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There's no shortage of shoot-'em-ups on the Electron and, for games that demand little thought, they're hard to beat. Zalaga is one of the types where you get a laser-base at the bottom of the screen and a bunch of aliens floating above. Your aim in each stage is to shoot away all of the aliens. Their aim is to rain down upon you and cause your laser-base to explode.

I'm not particularly fond of this style of game because, unless you're playing something truly special, they tend to get very repetitive very quickly. That said, Zalaga is clearly very good. Your laser base moves very smoothly, and each tap on the RETURN key produces a missile which speeds impressively up the screen ready to take out any alien that stands in its way. The aliens themselves move a little more jerkily than you do and, unlike a lot of these Space Invaders-type games, each screen starts off blank and the aliens then assemble by snaking into it from somewhere outside of the playing area. You should aim to take as many of them out as you can because, once they are all assembled in formation, the screen can become very cluttered otherwise.

The game starts with a riff of notes and each shot you let loose produces one of the most irritating tinkling noises I've ever heard. Explosions produce a suitably loud bang and there's a helpful blip that signals each time another formation alien has flipped out of place and begun a descent.

Play is challenging, not least of which because of the incredibly short area between the lowest of the formation aliens and your ship. There's so little room for manoeuvre sometimes that you may well not get lucky with your shot until the alien has attempted to divebomb you four or five times; it's just too hard otherwise to get 'safely' underneath him. The attack patterns differ with each stage but typically involve a few swirls and arcs on the way down. As stages progress, aliens start to pause mid-flight and emit what look like sonar pulses as well as drop bombs.

In some games like Zalaga, it's tempting, either by accident or design, to spend a lot of time hugging the extreme left or right of the screen, and then only venturing into the battle area when it's devoid of action. This strategy works to a certain extent; however, be wary of the bombs... they fall at a slight angle rather than directly downwards and can therefore get you even if not dropped from directly overhead.

As one of the games from master programmer Orlando, Zalaga is one of the more respected Electron shooters. Part of the renaissance in games after the Electron dropped suddenly in price, it arrived in 1985 in a golden clamshell box, featured on several compilations and was re-released by Alternative in 1990. If buying a physical version, the golden box usually fetches £5. The budget release is very rarely glimpsed but fetches slightly less, probably because the cover art is so drab.