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Retrograde isn't, as you might think, a simulation about oil [Gosh, that hadn't occured to me, Tone - Ed]. It is, in fact, the story of one man's fight against oppression. Nothing too original about that, and, in fact, this game owes much to previous incarnations like Sidearms. It's a pretty solid shoot-'em-up of a kind that's becoming increasingly rare on the C64.

As you can probably tell from the screenshots, the planets are a bit heavily occupied, and everybody is out to get you.

As you can probably tell from the screenshots, the planets are a bit heavily occupied, and everybody is out to get you.

You begin the game armed with a jet pack and a crappy gun. You can improve your weaponry system by flying down to ground level and popping into one of the shops you find dotted about. As you shoot bad guys, they leave money with which you can buy extra weapons, which you can use to shoot more and more bad guys, to make even more money to get even better weapons. It's an easy circle to break into.

When you think you have strong enough weaponry, it's time to attack the planet's core. Race along the floor beating up all the soldiers you find until one of them drops a planetbuster (a very large bomb); go back to the shop and pay an extortionate amount of money to have the bomb primed, and then jump into a duct, which will enable you to fight your way through even more guards and deposit the bomb at the bottom of the shaft. Do this to all the shafts and the planet will blow up, allowing you to face the evil oppressors.

I'd say Retrograde is decidedly average. Graphically it's nothing spectacular. It has pretty small sprites, quite a few of them single coloured, and what looks like the same scrolling routine as Drop Zone.

It doesn't play spectacularly either. The controls are just a little too slow for a fast-paced game, and the inertia doesn't help much either.

It seems to me that the programmers have taken Drop Zone and merged it with Morpheus, and the end result is far from brilliant. Not a bad product, but not exactly a record breaker.