Cybernoid (Commodore 64)

I'll be honest, I probably wouldn't have thought of playing this at all. But I read online that it was available on the Wii's Virtual Console, and it made me think it would be a good game for this. I might have played it briefly in the Eighties, but I certainly didn't own it... it would have been hidden away, somewhere in the middle of a C90, given a cursory glance as I moved towards something I did actually want to play.

It's actually a really interesting game. It's basically a flick screen platform game in essence... except that you control a spaceship instead of a man/mole/jumping thing, and have to shoot your way through each screen.

That makes it sound a bit mundane, actually... although I wouldn't exactly say there was a puzzle element to Cybernoid, you can't just pile in with all guns blazing. Instead, you have to take a while to take stock of each screen, work out how best to get through it, and then give it your best shot.


I'll just sit here and wait for those arrows to pass... oh wait! They fire too! Aaaaargh!

Cybernoid, as you might expect of a Commodore 64 game, is hard. It's very hard, in fact, and you'll get to "practice" a lot of the screens over and over again as you try and figure out how to get to the next. Making it more difficult is the fact you don't have energy... one hit will blow up your ship. And as the graphics are quite big and the screens a little cramped, everything is a touch more difficult than it might otherwise be.

Still, I've actually really enjoyed playing it. It's very much a game of its time, although (and I seem to be reimagining every game I play these days) I'd quite like to see an update, or maybe combine both games into one and stick it on the DS, possibly using one of the screens to preview what comes next? Won't happen, though, but I quite fancy giving this one a bit more of a prolonged crack.