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The Austrian-based World of Spectrum forum frequenter, LCD (whose full name is Leszek Daniel Chmielewski), has recently released his U-Boat hunting game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

This 2D game, called U-Boot, puts you in control of an Allied ship during the Second World War. The task is to send the depth-charge into the sea to obliterate a patrolling submarine. The only information available is how far away the U-Boat is from your last attack. The enemy sub will patrol at the same depth, moving horizontally only. With a limited supply of munitions at hand, the task can be rather tricky.

On LCD's web page, just click the link to the Spectrum section, where you'll find the downloads to this and his other games.

While we're on the subject of new Speccy software, Bob Smith is busy putting the finishing touches to his ASCII-based blaster. It has the feel of a Commodore PET game to it; I know what you're thinking, shouldn't that be it has the feel of a Sinclair ZX81 game to it? Well, almost, except the PET had a much better ASCII-compatible character set that was 8-bits wide, whereas the ZX81 was much more limited.

Anyway, this is already to the usual standards that you'd expect from Bob, with smooth scrolling considering the character limitations, and imaginative use of the ASCII set to build up the movable object blocks. Keep an eye on Bob's website, or search the popular social network site Facebook for Bob's Stuff, for more information about this release.

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The Atari XE/XL developer known as Gonzo is developing what is a simple, but technically impressive, shoot-'em up for the powerful micro computer. The game, called Luki Lak, has a stereotyped 'Wild West' theme to it in which you control a plodding Cowboy who's heading through various 8-bit towns, while avoiding or shooting those no-good pesky roamers that cross your path.

This is a horizontally-scrolling affair boasting a well-animated and rather big main sprite, three layers of parallax scrolling and excellent Pokey music.

Whether or not there's enough gameplay to complement the technical niceties is a question we won't know until it finally has its public release. But until then, there's a nice taster posted on YouTube over at tinyurl.com/luki-lak

Platform: Commodore VIC-20 + 16K RAM expansion
Developer: Robert Hurst
Publisher: Self published (robert.hurst-ri.us)

In 2010, Robert Hurst converted the 1980 arcade game Berserk for the expanded Commodore Vic-20, to mark the 30th anniversary of the classic blaster.

Originally created by Alan McNeil, this somewhat unsophisticated shoot-'em-up put you in control of a humanoid who must escape from a deadly maze made up of some 64,000 screens, each containing trained robots that are out to get you. Thankfully, you are armed with a directional single-shot laser, but the robots become more intelligent in tracking your movements the further you get. If you spend too long on one level, the evil Otto, a bouncing smiley face, will head your way. This character cannot be taken out, no matter how good a shot you are.

While Robert's original game was written for only an extra 8K of RAM; this newer version makes more demands, but adds the speech synthesis of the original arcade hit for a more authentic experience. Both are available from the above site, and play identically otherwise.

This is an excellent and authentic remake of a true old-school blaster, one that should be tried on the real machine, but if you don't have the know-how to transfer the binary PRG file to the Vic then fear not as there is always the cross-platform VICE emulator.