Blast into infinity

Quazer seemed a strange name for a new Archimedes game, so a short trip to the dictionary was called for. Lots of words begin with the letter Q - far more than I would have thought! From quaver to quean - an archaic world for a bold girl - but no quazer. Perhaps Impact has mispelt it - after all, they spell parallax as parellax on their cover notes - so, in desperation, I called them and discovered that it's named after a particularly enjoyable fairground ride. It would be

difficult to buy this program without realising its genre. The packaging has a bright, almost gaudy picture of the game - a blast 'em all out of the sky one. The notes on the package give you the background, as do the opening screens accompanied by excellent music which can be turned down by stages or switched off altogether.

Vertically scrolling Quazer reminds me of a very frantic version of Zalage. If you enjoy games that give you virtually no time to think and are a non-stop onslaught of further terrors, this is for you. The Werros - the baddies - come at you in waves and for some reason as well as blasting them you have to shoot some red diamond shapes. What else could you do to these awesome Werros?

The power of the Archimedes is used to produce some stunning effects, and the programming is perfectly adequate. Quazer has one major flaw - clever graphs and multitudinous colour cannot create real excitement. Just hold down the fire button and blast away. One disquieting effect - when a sprite passes over a background of the same colour it becomes virtually invisible.

There are eleven levels, each more frenetic and difficult than the last, but they do not get more interesting or addictive. The great variety of gaily-coloured targets is a delight and I suppose that as the attacks follow a pattern, the thinking part of the game is to position one's ship so that the enemy may be destroyed as efficiently as possible. There is nowhere to hide from the kamikaze Werros and at higher levels more than one hit from the mega-photon-destroy-all-torpedo (their description) may be needed.

There is a password system, so you can always jump directly to any level but you have to complete the previous level to be given the secret. A practice mode, which could be entered at any level, would have been a nice, additional facility. A lot of work has gone into this game and it is at least as good as the opposition.

Peter Blenkinsop