Previous Next

Last Mission is one of US Gold's coin-op classics, though I must admit to never having set eyes on the arcade version. It's a scrolling shoot-'em-up in the classic tradition, nothing new or trendy about it, just good old fashioned blasting.

You are an outcast. Restore your honour. Invade the hostile forces who torment your people. Your quest for honour is your last mission. That's what I like to see, short and to the point. None of this poncing around about kidnapped princesses and evil overlords, just kill the suckers.

Actually, there's a little more to it than that. First of all, this big splodge which looks like one of those closed circuit cameras you get in Woolworths glides across the screen from bottom right to top left, breathing great plumes of fire from four holes in its side, though why this happens is anyone's guess! But it does give me the chance to tell you that you view the Woolies fire-breathing camera from above, and below it the planet surface scrolls in any one of eight directions (that's up, down, left, right and the ones in between).

On the planet surface there are several different kinds of object that you will have to look out for. First, there are buildings which as a matter of fact you won't have to look out for at all, as they don't really do very much and will only distract you. Next, tanks. Tanks aren't very mobile, they just sit their turning round and round and firing their guns, but are nonetheless dangerous, as you will discover soon.

Round things: In real life they're probably called multi-gratory oscillo-transponder things, but without the instruction book it's hard to say.

Crab-shaped thing: Again, they probably have some dead impressive psuedo scientific extra terrestrial name. Like the round thing, they don't do anything unless you shoot them or bash into them.

When the Woolworths thing disappears off the screen, your ship appears. It's fairly small, but in all other respects looks much as you'd expect an intergalactic space fighter to appear - gull wings, streamlined, bristling with weaponry. A quick burst on the joystick fire button confirms your impressions about its firepower as several blips emerge from the speaker and a corresponding number of short black dashes emerge from the ship's nose. This craft had hidden reserves, but before you can begin to plumb their depths the aliens appear.

Creeping in from the edge of the screen, they approach in an erratic weaving fashion threatening a collision with every unpredictable move. A bit of practice with the controls would be helpful. The directional controls sound simple, but take some getting used to; Forward on the joystick sends you up the screen, downward back, and so on (in reality the ship stays where it is and the screen scrolls in the opposite direction to the joystick movement).

The only thing to do is kill the lot of them, but before you do that, it's worth shooting at some round things, tanks or crab-shaped things. It takes several shots to destroy them, but there are two good reasons for doing this. The first is that, if you collide with them you'll blow up. The second is they can provide you with a selection of weapons to use against the invaders. Most important of all, on destruction some crab-shaped things provide you with a force field which makes you totally invincible to alien attack and collision. Without the force field you can expect to last about two seconds.

The alternative weapons vary in power. They are all more effective than the cannon, but the most brilliant of all is the one called 'Hyper' on the instrument panel. Hyper send super destructive bolts radiating out in all directions from your ship. If you are clever about destroying the round things and crab-shaped things, you can ration your forcefields.

The objective is to wipe out all the aliens, you can check your progress by the alien meter on the instrument panel. Once this is accomplished, the Woolworths video camera returns and you just have to keep blasting with whatever weapons you have handy until it's destroyed. This is trickier than it sounds because the thing moves as erractically as its alien friends and if it bumps you without your force field on you've had it.

Once past the Winfield wonder it's on to level two and more of the same, only more difficult. Last Mission isn't anything outstanding or original, but what it does it does well. The sound and graphics are set up to mark and the gameplay is fine. It's OK. I'm not sure I'd shove 10p pieces into it for an afternoon though.