Sinclair User


Silkworm
By Virgin Games
Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Sinclair User #107

Silkworm

If you like fast-moving, mega-destructive shoot-'em-ups, you will be scorned and humiliated behind the bikesheds if you don't have Silkworm in your collection.

This is one of the few SEU's which go to the trouble of explaining the amount of sub-nuclear destruction involved; it's set in a future where nukes hove been banned, but you can go wild with any other weapon you fancy! The choice boils down to a mega-equipped helicopter or a super jeep, or in two-player mode you can control one of each. The chopper has two weapons systems - one fires forwards and the other diagonally downwards - and the jeep the opposite, so you can zap land-based or aerial targets. Hit a landmine and it releases a cloud of plasma gas; fly into it, and it will act as a shield for a time, protecting you from enemy missiles (very imaginative use of previously unknown laws of physics by the programmers). Even more unlikely, if two plasma clouds are on screen at the same time, you can collect the first then shoot or run into the second to create a smart-bomb style explosion. Uncanny! The backgrounds are minimal, the moving objects monochrome, but the graphic design is good and the animation smooth (though it does slow down jot when there's lot on screen). As you would expect, apart from the waves of helicopters, missile launchers, tanks and rockets, there are excellent end-of-level nasties. You might think that the goose-neck helicopters, which fly onto the screen in sections, assemble themselves them blast the hell out of you, are the nastiest nasties; in fact there are bigger and more vicious command vehicles lurking at the end, such as a super helicopter and a giant tank.

It's greet, mon, as Gazza would no doubt say if anyone bothered to ask him.

Overall Summary

Top hole spiffing blast-'em-up which all the chaps should bally well buy if they can.

Chris Jenkins

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