Games Computing


Armageddon

Publisher: Ocean
Machine: Spectrum 16K

 
Published in Games Computing #9

Armageddon (Ocean)

If anyone is giving away prizes for game titles in the best possible taste then this one should certainly make the grade.

The idea of the game is to shoot down 'nuclear tracers', which are moving down towards your cities, using the missile batteries at your disposal. There is also an armed spy satellite which must be vaporised on sight. The control keys are simply laid out and are up, down, right, left moving your cross-hair sight, restart game, and hold game. The program also works with a Kempston compatible joystick.

As you progress through the screens the action increases in speed and consequent difficulty. You score twenty points for each nuclear tracer which you shoot down, one hundred points for each spy satellite, and a ten point bonus for each missile left at the end of a screen, when you have managed to dispose of all tracers. Generally the use of sound is quite good, but the use of graphics is somewhere between mediocre and poor.

Armageddon is heavily based on the old arcade favourite Missile Command and as such I think that probably the most entertaining part of Armageddon is the copyright notice on the cassette inlay. The designer has achieved the right sort of sound in the game which is not unimpressive given the limitations of the Spectrum, but otherwise it is a very pale and uninteresting imitation of the original.