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I remember Astro Blaster in the arcades back in the early eighties and I also remember Astro Blaster on the ZX Spectrum by Quicksilva. Whilst it was a decent enough game, it was absolutely nothing like its arcade counterpart and I was extremely disappointed.

Fast forward nearly 40 years later to 2019 and a lovely person by the name of Matt Jackson has released a real arcade port version of Astro Blaster for his first ever game. I am extremely excited.

This is the version of Astro Blaster I wanted to see as a teenager. It's a nigh on perfect port for the Spectrum. The graphics are the same as the arcade version bar the differences in colour due to the Spectrum's colour limitations, but these differences are not that noticeable. The enemy attack patterns are exactly as I remember them from the arcade.

The game is unbelievably close to the arcade original. At every stage of the game the enemies look and move exactly as I remember them. Your ship looks the same in every detail, even down to the way your ship disintegrates when it's hit. The overheating lazer mechanic is in play and of course your fuel gauge too.

When meteor storms occur, the graphics are the same as the original and fuel pickups also occur, although they do seem to be a bit more frequent in this version. When the docking ship appears it looks exactly the same as the one in the arcades.

Even the sound FX are as close to the original arcade game audio as it possibly could be with the Speccy's AY chip. You can see it for yourself by playing the arcade original in an emulator such as MAME and then playing this. This port has it nailed. Right down to the little things like the game instructions, the intro screen and the high score entry mechanism.

The graphics are really impressive. The amount of research required to get them looking and moving just like the arcade original must have been a mammoth task, which I'm glad was attempted and completed. The audio is almost a carbon copy of the arcade version in the familiar AY style.

I pretty much liked everything about this game. Gameplay, graphics and sound are all on point in comparison to the original arcade game.

There wasn't anything I didn't like. To be honest, I'm still in a state of ecstasy.

A huge wave of nostalgia will flow through anyone who plays this and is aware of the arcade original. It's almost like having the cabinet in your own home. This is what the Quicksilva game of the same name released back in 1983 should have been. I quite enjoyed that game after the initial disappointment of it being nothing like the arcade version but this just blows it out of the water. It's difficult to believe that this is Matt Jackson's first game. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.