I got this one on a second-hand magazine covertape back in the early nineties, during the brief spell I had my ZX Spectrum +2 set up with a colour TV oohh! More than anything else I was trying to populate my rather meagre speccy game cupboard. I can't exactly say that in buying this particular Crash mag and cover tape I significantly improved my game collection though. It was a strange time when 8-bit games were already effectively devalued and the magazines had thinned out considerably. In the UK it was cleary a sort of tail end of the original speccy era, yet on the plus side certain coding techniques such as sprite routines, scrolling and sound routines had been more or less perfected.
Zanthrax is arguably the best title on its particular four game cover tape though. It is memorable mainly for its impressive turbo loader, multi-channel BEEPER music on the intro screen (main synth melody plus drums) and absolutely perfect flicker free pixel scrolling and high speed sprite action in the monochrome play area.
You control a small racing spaceship which can scroll both up or down the screen vertically at three different speeds in either direction. The objective is to scour each artificially built space-race-track looking for ten domes which must be destroyed by shooting at them. After destroying all domes, you must fly to the "finish" pad. There are many hazardously placed obstacles in the way such as pillars and walls which you must avoid crashing into by shifting the ship sideways whilst racing about.
In fact there is a quite tricky bit right at the very beginning of the first level which I just kept getting killed on until I got a little more skilled at the game. I could imagine this might put some people off it.
There are also racing opponents which can shoot and kill you, but of course you should shoot back at every opportunity. Each level is against the clock so the faster time you get, the more money you earn which naturally leads to better weapon and ship upgrades before starting the next level. 20,000 credits in particular is a very useful amount to earn since it buys an extra ship. (you start with three and when they are all destroyed, the game is over). On the one hand you want to fly fast to get a good time, but on the other hand avoiding fatal obstacles is virtually impossible on the fastest speeds. It's so much more easier to fly around on the slowest speed but of course you'll then only gain modest ship upgrades due to getting slow finishing times.
Overall the game is expertly coded and a real test of reflex and skill, but just not totally addictive. I can't put my finger on why this is. On the face of it this should be an excellent gaming experience. Perhaps it is the horrendously tricky weaving between the contrived obstacles or getting completely shot out of existence by opponents with about 0.5 seconds notice (as the game is so fast), make it just a bit too hard to get off the ground for a casual player.
There are also a couple of minor other criticisms. If you elect to play with the keyboard, as I usually do then you have to redefine the keys every time you play the game. In the beginning, the game may only last a couple of minutes (until you have built up more skill). On dying, you just want to press a key and regain immediate entry back into the game, but alas you have to go through the "define key" screen again. So, it's arguably more sensible to select a joystick option instead, even when using an emulator.
Also, the player name has to be entered before each game starts. This is for the highscore table. It's one of those ones where you move a cursor along a list of letters using left and right controls - again I appreciate the arcade feel of this, but why can't we just use the keyboard to type the name directly? You'll probably just end up pressing "FIRE" 12 times before playing the game on each occasion, so that the highscore table will read AAAAAAAAAAAA throughout. Whilst supporting a keyboard option this game really is crying out to be used with a joystick.
In summary, a technically excellent and ultra smooth vertical shooter with memorable effects that somehow just doesn't seem to draw in the casual player. The playability is slighty diminished by rather inconveniently placed monochrome obstacles that are easily crashed into, outrageously fast lethal opponents and over-cumbersome pre-game menu screens.
