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OK, I might as well get this out of the way early - Attack On Alpha Centauri is a Space Invaders game. Yes, yet another one. This is an Electron conversion of the original 1983 BBC B game by Simon Vout - released almost 40 years later (almost to the day) by snuggsy187. Simon Vout wrote a small library of games that were mainly published by Software Invasion, and he seems to have tried his hand at everything from the humble platformer (Stairway To Hell) to the monochrome shooter (Vortex).

I played the original Attack On Alpha Centauri on the BBC B back in the day and found it pretty standard fare - basically, it's the typical base-at-the-bottom, formation-of-aliens-at-the-top seen-it-all-before style of game. It won't win any prizes for originality, but it's nevertheless an engaging blastathon, even if we really don't need another Invaders game at this point.

So how does Snuggsy's Electron conversion hold up to the original? Well, it's largely identical. The 'unique selling point' Alpha Centauri featured (when compared to other Space Invaders games) was that aliens peeled off from the formation in the usual way but suddenly 'ballooned' up to about x4 size mid-descent and in the centre of the screen... before shrinking to normal size again. This effect sort of has to be experienced to be understood - I haven't seen it used anywhere else! - but it works quite well as something of an 8-bit jump scare. The 'big' alien in the centre of the screen is easier to hit, but also prevents you getting to the pack behind him, meaning you end up ducking and diving around him in a way you don't usually need to in games of this type. And you can't ignore the descending aliens whilst picking off four of their stationary friends in the same way as you can in Arcadians or Swoop.

There are some upgrades to the game too, with the keys changed from the non-standard A and S game controls on the BBC to the more regular Z and X ones.

Graphically, it's a lot better than you'd expect, with the alien bugs looking extremely menacing, particularly when they temporarily enlarge themselves to glower at you. Everything moves at a fair speed too, with the alien bugs loosing bullets down upon your base and, occasionally, appearing to dive-bomb your base. And yet, I found it very easy to play. Too easy, in fact. Part of the problem seems to be that the bugs only seem to fire at you from the top of the screen, meaning there's plenty of time for you to get out of the way of their missiles. In addition, the bugs themselves, when they do dive-bomb the bottom of the screen, seem to just pick a random area to home-in to, so they frequently miss your base entirely!

For this reason, games of Attack On Alpha Centauri can go on for a long, long time. Which is a shame considering it doesn't really change much. You quickly feel that there's little challenge other than building up an extremely high score.

The conversion itself cannot be faulted. I replayed the BBC version just to compare the two and, apart from a few palette differences, they play equally as well. Overall then, an amiable blaster which is just that little bit too easy.