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Konami, to my mind, seems to have come out with quite a few good games lately. Nemesis combines space adventure with rapid shooting in the inevitable conquest of the aliens. Thought for the day: Where do they come from? Will it ever stop?

Your mission is to control your ship through a maze of passages, and massacre as many aliens as possible. Years of shoot-'em-ups allow these cruel words - kill, murder, massacre - to pass my lips.

The first phase of attack from the aliens is a stream of ships which always follow the same pattern. If you shoot all of the ships in each stream, another alien ship will appear; you must steer into it to get your weapon counter to increment. What? At the bottom of the screen is a six-section weapon indicator. Every one of the "last in the stream" ships that you steer into will move the weapon indicator up by one. Choose a weapon and this weapon will stay with you until you get shot (or, in the case of the shield, until it expires). You can have more than one weapon at a time, but everything starts again when you die. This is a real pain: however far you got on the first stage, you will always go back to the last two streams of the first-phase aliens.

The second phase incorporates more aliens, with a varied approach. These are much harder to hit, and I (well, actually all credit should go to a friend of mine, H.E.) found greater success when attempting this phase with a shield and a double.

I didn't like this game at first, but after a while it started to grow on me. The only feature which still gets my goat is having to go back to the start. This tends to dampen my enthusiasm, for it is invariably a lot more luck than judgement which gets me anywhere. Still, the graphics are not too bad, and the sound is good. Movement is easy and smooth, and there is the possibility of getting quite skilled at it in a very short time.

I agree with Chris about the restart feature. Things like that are guaranteed to get up your nose and irritate the lining of your brain. Otherwise it's a very competent shoot-'em-up with lots of variety in the weapons and aliens. A good way to spend a casual hour zapping.

No problems zapping in green.

25,000.

Graphics 74%
P. Varied scrolling scenery.
P. Pretty-coloured characters.

Sonics 68%
P. Convincing effects.

Grab Factor 77%
P. Lots of aliens to shoot.
N. Dying always sends you back to the start.

Staying Power 67%
P. A lot of tough waves to get through.
N. Not much else to do but shoot.

Overall 75%
P. Varying weapon range to choose from.