blasting any green aliens you come across. The aim of the game is to retain 10 blue objects which lie along the bottom of the screen amongst the landscape. You are given these at the start of each game and the green aliens try to attach themselves to these and move towards the top of the screen. The aim is to first blast the alien and then catch the falling blue object before it hits the ground and is destroyed. Points are given for catching and returning it to the ground safely. However, if you don't stop the alien and it reaches the top of the screen, it changes into a purple coloured alien. Its movement is much more erratic and they move faster making them difficult to hit.

The layout of the keys is cleverly done and they include up, down, thrust, fire, change direction, hyperspace and smart bombs. If used, the smart bombs destroy everything on the screen with an impressive flash.

Besides the resident aliens there are also, blue and purple squares which move diagonally across the screen laying mines, as well as innocuous looking yellow saucers which never move except when they are hit, when a hoard of smaller red saucers are unleashed.

The entire activities of all the aliens are shown on a long-range scanner at the top of the screen.

As you progress through one attack-wave after another, you are awarded extra ships and smart bombs. I've found that after 200,000 points the computer becomes very generous with these.

One drawback with Orbiter is that you are only shown a maximum of three ships and three smart bombs on the screen, so if you have more than three it is impossible to tell how many more. One time, out of curiosity, I let my ships be destroyed and found that I had 18 ships apart from those three shown (this was at about 350,000 points).

The danger in this addictive game is that if the green aliens swipe all your blue objects there is a flash, the landscape disappears and from then on all the aliens are automatically changed into mean purple ones. The secret to survival is not to, at any cost, let this happen, because if it does you're in trouble. So when down to the last blue object, instead of setting it down on the ground after taking it from the alien, hold onto it - for long as you do, no aliens can pick it up. Then you try to reach attack-wave 10, where you are given five free blue objects after every attack-wave.

At £5.95 I think Orbiter is well worth the money.