Mastertronic Plus
£2.99

Capable of 0-600 in 5.6 seconds and with a maximum speed of 1346 mph, the Foourd T-Bird racing machine is real mean! This revolutionary transportation system has everything you could wish for (except the kitchen sink!), but you've driven it into the alien part of town. These aliens are a mite jealous of your new purchase and will do anything to ruin it. You must now fight off the swarms of alien beings and dodge their fire if you're going to make it home in time for tea!

T-Bird is a 3-D style shoot-'em-up. Aliens and objects on the ground fly towards you at great speed. The 3-D effect isn't bad with objects getting bigger as they move down the screen. Colour is (wait for it) glorious monochrome with a different colour for each level, and just for luck there's the compulsory end of level big monster to be destroyed.

You can increase you weaponry by collecting the pods that arrive when an alien swarm is destroyed, but then this style of play has been used over and over again. The simplistic gameplay and lack of variety will soon have you reaching for the off switch.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Looking for something cheap? How about RICH PELLEY (now at half price - a snip)? Er, on second thoughts...

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Imagine a totally fabby game which is full of colour, massive spaceships, squillions of different nasties, huge explosions and ace sound. Right, now let's talk about T-Bird (ho ho).

(Sorry.) Okay, so T-Bird isn't exactly a Speccy game of Spielbergian proportions, but the weird thing is it isn't actually all that crap. No, it's quite good - pretty simple, and pretty addictive. It's a fly-into-the-screen jobby (a bit like Afterburner but with a puny spaceship instead), shooting loads of waves of unfeasibly large aliens and dodging large pillars and things while you're at it. Oh, and you can pick up icons for extra add-on weapons as well (better firepower, shields etc). The graphics are minimal, although they are reasonably varied and fast, but the best bit is the playability - there's loads. It's sooo simple you'll be craving for just one more go. Totally brilliant. Buy buy buy!

Label: Mastertronic
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

In the thirtieth century no-one walks to work - that would be a bit diff because everyone works on the planet Pluto in the golgafrinch factories. You need something with a bit more OOMPH to get to work - something like a Foourd T-Bird, ca-able of 0-600,000 in 5.6 seconds and equipped with all the weaponry you need to fight off the traffic wardens and space pirates along the way.

All this scene-setting is a thinly-veiled excuse for yet another multi-level alien shoot-'em up, but let's be generous, at least it's a decent one.

Viewed in that sort of forward-scrolling method normally reserved for motor-racing games, T-Bird sees you taking a wrong turn on your test drive and heading into a seething wasteland of space aliens. The two-level background scrolls cleanly, with monochrome pillars, space statues and other obstacles moving towards you smoothly and convincingly.

Your ship is free to move all around the screen, and this too is fast and smooth. The baddies, which include saucers, TIE fighters, space jellyfish and unidentifiable blobs, come at you in set patterns, dancing backwards and forwards and around the screen until you blow them to bits.

You can do this in two ways; with your standard zapper or with a smart missile (just hold down the fire button and everything on the screen explodes). You have only five smart missiles to play with, but you can pick up more sexy devices by destroying a whole wave of aliens and picking up the token which appears. Bonuses include a roving sight, sideways-firing missiles, extra lives, extra missiles and so on.

Between each wave of aliens there's a meteor shower, and at the end of each level the usual Guardian - the first is a huge octopoid thingy, and to be honest this is so scarey that I was surprised to see it in a budget game! To make it even scarier, you can't use your smart missiles against these big mothers.

Fortunately, your ship is supplied with an anti-collision shield, but this has a limited power supply which is drained by each impact, so in the end you're going to be a write-off one way or another.

You aren't going to faint with surprise or amazement at T-Bird, but you won't regret parting with your measly £2.99 either, take it for a spin.