Producer: Quicksilva
Retail Price: £8.95

The Bombyx Moons are almost entirely composed of pure Talanite, which the evil Necrons are ripping off from the Bombyxians. Terran civilisation can offer them far more. To that end you, as a Star Commando, are sent to the Bombyx Moons to dispose of Necronian personnel and their military and communication installations.

Ferried by the mother ships 'Zhukov' and 'Coral Sea' you're dropped to a moon' s surface in a Red Scorpion space tighter. A head up display views the combat zone on a horizontally scrolling screen.

Red Scorpion moves left, right, forward and back, with direction indicated on a navigational geocompass. The craft carries four vision systems: microwave, which detects underground installations and looks through camouflage; infra red, which detects fast moving objects; ultra violet which identifies Talanite sources; and natural light.

It carries four threat detectors, activated when enemy targets come within range. These detect above ground structures. Talanite mines, armed aliens, and Necron missiles. Additional help is given by the 'Coral Sea'which relays information about Necron missile launches.

Enemy fire damages Red Scorpion's shields, with a twofigure number at the top left of the screen indicating their condition. When that rating falls to zero the next hit destroys the craft.

The ship's armoury is made up of armour-piercing missiles, cluster bombs, sonic stunners, a multi-frequency electronic warfare system, and a particle cannon. Points are awarded for each enemy target destroyed, and a total is shown at the top of the screen. Ten onscreen icons show the status of weapon and vision systems.

Both motherships are used during the operation, a rendezvous can be made with the Coral Sea and Zhukov provides heavy cover fire, this however causes damage to the Red Scorpion's shields.

Complete the mission successfully and promotion is yours.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Y/H up/down, O/P left/right, J or bottom row to fire
Joystick: Kempston
Use of colour: some distinction made between craft
Graphics: wire frame 3D
Sound: limited
Skill levels: one
Screens: continuous landscape

What's this, Battlezone with a plot and a strategy element? Nobody could possibly cope with the nasty icons, the hostile craft that you can't shoot because you're supposed to be friends and the rest of the abysmally slow and over-complicated gameplay. The graphics are as well defined as most vector graphics, but the icons leave something to be desired in the way of clarity. On the whole I'd give this a miss, it might have been worth a look for two quid, but for nearer nine pounds it isn't worth it.
BEN

I'm sure that there's a perfectly good game in this package... somewhere. It seems to have been lost in the unhelpful instructions - too much scenario and not enough fact. The whole idea of a Battlezone type game is always enticing if the graphics are last and flicker-free - but this one misses out on the former. Red Scorpion is well laid-out, but it lacks the necessary speed.
PAUL

I'm sure the authors are disappointed with Red Scorpion; I know I am. The packaging is very good, with a generally professional feel - but that's what you expect when a company has been around as long as Quicksilva. Their experience doesn't come to light on the game though, which falls far below standard and is nothing more than a poor Battlezone variant. The icons on the bottom of the screen are a nice addition, but when compared to something as slick as Realtime's semi-ancient Tank Duel, it's not up to scratch.
MIKE

Quicksilva
£9.95

When the gormless one asked what I was doing and I told her I was a bounty hunter, she said she preferred Milky Ways. I ask you! Has she never heard of those mercenaries who go off in search of a fistful of intergalactic dollars?

Well, they might gain a few credits in this game, but they also receive a fistful of keys. Red Scorpion is a tank, you see, and we all know what tank games mean, don't we, software historians? Yes, our old friend Battlezone makes a welcome (well, sort of) reappearance, just when you thought it was safe to return to the vector landscape.

This is a very special Battle-zone though, and the major point in its favour is the quality of that line 3D. Okay, you say, so they should have got it right after all these years. Well, they have, and the objects you encounter move fast and spin smoothly. Shoot them and they even shatter debris all over you. The ground itself seems to slide by like a ploughed field as you glide over its lines.

All well and good, and if blasting was all there was to it you'd have a game of guaranteed, if rather limited, addictiveness. But it seems that every formula needs elaboration nowadays, at least in the eyes of the game designers - and this is where all those keys come in.

Being a high tech sort of jalopy, your Scorpion is equipped with a dazzling array of aids to attack and defence. I presume they're aids to defence, though as far as I was concerned, the enemy might have put them there to hamper you, because every so often you have to switch your fingers from the joystick to the keyboard to activate a weapon or night sight.

With a whole row of keys to remember it can become more like a typing exercise. Maybe it's just a personal preference, but I like games where I can get into the action without having to remember a whole row of keys. I'm sure that I'd learn them if I persisted, but by then I think I'd have lost interest.

There are other interesting additions though, including friendly units which you mustn't shoot on any account, unless you want to be court-martialled, which means you need to know your wire-frame. And do read the inlay notes - very satirical, indeed! But in the end the control system is too clumsy for my liking, and only serves to detract from the speed of the action.

Label: Quicksilva
Author: In-house
Price: £7.96
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Red Scorpion could have been called TauGlider.

If you imagine a plot like Tau Ceti with Tau Cetiish shapes but presented using Starglider vector graphics you've got 80 per cent of what Red Scorpion is all about.

This isn't a big criticism it may even be a recommendation - if you really liked those two games there is a fair chance you'll like this.

The plot blurb runs to a good few paragraphs but can be reduced to this: you control an infantry attack craft that zooms over the surface of assorted Bombyx moons. The moons contain Talanite (valuable stuff, probably related to Teflon) which is currently being ripped off by the completely-evil-in-every-way Necron empire. Your mission is to blast the Necrons off the moons without alienating the native population by blowing up centres of population, farms and other non-military targets. Getting this bit wrong means instant court marshal and the end of the game.

Apart from that the game is just finding the objects to destroy and using one weapon system or another and blowing Necrons into little pieces. They, of course, may feel like firing back.

The tricky stuff: the main problem is that some extremely dangerous objects are invisible under normal lighting conditions - you therefore have to toggle your cockpit display systems between four modes, natural light, infra-red, ultra-violet and microwave the last three of which allow you to see through camouflage, fast moving objects, underground objects or Talanite.

The only clue you get about what mode you need to be in is a series of letters which light up at the side of the cockpit screen indicating, for example, that there is something buried nearby. Other letters helpfully indicate that some sort of missile is about to hit...

The Red Scorpion is equipped with shields as its basic defence mechanism - these slowly lose power as you are hit and if they drop to zero the next one will be your last. In extremis you can call for battlecruiser fire support from the Zhukov - a gigantic space battlecruiser which is in orbit. This blows up everything in the vicinity but drains shield power. Your defence system also allows you to destroy incoming missiles by matching your ship's wave pattern with that of the missiles - it works very much like the wave-form feature in Zoids - you move between various wave patterns trying to spot the ones that match as quickly as possible, ie before you explode in a ball of flame. The last option is to run away very quickly.

The graphics - well - if you've seen Starglider you'll know the sort of thing to expect - geometric shapes of various sorts, some simple, some moderately complicated.

They aren't animated, as such, but the movement routines have them moving around the screen moderately smoothly. The planet's surface is a large grid matrix - largely featureless.

The various command options - missiles selects etc - are operated via another one of those pointless icon systems where the icon looks like nothing in particular thereby negating its whole purpose. Anyway it's tolerable.

The game plays fairly well, but in the end it's just a glorified zap em-up and lacks both Tau Ceti's wide range of missions and Starglider's technical sophistication.