A game called Batalx could only have been written by a bloke called Jeff Minter. Yes, the guru of zap strikes again.
Batalx is actually six sub-games rolled into one. If you get bored, you can leave one game and play another.
You don't have any lives as such, but a fixed amount of energy. This depletes whenever you do something amiss in any of the games. The object is to get as high a score as possible.
1. Game 1: You control an orb. When you push your stick left, the orb fires left but moves right. Shoot the most imaginative nasties in computer gaming including horny beasties, pints of beer and bearded pacmen.
2. Game 2: Mini Attack of the Mutant Camels. Blast the dreaded dromedaries to bits with your fighter ships. Hyperspace to bonus levels. Superb graphics.
3. Game 3: So way out I couldn't even begin to describe it.
4. Game 4: Ancipital without the rooms. Destroy the grey globes before they bounce away and make holes in the floor and ceiling, through which you're liable to fall if you're not careful. Your horny beasty fires faces, pyramids, little furry rodents and notes saying "it's your round".
5. Game 5: More whacky stuff. Orbs fly around the screen against a background of windows containing coloured patterns. All this is accompanied by an ominous church organ sound. By placing a cursor over the grids you can give yourself a migraine by causing the pattern to whizz past the window. As well as changing the tone of the note, this causes the orbs to change their pattern of movement. You must get all the patterns whizzing in the right direction to stop the orbs.
6. Game 6: Not so much a game as an elaborate pause button, simple Psychedelia. Amazing stuff.
If you've got nothing else of Jeff Minter's, make sure you get this. It's brilliant.