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It is very rare that I find a program which I have no interest in, especially a game. Martian Rescue however has achieved that dubious accolade. I have played the same game on and off in the guise of Meteor Mission 2 by Big Five Software of America for the past two years, and of the two I would say that the TRS-80 version stands up better.

The idea of the game is to rescue the survivors of the crashed Mars Expedition. To do this you must maneouvre your landing craft out of the mothership, through a storm of meteors and occasionally alien ships using the arrow keys and a thruster which appears to work appallingly badly. If I had been the designer of the rockets I would have resigned from the Space Agency!

Once you have landed (on a landing pad), a little man runs across, into your spaceship and hopefully to safety. You must then journey back up through the meteors, shooting them as you go and scoring more points. Compared to A10 Bomber and Geniepede, this game is rather a let down and certainly not as good a representation of its arcade version as the others are of theirs!

David Doohan