After a loading time of almost six minutes, and no less than four programs being chained, I hoped that Attack On Alpha Centauri would be worth the wait. It was. If you imagine a type of Galaxians with 3D graphics, then you have some idea of what this game is like.

Alpha Centauri is apparently being attacked by "Giant bug-eyed wasps", who not only peel off from the fleet and swoop down to attack your base, but also zoom towards you in 3D manner as they near the bottom of the screen. The graphics involved in this feat are pretty impressive, and very fast.

The sound in the game is of a high standard, but I couldn't help feeling that the programmers had overdone it a little. Having three sound channels tends to make programmers think that they should put masses of sound into their software. In this particular game, I thought that if some of the screams and explosions had been cut, it would have a little more clarity in what was already there.

The controls for the game include the obvious left/right/fire, plus some nice additions: sound on/off and game pause, allowing you to massage your tiring trigger finger during a long game: A real sanity saver!

On the first screen, the aliens swoop down one at a time, but as you clear more screens they come down in clusters. Each cleared screen adds another alien to the number that come and attack you. I managed to clear six screens before being blown to oblivion.

This program is one of the longest loaders I have ever seen. First, it runs the normal title page that is present on most commercial software these days. This is followed by an instruction page, which relieves the boredom while the next program, the background, is loaded. This program simply draws the background and scenery of a rather desolate planet with the odd volcano scattered here and there, and while you admire the high resolution graphics present here, the game loads. This method is all very well, and provides a very good quality backcloth for the rest of the game, but it means that the screen cannot be cleared for things such as high-score tables, level selection, etc, without the background being reloaded from tape. So the only "user selection" in the game is that of pressing space to start! This lack of variation tends to make the game quite boring.

One complaint that I have is that on a black and white television, the background makes the bombs hard to see, thus making quite a difficult game even more difficult.

To sum up, I think that this game is worth buying for the graphics alone. The lack of level variations and high-score table is a set-back, but these have necessarily been sacrificed for the quality of the graphics.

Dave Reeder