Producer: Unique
Memory Required: 16K
Retail Price: £5.99
Language: Machine code

Red Attack is a 'Galaxo-variant' shoot em up with 72 attack waves, six waves to a level with 9 different types of alien. As usual you laser base can move left and right at the base of the screen but, like Arcadia, you are allowed to move up the screen, in this case, right to the top. Your ship fails back under the force of gravity quite rapidly. The aliens wrap around vertically and horizontally.

There are two speeds for laser fire and two playing speeds selectable from the front-end menu, and it is possible to enter any stage between levels 1 and 5 with consequent forfeiture of lives. What makes Red Attack unusual is that the computer will keep a high score table going for up to 9 players.

COMMENTS

Control keys: user-definable, left/right/up and fire needed
Joystick: almost any via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive enough for the game
Use of colour: poor really, pastel colours on white
Graphics: large sized, but somewhat unimaginative, no animation and jerky, rather predictable attack movement
Sound: very good
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 5 per stage
Features: for between 1 and 9 players if desired

A fairly boring shoot em up, blast the aliens and jump over them as they come towards you. There are 72 attack waves (which I got nowhere near to finishing). I found this one boring and uninteresting with jerky graphics and no variation in the game itself.

Not much to say about this shoot em up. It soon gets very monotonous. Games from this time last year surpass this one! The graphics are large and smooth-ish but are all very similar in design and motion. It's generally not challenging enough and hardly lives up to the name Unique.

I really think it must be a mistake to come out with such a simple shoot em up game like Red Attack these days. 'Galaxian' style shoot em ups have had their day really, and this is a very simple one. Half the atmosphere is lost at the start by playing on a white screen, which makes some of the alien craft, when yellow or pale blue, quite hard to see well. The laser effect is fine, and overall movement versus attack speed seems well balanced, but I honestly couldn't recommend this to anyone.