Haven't I seen this somewhere before?

Producer: Image Works
Precious Rocks: £9.99 cass, £14.99 disk
Author: Teque

Help! I'm trapped in a time warp, doctor! Every time I load up my computer, games like Break Out, Pac-Man and now Asteroids appear.

Don't worry about it, there is a cure. Buy a review magazine like CRASH and carry it everywhere - this will warn you when you're about to purchase something which could give you severe déjà vu. Now, here's an example, just read this...

Blasteroids may be the very latest coin-op conversion, but is basically Asteroids with knobs on. In this case the knobs are a two player mode and a host of glitzy gimmicks, actual gameplay isn't too bad though.

When the game begins there's a choice of four different warps of varying difficulty. Warps contain several galaxies, each comprising nine or sixteen sectors. Each sector is predictably chock-a-block with asteroids, which must be cleared to go on to the next sector. Most asteroids split into smaller fragments as they're shot, others are indestructible but freeze when shot, and some asteroids even chase you. The most welcome asteroids are purple, as they contain energy pods to boost your power.

Also to be looked out for are the pods released by the destruction of alien ships. There are eight temporary add-ons including double shot Blasters, turbocharger Ripstars, energy pod attracting Crystal Magnets, extra fuel capacity and so on.

Permanent blasting power is provided by a very clever ship which can transform into the Speeder (fast), Fighter (heavily armed) and Warrior (best armour). And in two player both ships can be docked to form a supership, one person manning the gun turret while the other panics at the flight controls.

Once a sector is completed, an exit portal appears to transport you to the Galactic Map. You can enter any adjacent sector and when all the sectors have been cleared it's time to take on Mukor, a giant green alien. Defeat him - by blasting away large wart-like (ugh!) growths on his sides-and its on to the next galaxy. On easy level there's just two galaxies, which are (surprise!) easily completed.

Once that easy level is completed are you going to be all fired up to blasteroid your way through the other three? Well, maybe-the old left/right rotate, forward for thrust, control system is still as awkward as ever, adding to playability, and graphics are generally good. The problem is that the Galaxy Map only gives a relatively shallow chance to plan strategy, and lacking any great depth you might not return to it that often. Nevertheless if you want a simple blast-'em-up, with awkward controls and lots and lots of asteroids, look no further.

MARK [72%]

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: well-defined ships, but plenty of colour clash
Sound: good 128K title tune, fair ingame blasting effects
Options: definable keys. Two player mode. Four warps of varying difficulty

Turbocharged asteroids! Yes, the old favourite makes a souped-up comeback. You'll be glad to know that its original rock-blasting playability has been retained. But the range of extra features adds even more fun. One player can start off playing solo, and then if a friend arrives he can join in - good idea. Then there are the many add-ons to collect for your ship as well as a variety of asteroids and enemy ships. But the most interesting feature is the ability to change ship-size. As each size has both advantages and disadvantages, simple strategy is added to the arcade action. Unfortunately, clearing sector after sector eventually gets repetitive. The inclusion of four skill levels marginally improves lastability, but ten quid is a lot to pay for a few hours of fun.
PHIL [73%]

Image Works
£9.99/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

There really isn't much that's new under the sun. Some of the most playable games tend to be those that've been around the longest: the Breakout/Arkanoid/Batty imitators for instance, or, as here, the Asteroids clones. Blasteroids was a recent arcade reworking of that classic coin op, and while arcade standards have come far enough to make a revamp arguably worthwhile, the same cannot really be said for the Speccy. In other words there is precious little real difference between this new Spectrum version of Blasteroids and the antique conversion of the original Asteroids by a company that has long since slipped down the software dumper - except that Blasteroids will be available in the shops when you walk down there tomorrow and Asteroids hasn't been seen in years. Ah well, such is progress.

I'll assume you haven't been caught in a space warp yourself the last few years and know roughly how the game works. Oh, you don't? Well, okay. Basically you control a little space ship stuck in the middle of an asteroid field and you have to blast your way out. Every rock you shatter breaks into smaller lumps, each of which you have to pick off or else they'll wallop your ship and sap your energy. The great thing about both games is the way the space ship behaves. Like a real one, each action has an equal and opposite reaction so that any ill judged use of the thrusters can quite easily send you spinning out of control, bouncing off asteroids and the like and losing energy like crazy. To recover you have to spin your craft around so that the tail faces the way you're going and use the engines to slow down again - tricky, since the screen is so crowded you'll soon hit a trillion aliens and rocks and things and be bouncing around like a pinball.

What Blasteroids basically does is add a number of gimmicks to this format. These include a choice of spacecraft which you can switch between at any time (a fast one, an armoured one and a heavily armed one), purple asteroids that reveal power ups when you shoot them and alien ships that donate various temporary weapons and powers, including shields, a cloaking device and double blasters.

Add to these power leeches that home in on you to sap your energy, seeker asteroids that fly towards you at high speed when shot, four levels of difficulty which each consist of numerous sectors to blast through, space warps, a galactic map and a giant alien named Mukor and you'll realise they've added all sorts of stuff to spice up a game that was already immensely addictive and playable, if lacking in variety.

One thing you can say for it, and that's that it's very good for the ego! The easy level allows you to warp through numerous sectors without much danger (assuming a degree of competance), up to and past a first confrontation with Mukor. Other galaxys are much trickier.

In some ways I feel a bit unfair having a go at this really. Blasteroids is obviously a perfectly fine and competent version of a game that I've been familiar with for donkey's years. I've played it in arcades in Filey (it all comes out now, eh?) on an ancient PET, in 16 bit variations and it's always fun, even if it doesn't hold the interest in quite the way that Arkanoid clones do.

With this version my only real criticisms would be that the screen is too small, your ship is rather large, and you find yourself whizzing off one side and back on the other at a disconcerting rate. If ever space could be said to be claustrophobic, it's here.

What I'd tend to have to end up saying is that if you've not played one of these games before you'll have a ball. If you have, you may find yourself rather 'so what?' about it all, as I did.

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO SHOOT-'EM-UPS PART 1

Where'd we all be without shoot-'em-ups, eh, Spec-chums? Well, we'd all have much smaller games collections, that's for sure! Join MATT BIELBY for an epic blast through nearly a decade of firepowered Spec-fun...

Blimey! The complete guide to shoot-'em-ups, eh? A bit of a mammoth task you might be thinking (and you'd be blooming right! It's taken me absolutely ages!). It's so blinking gigantic in fact that we've had to split it in two to save the whole ish from being packed to the gills with ancient shooty-shooty games and very little else!

So how's it all going to work? Well, this issue we spotlight those hundreds of games where you control a little spaceship, aeroplane or what have you, while next time round we'll be wibbling on for ages about those blasters where you command a man, creature or robot - things like Operation Wolf, Gryzor, Robocop (the list is endless, I'm sorry to say). Yes, I know it's a bit of an arbitrary way to divide the whole subject up in two, but it's the best I could come up.

Anyway, if you 're all ready, let's arm the missiles, oil the cannons, buckle our seatbelts and go kick some alien ass! (Or something.)

SO WHAT EXACTLY MAKES A SHOOT-'EM-UP A SHOOT-'EM-UP?

Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's a game where simple reaction times count for (almost) everything, and the actual shooting of various baddies constitutes the major part of the gameplay. It's just about the oldest form of computer game going (Space Invaders was pure shoot-'em-up, for instance), short of mad Victorian chappies crouching down inside big wooden cabinets and pretending to be chess machines. It's one of the most enduring forms too - hardly an issue of YS goes by when we don't review at least a couple of newies, and it's the rare arcade-style game (sports sims and puzzlers excepted) that doesn't include at least a small shoot-'em-up element in there somewhere as part of the gameplay.

But back to the case in hand. What we're talking about here are the pure shoot-'em-ups - games where the wiping out of waves of aliens or other baddies is everything (though let's be fair, the violence in most of these is very abstract and minimal). They easily divide into four major types, depending on how you view the action. And you can read all about them over the page.

THE FIRST EVER SHOOT-'EM-UP

Goodness knows - Space Invaders is the obvious answer, but most of the other early arcade games were shoot-'em-ups too - Defender, Asteroids, Galaxian and the rest. To find out what made it onto the Speccy first, well, we'll have to look back in the vaults and see what we come up with, shan't we?

Right, here we are with the very first issue of Your Spectrum (later to evolve into Your Sinclair), cover date January 1984. Flick to the review section and we have two Space invaders-type games, both from long-forgotten Anirog Software - Galactic Abductor and Missile Defence. The second issue (Feb 84. believe it or not) brings us such delights as Xark (Contrast Software), a Defender-type game and Alien Swoop (a Galaxians rip-off), while in issue three had Bug Byte's Cavern Fighter (a tunnel-based jobbie, like an early version of R-Type).

Hmm. Let's go back a bit further, shall we? All the early computer games mags were listings based (ie had lots of crap Basic games printed out line by line over oodles of pages, as if Program Pitstop had run rampant over the whole mag!) so we might find something in there. Believe it or not find something in there. Believe it or not, I have the very first issue of the very first computer games mag in the country sitting right here on my desk, cover-dated November 1981. There's only one Sinclair game in here (for a ZX80 or 81 - a Speccy forerunner - and taking up a whole 2K!). It's called City Bomb, and it's a sort of shoot-'em-up. Apparently you're in a plane at the top of the screen and have to bomb the city beneath you, flattening out a landing strip so you can put down safely. Thrilling stuff, eh? As for commercially available stuff, it's all lost a bit too far back in the mists of time to be sure. Still, shoot-'em-ups started emerging for the Speccy pretty soon after the machine came out, certainly by the end of '82. Throughout 83 people like Quicksilva and Bug Byte were churning out Space Invaders, Asteroids and Scramble clones advertised as 'being in 100% machine code and in colour' too, so perhaps it was one of those. Exciting stuff, eh?

RATINGS

In the great YS Guide To... tradition, for a one-off-only special occasion we've adapted our normal rating system to accommodate the shoot-'em-up theme. Here's how they work...

Alien-Death-Scum-From-Hell Factor
Are there oodles of inventive, nasty and extremely difficult-to-kill baddies all over the place (including the biggest, meanest muthas ever at the end of each level) or do you end up fighting a fleet of Trebor Mints?

Shopability
Are there oodles and oodles of well-thought-out and spectacular weapons available to pick up and use, or do you have to make do with the same crap little peashooter throughout the game?

Copycat Factor
Unusually, the lower the score the better here. Basically, is this exactly the same as every other shoot-'em-up ever (in which case it'll get a high score for being chronically unoriginal) or does it have something innovative and special about it to set it apart from the crowd?

Visibility Factor
Does everything make a degree of sense in Speccyvision, or is it all a jumbled mass of pixels, with bullets, missiles and even little spaceships winking in and out of view willy-nilly?

Blasteroids
Image Works

This is the most recent Asteroids clone (that I can think of at least) and retains exactly the same gameplay as the original (more or less), just spiffed up a little with a couple of clever bits and pieces. To be honest there's precious little difference between this and the original, but since you can probably get hold of this one a lot easier it's this we'll talk about.

So how's it all work? Well, simple. You control a little spaceship caught in the middle of an asteroid field and you have blast your way out. Every rock you hit shatters into smaller ones which have to be picked off until they've all gone, while at the same time you've got to wiggle your ship around to avoid the flying fragments.

Now what makes it really interesting is the controls - the screen wraps round on all four sides, so whatever disappears off the top reappears at the bottom, and whatever slips off the left will soon be slipping on again at the right. Your little ship works as a real one would too, ie each action has an equal and opposite reaction, so you have to make your way around by pointing your craft in the right direction and firing your engines, then changing direction or stopping by twiddling your ship round its central axis and firing in the other direction, counteracting the forward motion. Complicated stuff!

Special additions to this basic formula include 1989 graphics, a choice of three ships (with different speed and shields), aliens, giant end-of-level nasties and collectable goodies such as power-ups and a cloaking device. There are loadsa levels to get through too. All in all then a bit of a corker, even if it had all been seen a good ten years ago.

Label: Image Works
Author: Teque
Price: £9.99 cassette, £14.99 disk
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Asteroids has to be one of the best, yet simplest games ever devised. If you don't know it, which I find pretty hard to believe, Asteroids had you as the pilot of a small triangular craft whose mission it was to destroy groups of large asteroids by shooting them repeatedly. As they were hit, they would split into two or three smaller pieces of rock. These smaller pieces would have to be hit and made even smaller until they ceased to exist.

As I loaded Blasteroids (© T. Dillon Reviews inc. Registered trade mark, all rights reserved) I realised exactly what Image Works' coin-op conversion is. Asteroids revamped. With just a small alteration or two.

Firstly, and the most obvious, is that the fast, smooth vector graphics have been replaced with slow, jerky sprites. All the asteroids now look like asteroids, rolling about the cosmos randomly. The backdrop has changed too. Instead of a bland black background, you now get nicely digitised views of space.

Probably the thing that has changed the most is the ship itself. Rather than one small triangle, you now have a transformable craft. It can change its size to suit its predicament. You have a choice of small, nippy craft that is very manoeuvrable, but has the lowest shield rating. Then there's the large lumbering monster that's almost invincible. The third is somewhere between the two.

So, what do you actually have to do? A large area of space has been taken over by Mukor, between 9 and 16 sectors depending on the difficulty level. You have to win back all the sectors by destroying all the asteroids in each. Between each sector is a map on which you can see which sectors you've cleared, as well as choosing which one to go to next. When you've cleared all the sectors, you get to fight Mukor himself, a large lumbering beast with more firepower than Tim coughing whilst eating a dry Cream Cracker.

In each sector, there are about five large monsters. One of these is coloured blue. As you break down the asteroids, one piece remains blue. When this piece is destroyed, it throws out an energy capsule. Collect this and it replenishes your energy back to maximum. Collision with an asteroid or practically anything else lowers your shield energy, at different rates depending on which ship mode you're in.

Alien spaceships also fly around the areas. Destroying these results in a goodie being dropped, either a two-way firing gun, or an extra shield. The one extra change? You can play one or two-player simultaneously. As usual, two player is much more fun.

Blasteroids is a very accurate conversion of an easily convertible coin-op with one major fault. It just doesn't have the fast paced action of the coin-op, and slow, sticky gameplay kills dead the quickness of reaction and speed of eye-to-hand co-ordination needed in a good arcade blast.

Rather than being a frantic, joystick wrenching blast, Blasteroids falls more into the category of a leisurely stroll, where the player makes occasionally almost subliminal move towards the computer.

Breaking rocks in the Imageworks.

Nostalgic memories of things past can often be shattered by someone trying to re-release or reinterpret them. Many a record, and many a film, has been ruined this way. Is the same true of computer games? The arcade reworking of Asteroids certainly kept players happy, so will the computer versions live up to the reputation of their grandparent?

The aim is to battle through a series of sectors to a final confrontation with a large alien named Mukor. The sectors are arranged in a grid of nine or sixteen squares to represent a galaxy, and each sector takes the form of a single wraparound screen. The asteroids in each sector must be destroyed before access can be gained to another one. Clear the whole grid and battle with Mukor ensues.

The craft you control can be transformed into any of three ships: Speeder, fast but vulnerable: Fighter, heaviest firepower: Warrior, heaviest armour but with slow firing and movement. Movement is achieved by spinning left or right and applying thrust. The basic weapon is a forward firing gun. The ship can be transformed at any time, and the Warrior and Speeder can be docked in two-player mode to provide a ship with greater protection and power. One player controls the movement, the other blasts away as the gun turret.

As well as quarry-loads of rocks to blast, including red ones that release energy crystals and blue "popcorn" ones that take several hits to make them stop, there are other surprises like eggs that release leeches, seekers that home in and ships that shoot at you.

When an alien ship is destroyed it sometimes leaves a bonus capsule giving special powers: shields, double shots, stronger shots, extra fuel capacity, increased thrust, invisibility, a magnet to attract energy crystals, and a Ripstar capability that spins the ship around, loosing off volleys of bullets in all directions.

Mukor is a big blob with tentacles, each one of which needs multiple shots to destroy it. If he is destroyed another galaxy can be entered. Blasteroids is a very entertaining game with lots of interesting features but in the long run the sectors and galaxies are all very similar and the gameplay becomes unexciting: even when there are two players blasting away.

Reviewer: Bob Wade

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Imminent
Amiga, £24.99dk, Out Now
Spec 128, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
C64/128, £9.99cs, £12.99dk, Imminent
IBM PC, No version planned

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 80/100
1 hour: 85/100
1 day: 75/100
1 week: 60/100
1 month: 25/100
1 year: 10/100

SUPPLIER: Image Works
PRICE: Spec/Ams/C64/MSX £9.99 cass, C64 £12.99 disk, Spec/Ams/MSX £14.99 disk, ST/Amiga £19.99

Blasteroid's roots go all the way back to 1979 to a video game called, surprisingly enough, Asteroids. It was actually quite innovative for the time, taking the left/right/thrust/fire/hyperspace controls of the earlier vector graphic game Space Wars and putting the player in the middle of an asteroid storm. The objective was simple: blast the rocks and occasional space ship (known affectionately as "eggies" because of their shape) and survive.

The 1988 version (the machine appear last year) follows a similar concept, but adds nearly a decade's worth of new technology to breathe new life into the aging format.

One of the major changes is the addition of a one or two-player option, allowing a team of prospective rock wreckers to battle together. The rocks in question are colourful bits of debris that break down under fire twice, each part getting smaller until it's tiny enough to vaporise.

Destroying rocks is the key issue, because if one strikes the ship its shield, represented at the top of the screen by a diminishing bar, shrinks towards a fatal zero. The player(s) start with three credits, effectively giving three lives.

The ships are the apex in space boulder demolition hardware and are capable of transforming into three different sizes. Small ships are very maneovrable, but suffer from low shield and firepower. Medium ships have heavy firepower, but medium speed and shields, while large ships are slow and have medium firepower, but are well-shielded.

In two-player mode the two ships can join together - one player controls the large and maneovrable main ship while the other takes control of a gun turret at the top. It's an unusual feature, and one which I found very enjoyable (as well as argument-inducing if you've got an idiot in control of the main ship!)

At the start of a game one of four difficulty levels is chosen: normal, medium, hard or expert. Bonus points are given if the player elects to start on a higher level. The action then begins with the ships being placed in the first asteroid storm, and the blasting starts.

There are several different kinds of rocks. Grey ones simply vaporise when shot, while red ones drop glowing energy crystals which are picked up to replenish shield levels. Later on blue popcorn asteroids appear and drift around the screen until they're shot four times, whereupon the stop and form an unmovable obstacle. The final asteroid type is a geodesic, which homes in on the ship when shot, forcing the player to take evasive action and blast it again and destroy it before it hits home.

When a screen is cleared of rocks, an exit portal appears, which the ships fly into to take them to the main menu where another screen is selected.

As the players progress further into the game, alien space ships enter the fray and attempt to shoot down the ships, or simply crash into them and damage their shields. Fortunately they can be shot, and sometimes a power-up item is dropped, which can be collected to add an extra feature to the ship. Such goodies include extra shield energy capacity extra shield energy capacity, double shot power, magnets (which attract energy crystals), shields (which give the ship extra protection), extra hit power, speed-up, ripstar (a sort of smart bomb) and cloak.

Occasionally space leeches are discovered. These horrors reside in eggs and are released when the shell is shot, whereupon they head directly for the ship and attempt to attach themselves to the outer hull and suck its shield energy dry. Naturally, the onus is on blasting them before they get close.

When 16 screens are cleared, Mucor appears. He's a giant green alien who marauds around the screen, shooting out tiny aliens from his nodules and trying his utmost to bash the ships, which diminishes shields considerably. The only way to destroy him is by blasting his nodules, which requires repeated and accurate fire. When he's destroyed it's off to a tougher set of asteroid fields populated by an even more aggressive group of aliens.

Being a great fan of the coin-op. I've been eagerly awaiting this for some time, and I'm glad to say the wait has been worth it. The ST version is brilliant, and fully captures the spirit and frantic action of the original machine. All the features of the coin-op have been incorporated, and I mean ALL of them, and the game plays in exactly the same way, so arcade players can use all of their favourite tactics.

The only disappointments are the gaudy backdrops (the sprites are excellent, though) and the mediocre sound. But I suppose you can't have everything. Still, the gameplay is adrenalin pumping, and Blasteroids is easily the best ST shoot 'em up to date.

Spectrum owners are also in for treat. That too has all the features of the original, and even if the gameplay is a little on the slow side, it's still very playable, especially in two-player mode.

Blasteroids is superb on both the ST and Spectrum - hopefully future Image Works arcade conversions will be of similar high quality.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Amiga: £24.99
Atari ST: £19.99

IS THE ASTEROIDS IDEA JUST TOO OLD?

Atari have been looking to their past successes for new coin-ops, and Blasteroids continues the pattern. As in Galaga '88 the gameplay might be crusty but you can't beat a bit of nostalgia.

Blasteroids has as mundane a plot as Asteroids. The green multi-tentacled alien Mukor won't come out to play until you've cleared each sector in a galaxy full of asteroids. Yes, this is where the Asteroids gameplay comes in as one or two spaceships take part in the mass slaughter of innocent hunks of rock. But these are no ordinary spaceships, they can transform at any time into any of three types of asteroid-killing ship each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

No revamp of a good old fashioned shoot-'em-up would be worth its salt without those obligatory little extras. Blasteroids is no different as certain asteroids reveal ship equipment, weapons and energy crystals when blown to kingdom come. The equipment to bolt onto your ship includes speed boosters, extra firepower, a larger fuel capacity and the Ripstar, a gem of a weapon causing your ship to spin wildly launching bullets all over the place.

For two players willing to cooperate, the two ships can be combined with one player steering the combination craft, the other unleashing the death and destruction.

On the enemy front it's not just dumb spinning asteroids. There are five classes of rock spinning through space including homing rocks, rocks with wriggly, energy-draining space leeches inside and patrolling spaceships.

Eradicate all space junk from a sector and its off to the map screen to warp to the next. Once defeated Mukor retreats but soon reappears in the next of the several galaxies per level.

Good as this conversion might be it is still based on a very dull original idea. The gameplay is all there (if a little easier than the first time round) and the two player option is great fun to use. Together with four skill levels to provide constant variation and ever-tricky inertia to master it isn't Asteroids but (and it's a big but) it's an unsophisticated and ultimately limited game.