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An adult-themed beat-'em-up has recently been released for the Amstrad CPC. Called Sardina Forever, it sees you take charge of a young Italian female pop-star. Your task is to guide her through the rough streets where many of her antagonists roam. You must fight your way through to get to the airport in good time to check in. If you don't make it, this musical icon will miss her world tour and legions of fans will be disappointed at best.

This game dates back some twenty years and is a remake of a fairly lacklustre and monochrome production called Sabrina. This new version has been crafted by one of the original developers (though it's not clear which one), and features full-colour graphics and a pretty catchy tune too, as well as some other improvements with the game mechanic. Further information can be found at tinyurl.com/sardina-forever or over at cpcgamereviews.com. Both locations will contain the download, but the former will need translating into English, although you'll be able to guess the links for the relevant disk and tape images easily enough.

Richard Bayliss of The New Dimension is busy working on Up In The Air, a game designed by Wayne Womersley for the Commodore 64. This is a sideways scrolling shoot-'em-up in which you must guide a biplane through the skies while avoiding or shooting down the oncoming gulls, other flying creatures and light air-crafts while collecting the balloons that pass by. At the end of certain levels, you're faced with a rather angry end-of-level boss, which could be anything from a mutated bird to a tank.

It's not going to be the most sophisticated C64 game that you'll come across today, but is a true labour of love by Wayne, who has been working vigorously on the graphics and mechanics for it, with the coding handled by Richard. The complete blog of this production is found over at tnd64.unikat.sk, and a fully playable preview may be downloaded from tinyurl.com/d2al9dq.

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Jinj 2: Belmonte's Revenge is now available for the 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum, created and released by the Spanish-based RetroWorks. In its 2008 prequel, by Computer EmuZone, our hero awakes suffering from a bout of amnesia but in a strangely familiar place. You're tasked with helping him explore the locale and regain his memories, and in doing so, save the world from the evil Professor Bel-Monte in a not-too dissimilar fashion to the popular Ultimate Play The Game epic Sabre Wulf.

This sequel is quite similar to the game mechanics of the first outing, but seems to have a much more sophisticated sprite engine. And it continues exactly where the prequel left off. With your memory restored, you realise that evil forces have been unleashed onto the world by the mad professor Bel-Monte, and it's up to you to return these malevolent beings to where they belong, saving the world again. Check out tinyurl.com/6nnkf3z for more information.

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Also in development for the Speccy, and from the Little Shop of Pixels, is Gloop Troops 2, which is described as a "pretty epic sequel" for the 128K machines. It has the same 'cute' graphics and gameplay from the other games in this series, and incorporates Super Mario World-alike map interludes. Head over to tinyurl.com/GloopTroops2 to find out more information.