Previous Next

In a galaxy far, far away there was born a young boy promptly burdened with the name Hilary Leslie Lovejoy. After a rather troubled childhood Hilary swiftly changed his name to Guy Manly and went off to be a terribly butch, and well 'ard space pirate.

Crime isn't what it was though, and in the future it's extremely well organised with a Council regulating your actions. Before you can even leave the space station, you must achieve an accuracy of 40% plus in one of the simulations. The first three simulations are free, with wireframe spaceships attacking you across a multi-directional scrolling background. Other simulations, such as Disasteroids (Asteroids), cost money to try out. Once you've proven your shooting skills you're offered a selection of missions - to begin with you can only attempt a mission with an 'A' code.

A mission starts with you being warped out to a map grid. The truck you're going to loot is represented by a fish icon, and you move toward it square by square. Green squares require a toll - shoot the aliens and pick up their cash - while black ones don't. There are also planet squares and pirate squares to explore. In each square a white box appears which shows the direction you must fly in.

Once you get back to base you can splurge your cash on new weapons (i.e. Sony Cutter) and shield units (i.e. Tesco Supal) besides paying for boring stuff like launch tax and new missions. With so many different missions the save/load facility is very useful.

People with a fairly good memory should remember the Amiga version scoring 87% last April, so why the C64 game has moved from Outlaw to a new budget house Byte Back is a bit of a mystery. Apart from the absence of the truck battle scene, gameplay is virtually identical. Presentation is also remarkably similar, with colourful planet graphics and good enemy ships. In retrospect, the Amiga game was a bit over-rated. Despite all the flash add-on bits gameplay is not that much more than multi-directional blasting, but it's still very playable. Compared to the chronic simplicity of most budget releases this a welcome surprise, and highly recommended.