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One of the first arcade games to be available for the Commodore 64 has now been transferred to the Spectrum.

Designed by Jeff Minter, this Spectrum version is written by Salamander and marketed by Quicksilva!

Confused? You won't be... Read on.

Gridrunner is similar to Atari's Centipede, but set on a grid of squares which covers the screen. There is also a computer-controlled laser which shoots at random from the side of the playing area.

The idea is to destroy the animal, but it splits into pieces are you shoot, until the screen is full of small aliens sweeping down towards you.

The game runs on a 16 or 48K machine. When the tape has loaded, the screen shows the title of the game and the current high score. There are no instructions printed on the cassette inlay, so I had to press every key to find out what to do next. The O key is used to start, while Q, A, I and P are used for movement. This is a lot easier than the four cursor keys as used on many other games.

The graphics are excellent, and are as good as if not better than those on the C64 version.

The Centipede splits into a number of fragments, each of which seems to rotate on its own. Movement is very fast, and the game is quite difficult to play. All in all, Gridrunner from Quicksilva is quite an addictive game to play.

The game runs on any Spectrum, and is available from Quicksilva. It costs £6.95.