Producer: Electric Dreams
Retail Price: £9.99
Author: Simon Freeman

The Federation is in trouble and they need you back. Tads is under attack from the dreaded Zylons - led by Chut, the man you defeated so long ago.

Your mission is thus, to defend your home star system of Celos 1V (the glacial planet Arcanum; the desert world of Seridus; Teris itself and it's moon Imbri), obliterate Chut's Master Force, pierce their stronghold in the star system of Procyon, and prevent replenishment of their space fleets by destroying their Attack Bases.

The Liberty Star, the latest in space fighter technology is at your disposal. A scanner shows the view from its cockpit, with a console above indicating the status of the craft and weapons systems.

Available weaponry consists of three computer-aided offensive systems. Fly fighters are destroyed by the Pulse Laser Cannon, with 100 points awarded for each. Prolonged firing of the laser causes overheating and leads to malfunction - the heat level is monitored from the central display. Fly Fighters are followed into the fray by the larger Zylon Destroyers. Here, the Liberty Star's laser automatically changes to the more powerful ion Cannon, with 500 points earned for each kill. The Command Ships in turn are worth 5,000 points. The third weapon is the Surface Star Burst (S58); this is a double missile, used to destroy Zylon ground installations.

Defensive shields are also carried, with their status indicated by switching to the Weapons Systems Mode on the Tactical Scanner.

Damaged shields are repaired at one of three friendly space stations. Whilst there, the ship's energy levels are replenished, and any used SSB's replaced.

Switching to the star chart gives the position of planets, space stations, Zylon squadrons, the liberty Star, and displays warp trajectories plotted to distant objectives.

When in enemy territory, land bases are picked off with a combination of the Tactical Scanner and SS8's. A status report is given on each planet before and after each attack.

COMMENTS

Control Keys: Cursor
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour varied and bright
Graphics: effective explosions and smooth scrolling
Sound: irritating white noise
Skill levels: one
Screens: eight: seven planets and the star chart

It wouldn't be much of a compliment if I said that Star Raiders II is just as good as its predecessor - because I didn't like the original very much! This shoot 'em up is reminiscent of the excellent Code Name Mat, but not as much fun to play. The only enjoyment to be had is in blasting anything that moves.
GARETH.

Why ELECTRIC DREAMS ever bought this is a complete mystery to me, it's one of the most boring games that I've ever seen. I can see how all the blasting appealed in the days of other ATARI classics such as Space Invaders and Planetoids, but nowadays people want a bit more than pointless pixel-pulping. The planet graphics are flickery and little imagination has been used in the deep space section - the explosions are nice, but that's about it.
PAUL

Electric Dreams
£9.99

'As Dirk Diehard edged into the seat of his souped-up Morris Minor with the dayglo go-faster stripes, he thought back to the meeting he'd just left. He'd been given custody of the Liberty Star, a hi-tech spacecraft that had pulse lasers, an ion cannon, and air (or space) to ground missiles, and it all came complete with a four-year guarantee! it sounded good. Too good. He couldn't understand why they'd kept smiling at him, and why they'd chortled merrily when he left. Then he opened his instructions and read what he had to do...'

Yes, folks, it's shoot the bad guys time, and what a doozy! All you have to do is single-handedly save four planets, three space stations, defeat hundreds of space ships and destroy an entire enemy solar system! There's only one snag - you've only got one ship to do it in.

But all is not lost. In fact, far from it. You see, I reckoned after a white that it was slightly harder to die than to stay alive. Wot? Well, the only way to lose a game is to run out of energy, and it's not easy to do that -whenever you're getting low you just warp to a space station and fill up the tank.

The ships are a doddle to destroy, and you amass huge scores by attacking the baddies (Zylons to you, guy) and warping off before you're dog meat. The ships are well animated, though the fighters themselves are pretty basic, and the motherships bear a strong resemblance to the saucers in V. There are also big tankers which, if you don't blow them up in time, emit strange rays that sap your energy. Stay there too long and the game is over.

If you press Space, up pops a map of the local star system, and if you move a line to the indicated area you're told how many ships are there, what type of planet it is, how many cities it has and so on. The map also shows the state of the battle, indicating Zylon squadrons and their positions. It's randomly generated each game, so you're never too sure what you'll be facing the next time round. The planets are shown too - they turn white if they're devoid of life. When you arrive on them, they scroll realistically at the bottom of the screen. By pushing the joystick forward, you can speed up your travel across them, while, pulling back slows you down. Your actual manoeuvres are limited to left and right, so the fighters, which have an annoying habit of hovering above your gunsights and firing at you, can prove hard to hit.

It's a good game, all in all, but limited - there's not a lot of variety, so anyone other than shoot 'em up freaks may get bored. The graphics aren't all they could be, but the strategy element certainly adds something. The only niggle I have is in the choice of keys - when you're trying to hit Space to get out of the way of three fighters, it's all too easy to nudge Caps Shift and find the game aborting in front of your eyes. But that's just a small complaint. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to save a couple of planets before tea!

Label: Electric Dreams
Author: Gary Stark, Bruce Poelman
Price: £9.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Do you remember Star Raiders 1? it was one of the very first programs ever produced for the old Atari 400 machine. A mixture of hurtling through space blowing things to bits with a bit of strategy - working out what things to blow up first. At the time the graphics looked pretty special and even much later on Jeff Minter declared it to be his favourite game ever.

Now we have Star Raiders II, a game which features the same sort of pseudo 3D effects and similar strategy elements. It even continues the old plot, though how many people will remember the Celos IV star system and the dreaded Zylons?

Never mind. Just assume that a whole lot of bad guys are invading the good (peace-loving, warm and friendly) guy's galaxy. Unfortunately all reasonable attempts at a negotiated peace have failed (big surprise) so you'll just have, to kill them. Drat.

This is not any kind of quasi-simulation. Things are kept nice and simple and that's good. Apart from joystick moves you only have to manage switching information screens and switching shields on and off.

This isn't to say there aren't quite a lot of things to think about. Where to attack first is one thing. How long you can risk it before you absolutely have to go and get repaired at a space station is another. When to turn your shields off is a third.

The game comes down to roughly three elements: blasting things over planets, blasting things in space and docking,

Blasting happens in two stages. A few waves of the relatively easy to blast X-wing fighter type things followed by a series of considerably larger, better defended and more tubular motherships. Your on-board computer system adapts your weaponry to deal with the different aliens. This means either the buzzing double zap lines style of laser or the big white blob style for the ion cannon (for serious harm).

When over a planet you also have to blast planetary bases and this involves lobbing bombs in front of you as the planet scrolls beneath you. Each bomb blitzes an entire city but don't let that worry you.

The graphics aren't going to blow you away but neither are they actually bad (a distinct improvement on the C64 version anyway). The program adopts some of the space game conventions of old - hyperspace is represented by concentric rings of flashing dots. Space is dots that flicker a bit. 3D is done in the old Codename Mat way of updating a series of increasingly larger shapes to give the illusion of something coming towards you.

Better is the planet surface which uses a moving pattern of colours to give the illusion of movement over differently-shaped land masses. Simple, but it works.

The strength of the game is all in the gameplay - intrinsically works well and holds interest and the graphics are just good enough not to detract from that.

Use your judgement, work out the most important areas to defend first and keep your eyes on the scanners that tell you just how little energy you've got left... will you run for repairs or try to take on one more wave of fighters?

It isn't another Elite, but Star Raiders II is easy to get into and a lot of harmful fun.