Advent Calendar - December 8th.

Alien8 (ZX Spectrum)

I loved my Commodore 64, and not for a moment did I wish I'd got a Spectrum instead. But if there was one way I was jealous of my Speccy-owning mates, it can be summed up in four words: Ultimate: Play The Game.


No point walking on eggshells... get a move on!

What a company they were. Of course, they went on to become Rare in later years, but it was as Ultimate that they made a hell of a name for themselves. And they made that name with awesome games. Atic Atac, Underwurlde, JetPac, Knight Lore... and they went on, with seemingly not a single misfire. I was envious, because although Ultimate had a presence on the C64, they released far fewer games and the quality just wasn't there. And those marquee titles never made the leap...

I often played JetPac and Knight Lore on friends' Spectrums, but I have to say I never got a chance to play Alien8. The sequel to Knight Lore, it sees you as a robot on a spaceship... a spaceship carrying the inhabitants of a dying planet to safety, a new life, a new beginning...


The purple spike room was not Alien8's favourite.

You're just there as housekeeping, making sure everything keeps running as it's meant to. So as you approach your destination, it's a bit of a shocker to have the ship attacked by aliens and to see all life support systems damaged... Your job is to get all the life support systems back online and restore the cryogenic systems to operation, so that the ship can reach its destination with the inhabitants intact and alive.

If there's one common thread that runs through these isometric 3D games, it's that they're rock hard, and Alien8 is no exception. I played half a dozen games before I found anything interesting at all, but once I'd got a bit more to grips with it, I started to make some kind of progress, and then I started to enjoy it. That's the thing... they can be very frustrating games when you're just seeing the first half a dozen screens over and over again, although the fact you have a pool of different start screens helps.


OK, now this room is just a cluttered mess.

Alien8 is probably a better game than Knight Lore, even if just marginally. There's no "change" animation in this game, which serves for the better... in the original game, too much of your time was wasted watching your character become a werewolf. That said, this game has less character, less personality than Knight Lore. But it's a massive challenge, a real test of your platforming skills and a really good example of the early days of arcade adventures.

Highway Encounter (ZX Spectrum)

Highway Encounter is a game that I probably wouldn't have thought about playing, but it's in World of Spectrum's Top 20 games, and as the Spectrum is a bit of a blind spot for me, I thought it would make a good blog game. I can actually remember reading the review of the Commodore 64 version in ZZAP! 64, where it got a pretty decent if unspectacular review, so I wasn't coming into this completely in the dark.

Then again, I might as well have been. I had no idea what the gameplay was going to be like... although I knew that the game had a Zaxxon-esque viewpoint, it plays nothing like that. Nor is it particularly fast-paced, as you might expect from a game called Highway Encounter.


Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go...

The game sees Earth in the grip of an alien invasion. The only way to repel this invasion is to destroy the mothership, which is parked at the end of a highway. It's far too dangerous to send in troops, so the plan is to use a squadron of droids to transport a massively powerful bomb called the Lasertron to the mothership, where it can be detonated, and all will be well.

You start with five droids, one of which is under your direct control. I say "direct control"... that was never really the case with me! Your droid uses an Asteroids-style control method, where you rotate and then push forward to accelerate. It really takes some getting used to!

The remaining droids just plough on in a straight line, pushing the Lasertron toward its destination. That sounds great, but naturally the enemy has populated the highway with obstructions. Your job is to clear these, either by pushing obstacles out of the way or by shooting enemy droids. Or, in some instances, you actually have to block the path so that the droids don't just rush headlong into danger.


Guys! Come baaaaack! Wait for meeeeeee!

It's easier said than done. The game takes on something of a puzzling nature as you work out the best way through each screen... if you're in time. Many's the time my squad of droids went piling onto the next screen before I could get there, and when I caught up, I found them in trouble.

I found Highway Encounter to be a really interesting little game, if a difficult one. I would imagine that if you put the time in and get to grips with it, it would prove very rewarding. It was nice to play something as different as this... there's not a lot like it.