Previous Next

Just how much can you say about a game that was in the arcades three years ago, on your C64 two years ago and now surfaces with a corny title like Mega Apocalypse? Quite a lot, as it happens.

It's a one or two (simultaneous) player game. Set against the backdrop of one of the slickest, smoothest star routines I've ever seen, wave after wave of planets, asteroids and comets move into view. The rules are simple: everything moves at 100mph - except when it's going faster. there are one or two fiddly bits (pods) which you have to collide with for bonuses (extra speed/lives/missiles/rotate control), everything else you blast. The faster it moves, the faster - hopefully - you blast.

Missiles are your most useful weapons. Launch one and watch it lock onto the fastest planet and shoot right up its tail! Ka-boom!!! You need all the firepower you can get, too, with the likes of Mad Xothopian around, a planet the size of, well, err... a planet.

Don't worry about memorising endless waves of aliens or asteroids. All you need for Mega Apocalypse is skill, and plenty of it, because it's a very, very hard game. Learning how to avoid comets and catch pods while blasting planets doesn't take a diploma, just lightning fast wrist-action.

The best technique is always to blast the seven planets on each screen before they reach full size. Do this and you get massive bonuses of 2,000, 4,000 and then 8,000 points, if you manage it three times in a row.

The game features speech, but everything in Mega Apocalypse (except the seven and a half minute music track) is sampled to give brilliant Star Wars-style sound effects. Five channel sound and, for the first time on a C64, nothing slows down for the speech.

If you cringe every time all those superlatives are rolled out for each successive 'genuine arcade action, blast-'em-up sensation' buy Mega Apocalypse and throw away your dictionary.