Cybernoid II: The Revenge

Your Sinclair

Alien-Death-Scum-From-Hell Factor 82%

Shopability 86%

Copycat Factor 50%

Visibility Factor 91%

Overall 92%

Matt Bielby 92%

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? Cybernoid II Hewson This flip-screen shoot-'em-up and its very similar (but slightly souped-up) sequel are notable in a number of ways. For a start there's the colour - absolutely loads of it littered about, especially when programmer Raf Cecco's famous explodey bits come into play. Then there's the gameplay - the first few screens aren't too tricky, but you soon find yourself coming across some of the most ludicrously packed and complicated problems ever - it's often a real triumph to get half way across a screen, let alone onto the next one! Neat touches like the use of gravity (some bullets drop in a little arc as opposed to zooming on in a straight line, and your ship squats firmly on the ground if you don't tell it otherwise) add to the infuriating fun. Raf's been quite generous in one way though - if you find you're having really insurmountable problems with any one obstacle you can always sacrifice a ship to get past it with the few seconds of invulnerability that come with each new one (I wouldn't recommend you try this tactic too often though!). A couple of essential purchases.

Yup, we've all been down here before, haven't we, Spec-chums? Blast that mutha away!

EVERY SHOOT-'EM-UP EVER Ha! You've got to be joking - I started working on it and got up to 150 names - and I was only half way through the poxy thing! Forget it!

GIANT ALIEN MUTHAS FROM HELL A few good end-of-level baddies can make a shoot-'em-up, a lack of them break one. Let's look at a few typical monsters, shall we? Dominator: Impressive pink mouth affair firmly in the R-Type mould, and nicely animated too - the eyes blink and teeth move. Unfortunately the rest of the game didn't live up to it. Mr Heli: A giant eye thing with lobster claws - not bad, the grey and yellow graphics don't help it to stand out as much as they might, do they? Silkworm: This is the other way to do it - not a giant fixed mass (like the other two) but a moving baddy in the vein of stuff you've already met on that level, but bigger. This super chopper is delightfully guppy-like.

HOW TO DESIGN A SPACESHIP We cant really express how important a good central sprite can be - after all, other sprites may come and go, but you're looking at this one the entire time! Halaga: Hmm. Your basic Space Invaders/Galaxians thing - not too impressive, is it? Sidearms: Anyone able to tell me what's meant to be going on here? It just looks like a bit of a mess to me! Answers on a postcard please. Dark Fusion: A-ha! Now this is more like it - simple, clean design, easy to see but not too distracting. It's the biz.

SHORTS Blimey! Space doesn't go very far when you've got a subject as big as this, eh? So, dotted across the next four pages, we've squeezed some mini (mini) reviews into snazzy white blobs (just like this) - not wham-bam classics, but all good representatives of a type…

SO, YOU WANNA WRITE A SHOOT-'EM-UP? Would you believe it's not as hard as it looks? (Actually, the way loads of people seem to write shoot-'em-ups it doesn't actually look all that hard anyway!) Here are a few of your central ingredients... The Main Spaceship A little square box thing with another square box on the front will do fine here - nice and simple and to the point. Alternatively you could go the whole hog and stick as many spikey bits as possible all over it so the sprite looks 'interesting' from all angles. Enemy Spaceships Nothing wrong with a whole squadron of polo mints zooming through space towards you - after all, it's the cunningness of the attack formations that counts! The Name Something gun-like sounds good and hard (say Side Arms or Armalyte) though anything vaguely aggressive-sounding will do (Eliminator, Dominator, Xecutor, H.A.T.E). If you're desperate you can always go the pseudo-scientific route (R-type, P47, Ultima Ratio), opt for an animal name (Salamander, Silkworm) or go for that old standard, the meaningless, vaguely futuristic-sounding word (Triaxos, Xeno, Zynaps, Xarax, Sanxion, Uridium, Xevious). Lots of 'Z's and 'X's are good. Background Nice and complicated is fine - let your imagination go wild. Don't worry about bullets (or even smaller enemy squadrons) getting lost amongst the mass of background detail - you can always pass it off as 'challenging gameplay'. Collision Detection Don't make it too easy for them! It's perfectly all right if any alien coming within inches of the player kills him dead, while he needs to blast baddies six times for any effect to be felt Again, it's all in the cause of challenging gameplay!

THE 'INTO-THE-SCREEN' JOBBIE Although occasionally attempted with reasonable success by budgeteers like CodeMasters, these often constitute a less than satisfying experience. All too often someone responsible for coin-op licence acquisition will pick out an arcade favourite with a giant hydraulic cabinet - say an Afterburner or Thunder blade - with little thought as to how it's going to translate to the home computer. (Not very well, usually.) Thus most 'into-the-screen' shoot-'em-ups are technically impressive and rather brave attempts to reproduce the thrills and spills of the original, but almost inevitably doomed to failure. Robbed of 3D, moving cabinets, and whizzo graphics, the limitations built into the game become abundantly clear - there's little real feeling of speed (difficult enough to create even with a rolling road as reference point, let alone without one), oodles of almost identical levels and very little to actually do. Boring. Videodrome, here we come - it's 'into the screen' time with F-16 Fighting Falcon.

THE FLIP-SCREEN Not all that common, but these can work very well indeed - check out Raf Cecco's Cybernoid duo, for instance. The thing seems to be that if you dispense with trying to write decent scrolling routines (since the background doesn't move at all - you simply progress across the screen until you get to the far end, when a new one flashes up with your little ship in its new starting position) you can spend a lot more time making everything else very pretty and colourful and inventive. Thus flip-screen games have some of the best, clearest, most colourful graphics ever seen on the Speccy. On the minus side however there's the disconcerting, disorientating bit where your ship flickers off the right hand side of the screen, only to reappear on the far left of the next one. But they can be incredibly addictive (it's always a temptation to try for 'just one more' screen to see what it looks like) and, in the case of the Cecco games at least, can strike a fine balance between mindless blasting and working out the best route past each new obstacle. They're still pure shoot-'em-ups, but slightly more cerebral ones. Flip screen a la NOMAD - no place to run to, no place to hide. (It's a bit like playing Murder In The Dark really.)

THE HORIZONTAL SCROLLER This is the other main option, and usually a much more sensible way to go about things. Not only is the screen the right shape, but you can have a very complicated and pretty bottom and/or top bit to it (the ground, or the edges of a tunnel, say), while leaving the bulk of the play area relatively free from obstructions. Most the great shoot-'em-ups (but by no means all) are built like this, including the Your Sinclair all-time fave raves like Uridium and R-Type. Game over, man! (Well, Game Over II to be precise.)

VERTICAL SCROLLERS One obvious option for a shoot-'em-up, and one that's used all over the place, is the vertical scroller. This is where the action is viewed from a God-like perspective above it all, looking down on everything from a distance. The action scrolls up (or on the very odd occasion down) the screen. This has some advantages - it's easy to lay out complicated attack formations and the little spaceships can he the simplest blobby shapes and still function quite well but it can suffer from some rather major flaws too. The first is that the shape of your average TV or monitor is all wrong. Think about it - you're trying to present portrait-shaped action (taller than it is long) on a landscape-shaped screen (wider than it is tall). In a coin-op, which is where 85% of vertical scrollers originate, there's no real problem with this because you can easily build a cabinet with a tall thin screen to contain the action, but in Speccyvision the programmers have to waste large portions of the side of the potential play area to reproduce it Subsequently, all the sprites have to be fairly small to fit in, and on most TVs become next to invisible. You've effectively castrated the game before you've even started. There's one other major problem too - the background. Since most scrolling Speccy games have to be largely monochrome, any sort of backdrop (say a forest which you're flying over) can cause real problems. You'll be safe (but probably rather bored) if the programmer opts for a simple black starfield over which all the sprites will show up well, but anything beyond that courts disaster. All too often overzealous background artists, small sprites, even smaller bullets and the sort of slightly crappy TVs most of us use with our Speccies conspire to render your brand new vertical scroller virtually unplayable. Don't think I've got a total downer on them though - despite all the limitations some of the real classics use this design. Xenon, anybody? Clear backdrops, that's what vertical scrollers need. (So Gemini Wing's a sorry loser.)

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Graphics 8/10

Audio 6/10

IQ Factor 2/10

Fun Factor 7/10

Ace Rating 672/1000

Bob Wade 672/1000

Pirate pranging with Hewson. Those pirates are back again and stealing Federation cargo, so naturally you've been delegated to slap a few wrists, pop a few heads and get it all back again. The mission is not dissimilar from the original game, although additional features have been added to try to jazz it up. It's a flick screen cross between a shoot-em-up and an arcade adventure, with the emphasis firmly on the blasting. Each screen presents a bunch of nasty aliens who have to be turned into ex-aliens or just avoided. The bad guys come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and behaviour patterns. On most screens they come in great numbers and you'll need all your skill and weapons to survive. The weapons have been beefed up, which is just as well with all those vicious aliens around. You're now armed with bombs, time bombs, shield, bouncing bombs, seeker, smart bombs and tracer. These can kill virtually all known aliens, dead, but are in short supply at the start. Extra killpower can be picked up along the way as ammunition, or extra weapons in the form of a backward firing gun and a large sphere that circles the ship. Despite the impressive firepower it's still an extremely difficult game to play. The odds are stacked against you and after dying once, losing weapons in the process, it's even harder to survive. This sort of manic gameplay appeals to many game freaks but there's not much originality and no concession to those wanting a less demanding task. Reviewer: Bob Wade RELEASE BOX Spec, £7.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now Amstrad, £9.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now C64/128, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Out Now 16-bit versions under development Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 68/100 1 hour: 90/100 1 day: 68/100 1 week: 55/100 1 month: 35/100 1 year: 10/100

Entering at the bottom left you are confronted by a screenful of alien killers.

AMSTRAD VERSION The best looking of the three, with the same testing gameplay. Graphics: 9/10 Audio: 6/10 IQ Factor: 2/10 Fun Factor: 7/10 Ace Rating: 672/1000 Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 68/100 1 hour: 90/100 1 day: 68/100 1 week: 55/100 1 month: 35/100 1 year: 10/100

C64 VERSION Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 68/100 1 hour: 90/100 1 day: 68/100 1 week: 55/100 1 month: 35/100 1 year: 10/100

SPECTRUM VERSION Graphics and sound up to the standard of the first game - and they're slick. Gameplay is just as addictive and frustrating.

Your SinclairYour Sinclair Megagame

Graphics 9/10

Playability 8/10

Value For Money 9/10

Addictiveness 9/10

Overall 9/10

Marcus Berkmann 9/10

Hewson £8.99 Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann Phewwwwwwwww ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatat, wheeeeeeeeeeeeee boom! Not that I'm a violent sort by nature, of course. GOT THAT? (Scrunch!) Good. But I do like a good shoot 'em up. It lets me release my more... er... anti-social cravings I mean, hoooooooooooooooooooo blammmmo! If it weren't for a good shoot 'em up now and then, what would we all be doing? Pillaging and plundering and looting like Visgoths, probably. Perpetrating untold acts of unimaginable cruelty and violence certainly. Or at least watcvhing Neighbours. But society will be a much safer place with Cybernoid II around. This is a really cracking shoot 'em up. Those poor saps who never saw the original Cybernoid (which was to Exolon roughly as a BMW is to a rollerskate) will be saying, "Huh! The old boffer's always saying that! Every game's the bst thing since the toasted tea cake. He's really gone over the top this time. Let's go and buy Ninja Ghostbusters -that's only £1.99" To which I say - PAH! Of course, by the time you read this, Cybernoid II will be number one in the charts. If you played the prequel, you'll know what to expect: the puzzle-solving megablast that was Cybernoid, but refined further, made harder and with neater graphics than you'll find this side of the 16-bit. You'll need speed of reaction, speed of thought and nimbler fingers than Paul Daniels. Most readers will of course know this already, as they'll have bought the October ish, read the preview and played the playable demo that appeared on the front cover. (So what are you doing reading this review then? Go on clear off!) But for the few who have missed out and are wondering as ever, what the fuss is all about, here are the wizard extra features that Cybernoid II has in store, with subtitles for the hard of hearing (Eh? Ed). First your Cyberniod super-spanky blaster ship has a few useful new weapon systems, some of which come ready fitted (you access them by pressing 1 to 5) and others of which you'll pick up along the way. Edge-following bombs are not fans of U2 (as far as I know, that is) but hug the terrain before blowing up whatever's at the other end of the scree. Smart bombs you'll be familiar with from countless other games, and time bombs are even more useful: plant them next to the nasty, leg it and watch from afar as it disintegrates with a wazzy new Defender-type blast. Your aliens too are a mite more advanced, having learnt perhaps from their mistakes the last time you tangled with them. There are baiter aliens which appear when you have been faffing around on screen far too long. There are armoured emplacements which can only be destroyed when open, and when destroyed suddenly spit out more aliens. Alien waves, before completely predicatble, now alternate on the same screen - nasty, eh? And so on. So what you're getting, in the end, is a souped-up, all-new-version of the bestest blaster we've seen on the beermat this year. If you went for Cybernoid Un, as the French would say, Deux will be music to your ears. If you didn't, it'll be Shakin Steven's Greatest Hits. The choice, mon ami, c'est a toi!

As you can see, the final version of C II isn't exactly the same as the demo you played (I think the bits we saw appear later on). So here is screen three, which presents a particularly tricky problem for those of us who find these perfect timing challenges something of a headache. The fact that it's horizontal makes it even harder. On with the shield, methinks...

That's about the only place you can hide, seems to me. Time for a Bounce, I'd say, and watch out for a concealed baller within the frog-faced thing on the right. (There isn't one in there, but watch out for it anyway.)

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

The Games Machine

Overall 85%

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.95, Diskette: £12.99 Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99 SON OF A CYBERNOID The space pirates are back! And they're not just annoyed, their Cybernoid! Raffaele Cecco's first big hit, the original Cybernoid, was programmed in conjunction with Nick Jones and has only recently been converted to 16-bit formats (see the Amiga version update in this issue). With another pirate complex to destroy and updated weaponry to deploy, the sequel is upon us. In times past, evil mercenaries pillaged every defenceless settlement they could find, gathering riches and destroying anything in their path. If this was not dastardly enough, their malicious, avaricious gaze fell on the storage depots of the Galactic Federation. These held the latest developments in weapon technology, precious jewels, and rare minerals Their defence resources drained, the Federation asked you to pilot your faithful techno craft, Cybernoid and recover the supplies. The task was not an easy one, the pirates built a huge complex into their planet, its maze-like cavern network defended by strategically positioned laser cannons and marauding pirate ships. Fortunately your piloting skills and Cybernoid weaponry won the day and you made it through the entire base, leaving the pirates in wild disarray and at a fraction of their previous numbers. MAN UNITED AGAINST THE ARSENAL Time is a healer of all wounds, unfortunately including those of the enemy. They have recruited various evil-doers from all over the galaxy and built up their army to its previous numbers. Returning to their thieving ways, they once more plunder the Galactic Federation's depots, and stored their ill-gained treasures in another Battlestar complex. Once more it is your job to retrieve the treasures and render the pirate forces helpless (not the most surprising news you've ever heard). The new hi-tech fortress is even more deadly than the original, but your Cybernoid ship has been redesigned, and incorporates a more extensive arsenal. A panel at the top of the screen displays information such as number of ships remaining, score, weapon currently in use (whether it be laser, bomb, missiles etc) and so on. Occasionally abandoned supplies can be collected to replenish your limited quantities of weapons. Cybernoid II is very similar to the original game. The screen layouts are different, and incorporate new gun emplacements and spitting heads, but no drastic changes have been made. Thankfully more and varied weapons are at your disposal - the difficulty has been noticeable increased from the tough-enough Cybernoid. With few variations from the original, this is more of a Cybernoid-Plus than a sequel, and as such owners of the original may be disappointed. However, if you are new to this game and its predecessor, or are hungry for more of the same, Cybernoid II offers plenty of shoot-'em-up arcade-adventure thrills.

The lone hero battles against all odds to thwart the dastardly space pirates.

Tougher than the original but still addictively playable, Cybernoid II makes a worthy sequel.

"With few variations from the original, this is more of a Cybernoid-Plus than a sequel"

COMMODORE 64/128 Overall: 87% As in the original, colour is cleverly used to produce some beautifully shaded graphics, the ship and screen borders are displayed in a very attractive blue. Other visual treats are the fearsome phlegm-spitting heads and the bloody decapitated eyeballs. The most difficult version of the two received, it is best suited to hardened arcade adventurers and Cybernoid afficionados.

OTHER FORMATS The Amstrad CPC version will soon be with us, priced at £9.99 on cassette and 14.99 on diskette. 16-bit versions are nearing completion.

Sinclair UserSinclair User Classic

Graphics 88%

Sound 79%

Playability 92%

Lastability 90%

Overall 92%

Chris Jenkins 92%

Label: Hewson Author: Rafaele Cecco Price: £7.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Attack of the sequel people! Cybernoid 2 is nothing more or less than a remix of the impressive flip-screen blaster Cybernoid, by Raffaele Cecco. If you were expecting something completely new and original, forget it; if you're happy with an even bigger and better Cybernoid, you're going to be in Bliss City Wyoming. Once again, you and your highly dangerous killing machine have been horribly offended by aliens who have stolen your luncheon vouchers or something equally insulting. You set out to massacre them regardless of your own personal safety, and along the way encounter numerous deathtraps, weapons systems and alien growths determined to blow you to bits. As before, the animation and colouring are immaculate, with very little attribute clash, even in the most spectacular explosions. The background design is similar to Part One, but now the organic bits are even more slimy and horrendous, and the mechanical bits more threatening and futuristic. The main differences lie in the weapon systems, which as before are discovered by destroying major enemy installations. You still have a limited number of smart bombs which will destroy everything on the screen, and shields which last for a short period and will see you through the most frightening hails of fire. You'll find, though, that the aliens have become tougher too, probably enraged by the last trouncing you gave them. New threats include guided missiles which drop from the roof, homing in on you with speed and accuracy; pod emplacements which explode into a hail of small projectiles; ramrods which crush you against the wall or ceiling; gravity traps which pull you to your inevitable doom; and horrible caterpillar-like aliens which follow you around the edges of the rooms, trying to squash you in the narrow corridors. Rather than the straightforward chamber-after-chamber approach of Cybernoid 1, the new game offers alternative exits from some chambers, so you don't have to play the rooms in the same order each time. There are also horizontal "lifts" which transfer you from one section to another. Your new super-dooper spaceship boasts an even sleeker, sexier design than the original, but you'll be pleased to hear that the old war-horse turns up as an additional weapon, a probe which follows you around guarding your back. Faultless arcade entertainment, then, not much in the way of originality but the state of the art in shoot-'em-ups.

HINTS AND TIPS SMART BOMBS Simply smash everything on the screen, except the wall crawlers. Use with discretion; you'll need them to get through some of the trickier screens. GUIDED MISSILES Seek and destroy large enemies, often helping you to find other weapons. EDGE FOLLOWING BOMBS Particularly useful against the otherwise indestructible wall. TIME BOMBS Leave them under major obstacles, stand well clear and wait for the bang. DUAL CYBERMACE Like the original cybermace, a spinning, smashing projective - except there are two of them.

Crash

Presentation 87%

Graphics 89%

Playability 87%

Addictive Qualities 85%

Overall 88%

Mark Caswell 90%

Nick Roberts 88%

Phil King 87%

Smelt nurdy aliens and blast their weapons into smoking piles Producer: Hewson Out of Pocket: £7.99 cass Author: Raffaele Cecco, graphics by Hugh Binns When Nick Roberts was told there was going to be a sequel to his favourite thing in life (after banana and mushroom pizzas), he was delighted. Now, hard-working Raf Cecco's Cybernoid II is here at last, but how does it measure up? Well, at first sight it's very similar to the original with similar pirate ships and backdrops. In fact, the status panel is identical to the one in Cybernoid. The 'fighting machine' itself appears slightly bulkier, ready for the highly dangerous mission awaiting it. As in the original, the Cybernoid craft explores a host of alien-inhabited screens, trying to recover as much treasure as possible by shooting pirate ships and collecting their cargoes. Apart from a lasergun, the Cybernoid is equipped with 7 extra weapons. One change from the original is the replacement of mines with exploding time bombs. However, the only difference here is that the time bombs are detonated after a few seconds rather than on contact with the enemy. But some extra features do exist, such as the positively huge gun emplacements and even more huge grotesque heads spitting bombs. There are also two maces (one in the form of a miniature Cybernoid) to collect instead of the prequel's one. Another addition is the inclusion of horizontal lifts as well as vertical ones. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that this is essentially just Cybernoid with different graphics - it's such a pity it's not different enough to be outstanding in its own right. Having said that, it retains the massive playability of its predecessor, and boasts some new catchy in-game music. Cybernoid II is a well-presented follow-up which derives rather too much from the classic original. PHIL 87% THE ESSENTIALS Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor Graphics: a slightly bulkier Cybernoid and some massive enemy installations; everything appears chunkier than in the original Cybernoid Sound: a catchy in-game 128K tune and atmospheric effects Options: defineable keys. Music can be turned off

The pirates are determined to stop Cameron getting to that end of level platform.

Which weapon can I use to get through this?

You've reached the end of the level, but have you collected enough treasure?

CYBERGESTIONS TOO If there's a large gun-type object on the screen throwing bullets at you, take cover behind a piece of border and use seekers on it. Get ready for the alien - it spurts out when it dies. You have to collect over 1,500 points of treasure, so if you find a screen that has no land guns and loads of aliens, fire like hell and collect all the points. To get past the horizontal moving circles it's best to drop down on them just as the first one goes by. Once you're in between, just move with them until you can get out the other side. The best weapons for enemy-filled screens are the bouncing bombs, so select them if you don't know what's on the next screen.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition