Gaplus

Alien hordes have invaded warspace! Take the controls of your timefighter and deal laser death to the invaders. Can you clean up every last parsec of space before teatime?

The fabric of space/time is under threat from invading aliens - the onslaught is relentless. No-one knows where the insectoid alien forces are coming from - they've been called the Gaplus, after the first cargo ship that disappeared as a result of alien activity - but whatever they are, or wherever they come from, it's clear that something has to be done, and done quickly.

Early warp drive experimenters discovered that space/time is divided into a complex network of parsecs, linked together via portals in multi-dimensional space. A spaceship equipped with a particle dissolution drive can enter the space/time network and hop from parsec to parsec, leaving the network at a point close to its required destination. All very well and dandy, until the aliens started arriving...

Not only are the aggressive intruders attacking harmless cargo ships and destroying non-aggressive travellers, their very presence in a parsec disrupts the fabric of space/time. The entire universe is in danger of being destablilised if something isn't done about the Gaplus. And it needs to be done quickly.

Which is where you come in...

A fleet of fighters has been assembled to clear space/time of the invaders. Each fighter pilot was allocated fifty parsecs to clear, and the fleet set off into space/time to begin the largest mopping-op operation in the history of the universe. You are one of these pilots, and your mission is about to start at Parsec One.

Alien Elimination

The insectoid Gaplus fighter craft warp into the parsec you are attempting to clear - if you don't destroy them as they arrive these drones start building up into a formation, awaiting the arrival of the Gaplus Queen before mounting a concerted attack on your craft.

Try to keep the number of alien craft in the formation down, but resist the temptation to destroy every alien as it arrives... when a Gaplus Queen warps into the parsec you can gain control of some alien weaponry, providing you haven't destroyed all the Gaplus drone craft.

A well-placed shot destroys the booster module of the alien queen, and providing you don't damage the command module, you can gain extra firepower. For instance, destroying one kind of alien Queen causes its command module to fall onto your fighter - a tracker beam can then be used to trap up to four Gaplus craft, and bond them to the hull of your craft thereby increasing your firepower. Other Queens confer double missiles or a cyclone accelerator that allows you to draw in Gaplus drones and shatter them.

Every third parsec it's bonus time! Strange, butterfly-like energy pods cascade into the parsec and can be made to release an energy pill. All you've got to do is play keepie-up in space, hitting the pods with a blast from the lasers. Keep hitting the energy pods and you keep collecting energy pills, which are converted into lovely points at the end of the phase.

As you might expect, life gets harder to hang onto the further you progress on your mission. Each successive parsec contains more aggressive invaders - so watch out for timebombs and missiles delivered by the Gaplus horde...

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Game Credits

Music and Sound FX: Maniacs of Noise
Coding And Graphics: Ash and Dave