These games have taken some six years to make the transition from the Vic-20 to the C16. The question is... was it worth it? On the whole I would think not, but enough of this doubting and on with the reviews...

The game Matrix is a shoot-'em-up based on screens of grids. Your ship can move around this grid in four directions and fires up the screen. Cycling around the Y and X axis of the edge of the screen are two 'zappers' if you linger with the zapper under you for too long then you get zapped! The main point of the game is very similar to Centipede - a centipede-like object cycles down the screen and you shoot at it, where it will break into bits, all of which proceed down the screen.

There are variations on this theme in later screens, but that's the real gist of it. As you can see, this is a slightly upmarket and improved Centipede game with some bits added and some bits taken away.

Lazerzone is another based on the 'one gun on one axis, one gun on the other axis' concept that a number of Llamasoft games feature (i.e. Matrix, Hellgate, etc). The square play area has a gun that moves from side to side on the bottom edge. These guns fire at meanies that appear on the screen and try to get you.

As well as firing in straight lines, the guns can fire diagonally be pressing fire and then moving the joystick. This is a bit tricky, but can be mastered eventually and can be quite effective.

However, does the world need this, and another souped-up Centipede game (Matrix) and especially at what can only be described as a relatively high price considering the low average for good C16 software. These games were originally written in 1983 on an extremely primitive machine by Jeff Minter and sold by Llamasoft. These conversions were written in 1986 on a very flash machine with twice the memory and ten times the graphics ability; however, they were not converted by Jeff, not sold by Llamasoft, and that's why it isn't.