Previous Next

It's been quite a while since Jeff Minter produced a game, but he's back with a vengeance with Andes Attack, an updated version of his old Vic 20 game. Before you swoon away at the thought of a Vic 20 game on your Atari ST, let me tell you a little about it.

Rather than produce a 16-bit mega game with 50 zillion locations and filled-3D graphics, Minter has decided to go back to grassroots and produce a straightforward, fast arcade blast. The result is a Stargate/Defender clone.

The player patrols a two-way horizontally scrolling planet and defends his eight llamas from the marauding aliens. These horrors attempt to whisk away the llamas to the top of the screen, whereupon the alien mutates and chases after your ship. If a thieving alien is shot when he's carrying a llama, the llama drops to earth and can be caught and set back on terra firma for bonus points. It dies if it falls unchecked - and when all the llamas have either been killed or spirited away, the landscape explodes and the player enters hyperspace, which is filled with hordes of very aggressive aliens.

As well as an army of llama-grabbers to blow up, there are plenty of other aliens to keep you on your toes, each type with its own personality and attack patterns. The ship is equipped with smart bombs, invisi-shield (both limited) and there's a radar scanner at the top of the screen to give you advanced warning of oncoming hazards. You can also warp to higher levels by carrying more than four llamas through a warp gate.

The control method is brilliant, but takes a bit of getting used to. The mouse is used to guide the ship up and down, while the buttons are used to thrust and turn the ship around. Three keys on the keyboard are used for smart, fire and shield. It's rather daunting at first, but the controls "feel" superb.

Obvious comparisons will be made between this and Star Ray, and while Star Ray is graphically superior, it has nothing like the fast, frantic gameplay and superb playability of Andes Attack. The action is very colourful, noisy and non-stop, and I found myself getting a genuine adrenalin buzz when I played it - something a shoot-'em-up hasn't done for me for ages!

The on-screen presentation is excellent, with details of each alien, a training mode and a high-score table that automatically saves to disk. There's also a high-score competition.

Andes Attack is a raw and uncompromising shoot-'em-up that'll have you on the edge of your seat - an essential purchase for the maniacal blasting fan.