Asteroids

ZX Computing

Nick Pearce

THE ZX81 SOFT SELECTION Nick Pearce gives us his critical views on some of the latest ZX81 software. ASTEROIDS Mikro-Gen This is a fast moving arcade-type action game. The screen displays large variously shaped asteroids moving through space and endangering your ship. By rotating your ship and moving forwards, you try to avoid them, or shoot them with your lasers. When hit, an asteroid breaks into several smaller ones. There are also UFOs and space mines to contend with. You have three lives per game. Game speed is selectable in ten steps from slow to impossibly fast. Your score and the highest score recorded, are displayed at the end of each game. ZX Asteroids is good fun to play although the graphics are not particularly subtle. The action is generally good and the game is responsive at high speed. Control of your space craft takes a while to master, it keeps moving forwards indefinitely once the thrust key is pressed and the only way to stop is to rotate through 180 and thrust forward again. Not possessing a joystick, I had to use the ZX81 keyboard although a joystick option is included. It is a 16K game and is recorded both sides of the cassette. Romik Software, [redacted]. Mikro-Gen, [redacted]. Software Farm, [redacted]. Fawkes Computing, [redacted]

Sinclair User

ASTRAL OBSTACLE COURSE The massive asteroid chunks spinning across the screen are only some of the obstacles you will meet in your efforts to conquer ZX Asteroids from MikroGen. The asteroids, large hulking crustations, are supplemented by UFOs and space mines which appear often. The keyboard layout is slightly disconcerting. You use the '7' key to Start each round, '2' to rotate anti-clockwise, '4' to rotate clockwise, '8' to thrust your ship forward and the usual '0' to fire. Those keys are not easy to remember during the game and when the pressure is on a game could be lost if you have to fumble for the clockwise key and confuse it with another key. The game starts when you enter your level of difficulty, measured by the speed at which objects move around the screen. There are 10 levels of difficulty, marked by the keys from '0' to '1', where '0' is Slow and '1' is very fast. ZX-81 owners should beware because once bought and played, you will never be able to put it down. ZX Asteroids is produced by MikroGen, [redacted]. It costs £3.95.