Reviews

Difficult and rich game of exploring. With a modern touch, also has a feeling of classical Spectrum program with all the identity from Gremlin Graphics games.. from MontyMole platformers until futuristics DarkFusion hardcore, passing by Mask's VenomStrikesBack sense of fun and arcade adventure.

The two characters cooperation team gameplay works incredibly good. It makes the usual Speccy platformer gains an strategy element which works wonders. If you like both ThunderBirds games, Aliens, HeadOverHeels.. and similar team arcade adventure games.. this one works every bit as good.

The fun factor comes when you have to perfect the strategy with the two heros. You can share resources between characters when they meet onscreen; You can attack an specially hard enemy from two separated points, your boys coming from different entrances from the map. All these moments comes with a sheer naturality, and are inherent to the pretty good design of the overall game.

Enemies are to be studied. While they remains again as the classical Spectrum's tiny sprite, its behaviour doesn't feel cliche... a mixture of pattern following and with nasty seekers. Their combination with terrain and false walls urge the player to be selective in your actions.. because sometimes you feel you been ambushed.

A must to manage the game is to deal with inertia. It has a lot.. but a lot more when you fire your gun because of the recoil. It is very important to be careful. This annoyed many players in its time.. but it makes the game less predictable and monotonous. If you are an experienced gamer in the search of new oldschool challenges.. then you're in luck. If no.. its a matter of caution and practice.

While jetbike stages were excessively praised by its time reviewers.. they seems like a good solution to get a good looking subgame which uses as many precious Kbytes as possible.
Anyway this is not a simply bonus game, it is needed to move yourself around different entrances of the map.

More over, coming with three loads.. the game promises a long lastability of real challenge for experienced players.

ManicMiner meets Exolon and Thrust.
Scumball+DanDare2 with a Deathchase subgame.
Non-linear Cybernoid with a cooperation Metroid gameplay.


A nearly forgotten gem of Spectrum gaming. And never enough recognized.

I can see what they were trying to do and I see why the appeal is there, but the co-op gameplay simply did not sit well with me even after I slowly seem to get the hang of what had and needed to be done. In all, I won't be too critical as the fault is clearly with me rather than this game, but I'm happy I never bought this back in the day because if I did I have been immensely disappointed in paying for a game I effectively can't play by myself.

I personally enjoyed this. Requires a lot of skill and strategy to succeed but it's thrilling and kept me gripped. Cool tune as well.

1988 Gremlin Graphics Software (UK)
by Steve Marsden, David Cooke, S. Leighton & Ben Daglish

For starters, this game has one of the most interesting, original and well made loading screens I've ever came across. All loading screen should be like this.
About the game itself, which technically is very different from anything Gremlin Graphics put out there, is also quite interesting.
The game is supposed to be played by two players or alternately by a solo player. If the first option is fine, the second is just wishful thinking, not only because the game is hard, and you die quite quickly but also because using a sets of 5 keys together with a joystick is just not practical.
The game is comprised of two levels, the jet bike section and the platform one. Both are really well done, with smooth movement, but they don't go together all that well, it looks like Gremlin Graphics picked up two games they knew wouldn't sell much and just joined together like Siamese Twins.