1st January 1985
New Cylon Attack
A & F are probably most famous in Spectrum games for their hi-scorer platform game Chuckie Egg which still sits in the CRASH than even now. It's been quite a while since that came out and the latest release, New Cylon Attack is a conversion from the BBC and Electron micros. The game was said to have set new standards for space games on the Beeb, and one critic went as far as to say that the only problem with it was that there was nothing to criticise (thereby reinforcing the fallacy that criticism implies bad comments).
New Cylon Attack is a 3D space battle in which you must defend civilisation from the attacking Cylon ships. The aliens have discovered the route of your mother ship and are out to destroy it. As an interceptor pilot you are launched from the mother ship to fight them with your laser guns.
Thescreen display is largely filled with the 3D view of space. Centred in the view is a squared gun sight with vertical and lateral moving bars for fine sighting. The sights move with ship movement. Laser bolts are seen as round blobs hurtling out from either side of the screen towards the large and solid aliens.
Other screen information shown Indicates status of shields, lasers and fuel. The lasers use energy and take time to recharge, failing to fire until replenished. Fuel and shields are replenished by docking with the yellow coloured mothership - an automatic process if you line the sights on it. Although fuel may be replenished by docking during an attack wave, shields are only replenished when a wave is defeated. But during the docking aliens may attack the mother ship.
Apart from the multifarious alien craft there are other celestial bodies about, planets with moons, signposts pointing to Mars, comets and many stars. A radar above the viewscreen indicates the positions of attacking aliens which are just out of visual range, while the mother ship is a yellow flashing dot. Well they thought it was great on the Beeb - how about the Spectrum?
Comments
Control keys: user definable, needs four directional and one for fire
Joystick: Kempston catered for, others via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive - watch out for 'inertia' effect
Use of colour: playing area is black and white, simple usage around
Graphics: good, fast moving, large and work well in perspective
Sound: very good
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3 fuel lives and percentage of shield damage
Screens: many attack waves
Special features:
Screenshots
