Previous Next

The Genesis of the title is apparently some ultra secret project of the future. The year is 6600 (yawn) and the world's top 12 scientists have been cloned 50 times and distributed over 50 planets in an attempt to put a stop to all the nasty diseases that are infecting Earth. But just when things seemed to be working out, the evil Mechanauts came along, conquered the 50 planets and took the scientists on each one hostage. Your job, of course, is to get them back.

All this rather corny guff boils down to a strange mish-mash of ideas ripped off from Uridium. Each planet is represented as a long narrow vertically scrolling strip about 40 screens in length. At the start of each level your spacecraft is deposited at the far left-hand end of the planet and the object is to find the 12 scientists and rescue them. By skimming the surface from left to right, you'll come across a little guy in a white coat waving at you. By flying over him you can pick him up. Each scientist has a special project with him that can be used to upgrade your ship. Projects include shields, extra weapons and the ability to speed up your ship.

Not that it needs to be speeded up though. It's incredibly fast to begin with, and when you consider that inertia plays an important part, the ship is frustratingly difficult to control properly. In your first few games I can guarantee that you'll be bouncing off landscape features. And then, of course, there are the Mechanauts' fighters. What infuriated me about the alien ships is the way they lock on to you and hardly ever miss. They creep up behind you and blow you away before you get much chance to react. It's all very annoying.

Fortunately help is at hand. At the bottom of your screen is a radar scanner strip that shows the entire planet and highlights your position, any scientists on the level, and the position of any enemy ships, so if you're quick you can get yourself in line with the alien ship before it comes on screen and thus pump it full of lead before it can open fire.

If you manage to rescue (or alternatively shoot) all the scientists on the planet, the level closes down and you proceed to the next. Some of the later levels have been fiendishly designed and include coil-like tubes that must be flown through to rescue certain scientists. The problem here is that if a nasty alien matey zips down the same tube after you there is absolutely nothing you can do to get out of the way, as you can't move up to down.

Steve Bak and Pete Lyon, formerly responsible for Goldrunner and Leatherneck (reviewed this ish) have come up with a fairly neat shoot-'em-up here. The graphics certainly are some of the prettiest ever for a game of this type, the only problem being that things can sometimes get a little confused because of the detailed scenery. Sonically, everything is fine and dandy, with a jolly Dave Whittaker tune, plenty of FX and some really great speech. In fact the only problem I found was that the gameplay area is far too narrow. At least a third of the screen has been taken by the flashy score display. It may look pretty, but I'm sure it could have been cut down to provide more manoeuvring space. It's this lack of space and the intelligence of the alien fighters that makes Return To Genesis rather too difficult to play. Nevertheless, if you're an experienced blaster, and are looking for something to provide a real challenge, or want a good Uridium clone, this could be for you.