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Cronosoft has yet more software lined up for the spring and summer months ahead, just in case there's a rainy day or two that can be filled with 8-bit goodness. The first two are for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with the third for the ZX81.

The duo of Spectrum releases are by Jonathan Cauldwell, with one being graphically pixelated by ex-Codemasters artist Jarrod Bentley. It's a 'Special Brew' edition of the game Home Brew in which you control a Firkin that must be controlled to collect up all of the falling fruits (that are dropped by the on-screen roamers once shot). These then must be dropped into a demijohn to ferment into various alcoholic- based beverages. The game is a little like Asteroids without the wrap-around play area, in that you must shoot down the somewhat cute on-screen foes.

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Alongside this is Jonathan's quirky arcade puzzle game Battery's Not Precluded, in which you've just been gifted several remote controlled toys. While controlling each around set tracks, the same type of radio-controlled vehicle will appear and follow your exact path at up to eight per screen and at set intervals. The task is to force them to crash into each other so to eliminate them from play.

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Finally, going monochrome, Bob Smith's superb 16K ZX81 outing Virus is now complete and is ready for cassette. Featuring eight big levels, this Gauntlet-alike shoot-'em-up sees you entering a secret medical complex to obliterate a nasty and mutated killer virus, before it divides and multiplies, threatening the very safety of the local population.

For information on all of these releases, including prices and postage costs, take a look at Cronosoft's website at www.cronosoft.co.uk.

The Commodore 64 group Tristar & Red Sector Incorporated has released its second Vectrex remake for the old bread bin.

It's a rather surreal platformer called Spike, in which our hero sees his beloved girlfriend, Molly, kidnapped by a mean and cruel bully. She is locked away, and the task is to avoid or beat up the roaming nasties and collect the key to free her. You can control where the ladder is placed, so to climb from one platform to another, and each path will scroll. It has some great speech synthesis included, and frankly I've not played anything like it on any 8-bit micro, as I didn't own a Vectrex back in the 1980s.

Spike is a thoroughly entertaining production, especially if you're used to more conventional 2D games. The disk image can be downloaded from the Commodore Scene Database (CSDb) at noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=90345, and as a treat, a 'cracked' version with built-in cheats is included too.

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Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders, released in 1988 by LucasArts Games is one of the great point-and-click role-playing games, and is remembered (at least in the UK) on the Amiga more than any other format, although the game was available for the C64 too.

A lack of disk-drive owners in Britain meant that this classic was missed by many breadbin owners, which is a shame, because the only real difference between it and its 16-bit cousin was the graphics.

Well, now there's a remake in the works for the C64, which will give it some parity with more graphically superior machines, but also requires a Commodore 17xx compatible RAM Expansion Unit (REU) to run. The extra visual details are a result of two things: new ways of pixelating the screen which have been discovered mostly in the post-commercial era, and that the REU can essentially make RAM access up to seven faster than conventional methods as well as boosting the memory beyond 64KB.

Don't worry if you think that an REU might be hard to come by; the 1541 Ultimate II device emulates this as well as a 5.25" floppy disk drive and other cartridges besides, and is considered as a one-stop solution for the 'modern' C64 user. More information about this upgrade can be found at www.1541Ultimate.net.

Getting back to the game, a preview can be downloaded from the CSDb at noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=90364.