Storm
£9.99/£14.99

A force of terrorising monster machines has risen to conquer the Galaxy. Made of pure evil they are attacking and destroying the peaceful races one by one. Soon there will be no one left and the cyborg monsters' ultimate dream will have come true: the galaxy will be theirs. But there is hope! One of the cyborgs rebels - a dragon, part animal part machine. Dubbed Saint Dragon, he begins the battle to return the galaxy to normal.

Saint Dragon is a reverse of the Saint George and the dragon legend. Instead of a gallant knight on a white horse we now have a great dragon with an armoured tail! As this dragon you must battle through five horizontally scrolling levels of the most hideous monsters you've ever seen, including armoured pumas, mechanical cobras and a giant cyborg bull. The idea is to blast everything in sight - your only worry being to protect the dragon's head. A hit there and he blows up into space debris. This is where the armoured tail comes into play. It can be used as a protective shield around the sensitive head.

What would a shoot-em-up be without the option of building up your weapons into bigger and brighter things? You start off with a basic plasma bolt launcher and fireball, and can increase it to bouncing balls, turrets and a maximum of five plasmas, all the better to bash them with!

There's only one way to describe Saint Dragon: hot! You're addicted from the second it loads. Of course, moaners will say 'it's only another shoot-em-up', but this one with a difference. The dragon with its long swishing tail makes a refreshing change from the endless space ships that have cluttered up other games. As well as being great to look at as it follows you around the screen it also acts as an effective barrier from the barrage of enemy fire.

Saint Dragon has great graphics. Backgrounds, sprites and scenery are excellently drawn and animated with plenty of colour, a feature that makes the game stand out. I found the game agonizingly difficult to begin with, but once you memorise the patterns the enemies come in you can soon be on your way to higher levels.

As a truly magnificent conversion of the Jaleco arcade machine Saint Dragon is a well deserved CRASH Smash.

NICK [92%]

The first thing that impressed me was the continue play option: so many games lack this vital piece of kit and it's so annoying to get so far only to have to start all over again. The game's tough, make no mistake about it, and don't think that just because the tail acts as a shield the going is easy. It takes a good few games just to find the right position to place the tail in for certain types of attack (ie from the ground). The main sprite moves very smoothly, and despite the fair bit of colour on screen there's little colour clash. A tough and very challenging game, buy it now.
MARK [92%]

Storm
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Kati Hamza

Let's face it, you wouldn't want a dragon for a pet. Just think of the hassle. All that fireball dodging, scale cleaning, mouthwash buying... And the food bills. How long's it since you could get a couple of tins of fresh princesses' flesh for under a quid?

It's lucky then that the dragon in question isn't actually a pet. In fact, he's more of a robot (converted from a Jaleco coin-op to be exact) and he's out for revenge. Why? Because an evil race of moustache-twiddling monster machines is invading the universe and everybody who's anybody is very, very (very) scared. So scared, in fact, that they've all disappeared down to the Jolly Sailor and left Saint to wreak revenge on his own.

For a dragon, he's rather spunkily equipped. Secret weapon number one - fiery breath. It's hot, it's poisonous and a couple of whiffs spell death. Secret weapon number two - a snazzy flexible tail. Not only is this handy for lashing the odd alien, it also makes a natty little shield. All he has to do is writhe about a bit and you've got A1 improvised bullet-proof protection for your most sensitive part. (Your head, that is.)

And we're off. Within seconds, you're under attack from all sides. Here come some mutant green droids. Got 'em. Next, a white floating jellyfish belching bullets. Dodged. Look out! There are some camouflaged vegetably aliens firing lasers from the trees. (Indescribably horrible noise of vegetable aliens being squashed.)

Hold on a second - what's this? Looks like a strange pod-looking object. I'll just get a little closer. Yep. One strange pod-looking object coming up. I'll zap it with a bit of dragon-breath and... amazing! It's turned into an extra-weapons pill. Hmm. Extra plasma bolts. Could have been invulnerability, a power-up or an extra life.

Two or three screens into the action it's all looking blinkin straightforward. Then it all goes rather horribly wrong. Suddenly, ten or so ugly mug mutants leap on-screen and before you can say "Oh, Clifford" there's a riot of death-defying creatures, falling rocks and deadly bullets all over the place. Dragon-eating tigers spring out of the undergrowth, rocks crumble into monsters and gun emplacements throw out mines. Eek!

Phew. Just made it by the skin of my teeth. Now what? Uh-oh, looks like a huge end-of-level, mutant, metal bull. Right. let's get him. That's shown him! His head's fallen off. Hurrah! No, hold on, there's more. He's turned crazy, there are great big bolts of electricity corning out of his neck. Help! I want to get out of here. I want to go home. Aaaaargh!

And so it goes on - five blast-'em-up levels, to be precise. The best thing about it is that you don't lose all your weapons when you get shot - no annoying 'facing the end-of-level monster with nothing but a pea-shooter to your name' jobbies here. The worst thing is that it's all just a tad uneven - one minute you're swanning around admiring the spiffy scenery (and it's really very pretty, especially the animation of old Saint's tail), the next you're accosted by ten mad robots gnashing their teeth and greedy for your blood (not that you've got much, being a robot as well, that is).

So there you have it. It could have been faster, there could have been a few more levels (five isn't exactly loads) and the difficulty could have been evened out - but who cares when it's fun? I enjoyed it, and if you like your games pretty, tough and a blast-a-minute then you'll enjoy it too.

REPLAY

Ladies and gentlefolk, YS presents - returning to regale you with restorative re-releases - Replay!

Kixx
£3.99
021 625 3366
Reviewer: Stuart Campbell

I was really looking forward to this one, 'Oh wow, another incredible Speccy horizontal shoot-'em-up to rival R-Type in the arcade accuracy and general all-round fabness stakes, I thought'. Big (big) mistake. When I finally got the first level up and running (it's another one of those horrible beasts, a game which multiloads even on 128K machines), I was mortified to find myself playing a hideously slow, graphically abysmal, impossibly tedious load of old junk that bore about as much resemblance to the gorgeous coin-op as I do to Princess Anne (or, indeed the horse she road in on).

The actual playing area is tiny, but in order to make it seem bigger the programmers haven't put any kind of border around it, so that you can easily find yourself moving up the screen to avoid a bullet, only to discover too late that you can't actually got any further. So you die, get sent back miles through the bits you've already ploughed tortuously past, and do the whole thing again until you die of the boredom of seeing every attack and every alien appear from the exact same place every time. As if that weren't enough, the far-from dazzling pace drops to a crawl whenever more than about four sprites are on the screen at once, making the game an utter chore. The only light at the end of the tunnel comes from some of the big, nicely animated enemies like the robot tigers and the gigantic bull at the end of level one, but they're not worth the damage you'll have to wreak on your keyboard to get to see them.

If you haven't got R-Type yet, go out and buy it at once and forget about this dross. If you have got R-Type, go and play it at once and forget all about this dross. Ugh.

SUPER GAME GUIDE

Look, over there, through that swirling cloud of strange mist... No, it can't be, but it is! SU's guide to the game-greats of yester-year. Yes indeedy there have been some good 'uns on the market in the last few years so now's the time to start polishing up on your collection if you've missed out on any of these fabbo titles. Mark Patterson, who's been in the business since before he was born and who has written not just for SU but also for Amiga, ST, PC and Console mages gives us an extra critical run down of the best...

ST. DRAGON
Label: Kixx
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Mark Patterson

An alien world protects itself from hostile invaders by building a an enormous mechanical dragon and arming it to teeth. The idea being that if the baddies aren't scared off the planet by the dragon, they'll be blown off it by the dragon. The game is split into five stages, to begin with you only have a plasma gun at your disposal but as you move along through the stages you collect tokens and move up to bigger and more destructive weapons. By the time you get near the end you'll be blastin' 'em with bouncing bombs, fireballs and lasers. St Dragon is not the most original title in the world but it is very playable and darn good fun!

Label: Kixx
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Paul 'Pecker' Rand

The mythical dragon has frightened and fascinated folk since the dawn of time. Tales of these massive, scaly beasts eating cattle and kidnapping fair maidens has engrossed civilisations. And the legend hasn't just stayed on Earth, either.

In fact, one alien planet is jolly pleased that dragons are such a talking point. The reason being that they've been invaded by a marauding band of outer space pirates, who happen to be terrified of the merest mention of these fiery beasts. To combat the threat from the stars, the inhabitants of this world nave constructed a huge metallic version of the monster, complete with all manner of weapons and abilities, in the hope of scaring the nasties back to their own world.

Split into five stages, St Dragon has the player perched on the back of the dragon ship, dealing death to thealien hordes. Beginning with a measly plasma weapon, collect various tokens allowing you too power up with lasers, bouncing bombs and fireballs. Alternatively, just smash those robotic raiders with your hyper alloy metal tail!

Originally released by The Sales Curve, St Dragon is quite an enjoyable little blaster, with detailed graphics which animate well and move around at quite a zippy rate. You've seen it all before, of course, a million times in fact. But that's what the punters want - and they should be well happy with this.

GARTH:
A robotic dragon, tons on weapons and a few good aliens to blast up. Mmm, sounds good to me! St. Dragon is a fast and busy game that'll keep you going for quite a while.