Previous Next

Good old Space Invaders. It never gets old... Except it does, doesn't it? Especially when you've played so many variants of it that you see pixelated motherships in the paving stones on your morning commute.

Swoop is a Space Invaders game in which you must face off against a fleet of 'birdmen'. These birdmen swoop down from a cluster at the top of the screen and, unusually for a game of this type, they don't drop bombs. Instead the whole skill of the game is focussed heavily around avoiding the birdmen themselves and putting paid to their divebombing as quickly as possible.

This is, of course, easy on the initial levels and easier said than done by the later ones. A typical game involves lining up your laser base with the most densely packed birdmen and then shooting up whenever one of the swooping ones looks like it's in your line of fire. Thanks to the very smooth movement of all the sprites, you can get very good at Swoop very quickly.

When you don't manage to shoot one of the birdmen, it will continue to the ground at the bottom of the screen whereupon it will leave an egg before reappearing at the top of the screen to terrorise you for a second time. Fortunately, the eggs never hatch. Unfortunately, they are fatal to the touch and can therefore "box" you into a small area. Most of the time I found this barely matters; as long as you can keep landing direct hits upon birdman after birdman, the egg will eventually disappear and you'll have free reign of the base again. However, there's always that one time where you just go a tiny bit too close...!

Each level injects enough variety (faster birdmen, more colourful birdmen and more swooping birdmen at the same time) to feel more challenging than the one prior, and you can select from one of four pre-configured attacking styles too.

Overall, this is an unpretentious shoot-'em-up. I don't know if it's got much over its stablemates. Graphically and sonically it's adequate rather than outstanding. In terms of playability, it's playable for a few goes but ultimately forgettable. And that's precisely how it was received on release. If you've looking to buy it, you can still find it for £1 or so.

You'll also find Swoop on the Micro Power Magic II compilation which is hard to find these days and usually sells for around £10.