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As announced earlier this year through these very pages, the premium software publisher Psytronik has just released its smash-hit compilation for the Commodore 64 entitled They Didn't Quite Sell A Million, which comes on 5.25" disk for the sum of £12.99 plus postage.

There are four games included in total, with the best of the bunch being Jon Wells' conversion of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum budget game Sceptre Of Baghdad, and also including Archetype, Psyko Zone and finally the Shoot-'Em-Up Destruction Set, all of which are by Alf Yngve. All of the latter productions are shoot-'em-ups authored primarily using the popular Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit by Sensible Software (released in 1987), and include hard-coded additions for a more professional finish.

If you'd like to get your hands on this, head over to the Binary Zone stores at Psytronik. You'll find the online ordering form tucked away under the 'Psytronik Software' link under the sub-category of C64 Premium Disks, along with the dozen or so other releases for the 8-bit, none of which have sold a million either. Not yet at least.

The Atari XE/XL coder known as 'Gonzo' is working on a highly polished and eye-pleasing horizontally scrolling blaster called Space Fighter. It uses some high-end effects for the old 8-bit micro, including fast, full-colour scrolling. Details are a little sketchy at the moment, but expect the usual storyline of an evil empire needing to be infiltrated and destroyed and just one armoured craft sent to carry out this mortal task. From the initial demo, at least, everything looks to be on a sound footing; I only hope this is as good a game as it is a technical demo.

For further information, and to discuss this project, head over to tinyurl.com/AtariSpaceFighter. Sticking with the Atari for a while longer, the developer known as Heaven/TQA is putting the finishing touches to his Commodore VIC-20 port of Jeff Minter's classic Grid Runner. This is a warped take on Atari's 1980 arcade hit Centipede.

The game is played in an arena in which ready-loaded laser cannons patrol the perimeter, while your single-shot craft must take out anything that enters the grid. Expect this game to be released shortly, which will be announced (as these things usually are) through the Atari Age forums.

The project Speeder has been announced through the World of Spectrum (WoS) forums, by the forum member Riv, who has experience programming in C, with this being his first attempt at Z80 coding on the Speccy. The game so far is a pacey vertically-scrolling track in which you must manoeuvre your craft left and right while avoiding the solid walls that will stop you. Boost pads speed things up quite considerably, although there is a brake, but this will slow you down to a crawl once again. As the aim is currently to complete the course in the fastest time possible, sharp reactions are needed especially when you hit a couple of the pads.

The most up-to-date demo and news can be found on the WoS discussion thread at tinyurl.com/SpeederSpeccy