Zzap


Meganova: The Weapon
By Alternative
Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Zzap #58

Meganova: The Weapon

It's dodgy Spanish translation time again with the inlay for this Dinamic game. Apparently Philipus Sunset has nicked the Sprocket System from the Drowhar empire and, for reasons which are entirely unclear, he must enter the caves of Otnirebal! Needless to say, numerous Drowhar gigaships are in hot pursuit.

The game is presented by a FX Triple Load, which is unsurprisingly claimed to have three loads. Yet once the game has loaded, there's no more room on the tape, and side two is the same as side one. Strange, although only a masochist would want more of this.

The game begins with your ship at the centre of a rightward scrolling screen. Pressing fire sends out an impressive stream of rather large, squarish bullets which seem capable of dealing with anything. What's more, additional weapons can be picked up as well as a speed-up and extra lives. The graphics are a bit crude, especially the bullets, but they and the sound effects are all quite serviceable.

The problem lies with the enemy ships which come on in great numbers, all very fast, often from behind your ship and then move in the most unpredictable ways. Too often, fast reactions simply aren't good enough: moving out of the way of one ship often puts you right in front of a ship zooming in from the top of the screen. As a consequence the only way to succeed is to painstakingly plan your progress, watching what happens and deciding what route to follow. Then you must follow the exact same route each time you play, until you come to a new area requiring new tactics.

If you're a shoot-'em-up fanatic this may well be of some interest, but for must sane people this is an instructive lesson on how well most other, apparently simple shoot-'em-ups are programmed.