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A clone of Atari's popular arcade game Missile Command, which was released in 1980, has been recreated for the Commodore 64 by Jorg Heyltjes of Data-Land software. In the game Missile Alert, the task is to protect the nearby cities (of which there are six in total) from enemy space projectiles heading towards them, by using a defence base from the centre of the screen.

Using a crosshair as a guide, the task is to time your shots so that your defensive missiles explode at the same point as the falling alien enemy barrage. Mis-time this and one of your cities will be obliterated, and, worst still, if your base is hit it becomes disabled until the onslaught has stopped. Once all of the urban dwellings have been destroyed, it's game over, as you would expect. However, there's a training mode that allows a rebuild each time you amass 1,000 points at the end of every level. This really is good, old-fashioned fun at its best. The only thing missing is a trackball and a pocketful of giant ten pence pieces.

Missile Alert can be downloaded to play on your favourite emulator (or real machine, with the right kit), from the Commodore Scene Database (CSDb) at https://csdb.dk/release/?id=81060

There's a new Dungeons & Dragons-inspired game coming soon to the Commodore Vic-20, and will be published for the expanded machine by Psytronik Software. This production is called Realms Of Quest (RoQ) III: The Dunjon Crawler, and is likely to be a disk-only affair, including 16KB and 32KB versions. This is breaking quite a barrier, as there weren't that many commercial wares published on floppy disk for the Vic (the few that did exist were productivity apps like simple word processors), nor was there ever any programs that I recall requiring such a huge amount of memory as 32 whole kilobytes of RAM. So, expect quite an expansive binary world to explore, because this is going to be one of the biggest ever for the humble 8-bit.

The Realm Of Quest series began back in 1991, at a time when the technology was certainly out of fashion and hadn't been supported in terms of new entertainment software for at least six years. It was put on ice for some thirteen years before the sequel appeared - created for the 2004 mini-games coding competition, and now the adventure continues, appearing in collectible full-colour packaging thanks to the aforementioned 8-bit publisher. If you're fond of role-playing games, this is certainly one to look forward to. Keep an eye on www.psytronik.net for more information, or Psytronik's weblog at psytronik.blogspot.com.

Atari XE/XL users have a new word-processing package to play with, called The Last Word (TLW). It supports plain text files (such as those created by Notepad on a PC), with an 80-column mode and support for compatible printers.

With the right kit and a bit of knowhow, you can write what you need to on your Atari 8-bit, and continuing editing on your PC or vice versa. It certainly sounds a whole lot more fun than using Microsoft Office, or perhaps that's just me; as a writer, the simpler and fewer distractions involved, the better. I've authored some features for this very magazine on a C64 using the GEOS package geoWrite in the past, and with TLW being released in its final version some time before the autumn, it might be time for me to perform a similar feat on my old XL. For more information, head over to www.atari8.co.uk.