Previous Next

Tarantara! It's finally here! Gordon Bennett, it took long enough. But after countless reprogrammings it seems that the mammoth task of jamming last year's fabbest arcade shoot 'em up into 48 cheesy old K has actually been achieved. Well, nearly.

All the original features are there, bar the amazing graphics - much as you'd expect. As you're flying along on your mission to save your planet from the avenging Bacterion forces, you have to pick up enemy capsules (usually awarded for pranging a whole group of fighters) which when collected give you certain extra powers. Missile, for example, gives you, yes, a missile, which drops down to the bottom of the screen and wipes out anything down there.

Laser gives you a much sharper, more powerful weapon (oo-er) which scythes through your enemies, but is often less versatile than your bog standard shooter. Double doubles your firepower, although it's incompatible with Laser ('tis one or the other, old chum). Option deposits an extra lump on your ship which also fires at aliens, and so on. As the game goes on, of course, it all gets much more complicated.

Like the arcade version, the Speccy Nemesis is very fast and very hard. The ship is highly manoeuvrable and the aliens whiffle about like nobody's business, knocking you out before you really notice. In fact, the collision detection is the game's single major flaw. To avoid the usual problem, Konami has you destroyed about half a sprite before you thought you'd hit anything - a bit irritating to start with, but you get used to it.

Otherwise it's a faithful, no-frills conversion. The graphics have suffered by necessity, but it you can accept that you have a Speccy in your living room, not a four-ton three megabyte arcade machine and a lifetime supply of 10p pieces. Nemesis is well up to expectations. A deserved hit for Konami!