Previous Next

Congratulations to developer Jose Javier Garcia Aranda. Using his 8bp coding tools, Jose has demonstrated, in Space Phantom, just how amazing his BASIC coding knowledge is and how to get the most out of the Amstrad CPC's Basic language.

You are a space hero, equipped with a jetpack flying across the universe, killing meteorites, space hawks, spaceships, and even a dragon. The game has three phases and an epic end. A Space Harrier clone, in this 3D space shoot-'em-up, you have one goal and that is shoot to kill, while you fly to thrill. Enemies generate randomly on the screen, just shoot away lining up your targets while you avoid being killed. The gameplay allows full screen movement in any direction of your character and enemies.

The opening Star Wars like movie credits sequence was a little bit dodgy but it still looked cool. The music changing on different stages of the game was cool and stopped it from becoming annoying. It had the nice effect like in the movies, when you hear the music changing so as to announce a bad guy or some form of unexpectedness. In game sound effects worked well too. While only three levels, there was enough in each wave of enemies to keep you entertained.

The difficulty felt right and so did four lives, perhaps though it is a little too easy. Graphically it is very colourful and captures that Space Harrier type of look quite nicely. Your sprite moves quite smoothly around the screen and shooting down enemies is easy.

The left and right combat movement took a bit of getting used to, but no problems there really. Explosions looked the 'biz' and so did the animation when you got killed. When you play a shoot-'em-up, all you want to do is shoot, that's exactly what you get here - press the fire button down and shoot away!

Annoying at times was the generation of enemy where you were positioned on screen that ended in certain death. Level two took quite a bit of loading, it wasn't overly long as such, just felt like it was too long watching all those dots on screen appear before you could begin play. When you died early on - in level two, you had to repeat the level. No way was there enough levels to play, it needed more, more, more!

It offers a wonderful colourful variety of space themed enemy, over three distinct levels. A very solid 'Space Harrier' type game created in BASIC. The only thing that is missing to make it greater is more levels. A very polished and professional presented BASIC game, that is a lot of fun. The best BASIC game I have played so far coded in the 8bp series of game releases coded by Jose Javier Garcia Aranda.