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Jeff Minter decided to take a break from the Commodore 64 and do a game for the Atari (don't fear C64-owners he'll be back on the C64 for his next game!).

The game he chose to do was Attack Of The Mutant Camels, an early classic for the C64, now considerably enhanced both in visuals and sound.

The aim in AMC is to destroy the mutated neutronium-spitting camels as they try to invade Earth. Fearless flyer that you are, you must use a Defender-type scanner to locate and destroy them before Earth is overrun.

Your craft has nine shields, a shield being lost on contact with a camel or one of its bullets. The camels' missiles vary in intelligence: some simply fly by you whilst others home in and follow you around the screen - these are *mean*!

As with Sheep In Space on the Commodore 64, your craft has true inertia playability. In effect, this means that both acceleration and deceleration are proportional to the amount of joystick toggling.

This feel of inertia initially makes AMC very hard to play but after a little dedicated practice I was converted and camel zapping came quite naturally.

If you destroy all the camels in one zone you hyperspaee to the next zone (there being 25 in all). But it's not that simple: as you hyperspace there are three rockets diving towards you which must be avoided or a craft is lost.

This game was designed for the 16K Atari and in that class I know of no other game that equals it, but when played on a 48K Atari it lacks a certain depth. The graphics and sound effects are truly 'awesome' in the best Minter tradition and for all 400/600 Atari owners it comes highly recommended.