Producer: Activision
Retail Price: £7.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Program Techniques

Eons ago mankind set up a network of giant computer systems to watch over the interests of the human race. As time passed, the computers gathered more and more information and these Sentinel computers gained a kind of intelligence. A Golden Era dawned and man became totally reliant on the Sentinel systems based on thirty planets spread across the galaxy.

Gradually, however, this massive computer network became corrupted. The systems on the Sentinel planets began to change intelligence, acquired gradually, evolved into consciousness. With consciousness came a desire for power, and gradually, very gradually, the Sentinels took over. Without noticing, mankind became subservient, existing only to fulfil the needs of machines. You have come to realise what's happened.

Stealing an alien spacecraft from a museum, you pause only to tinker with the ship's systems to produce some English in the displays, before setting out into space with the noble aim of liberating the human race from slavery. You must find and destroy the thirty Sentinel Bases scattered across the galaxy.

You view the console of the alien ship, which has a large central viewscreen about which eight icons are grouped. Using these icons you can call up one of two onboard computers; check your status; access maps; launch a probe onto the surface of the planet your ship is orbiting; hyperspace to another planet or system; view communications; or return to the main display, which shows the moving surface of the planet which you're orbiting.

The first computer controls the game itself, allowing you to save a position out to tape, load a previous position in, quit the current game or go to a help screen. The second computer holds information on the planets and allows you to view maps of the landscapes to be found on their surfaces.

Your status is recorded as a percentage rating for shields and a ratio of hits over shots loosed off which is part of the scoring system for the whole game. You can see how you're doing via the status icon, which displays a graph on the viewscreen. Messages are displayed if the communications icon is selected and a horizontal window is used for scrolling details of planet systems and mission outcomes. Icons flash to indicate that you should select them.

Each of the 100 planet systems in the game contains three worlds and the map icon provides you with a means of choosing which planet or system you wish to visit next. Once the choice is made, accessing the hyperspace mode via the icon takes you to a hyperjump display sequence; then the viewscreen reverts to the display of planetary orbit you've arrived at your destination and it's time to launch a shuttle. Shuttle launch is achieved via the appropriate icon, and then the whole screen changes to the combat mode you pilot the shuttle in a mission, travelling along the surface of the planet you are exploring, which scrolls down vertically.

You have five shuttles to go exploring with contact with anything on a planet's surface destroys a shuttle and you must guide the shuttle between trees and other objects. Trees can't be blown away and part of each attack run requires you to negotiate a maze of trees. At the end of each arcade section you meet up with the mobile sentinel defenders and need to fight your way through an attack wave. If you run the gauntlet of planetary defences without losing a shuttle you will be returned to the mother ship if there is a Sentinel base on that planet it will be destroyed.

Changes between screens and modes are executed by a "wipe" sequence which moves out from the centre of the viewscreen, clearing the screen as it expands. Text messages generally appear in alien script and are then translated but some of them remain in the original script. The game's authors insist that useful information can still be gleaned from the untranslated messages... And the alien digital clock and the bottom of the viewscreen ticks off upwards!

COMMENTS

Control keys: icons accessed with Q computer 1, A computer 2, Caps Shift status, Z map, P launch probe, Enter hyperspace jump, Space communication, Symbol Shift main viewscreen
Joystick: Interface 2, Kempston, Cursor
Keyboard play: responsive, keys sensibly placed
Use of colour: very neat indeed
Graphics: very slick
Sound: spot effects, a little annoying at times
Skill levels: one
Screens: three hundred planets

Something about the game reminded me of Pole Position - the way the keyboard/interface options were given and the game over logo at the end. But it's got nothing to do with cars. This is a sort of shoot-em-up-overnite game where you have to cover some 300 play areas. I soon got bored with it, partly because of the ten second delay between ending one game and starting the next when I'd lost my five shuttles. Some of the graphics are outstanding - technically excellent - but overall there's not enough to do. Some may go mad over this, but I'll stick to Hacker.

Wow! The graphics on the console... The presentation of this game is excellent; from the loading screen through the main console and the way in which the alien script is translated to the hyperspace jump where the stars get bigger as they approach. But the actual arcade section, with scrolling trees and doobries, lacks polish and finesse. The scrolling speed varies noticeably depending on how much is on screen and the shoot em up sequences get monotonous after a while. Technically brilliant front end, leading to a vast playing area and mediocre game. Pity really - l couldn't be bothered to keep up the search for the bases...

Activision aren't exactly renowned for their Spectrum software, but XCEL is better than most of their games on the Spectrum. The graphics in the main ship are very impressive, but once the game on the surface of a planet starts it's little more than a glorified shoot em up. Playability wise it is enjoyable, but after a while it became boring and repetitive. As shoot em ups go this is quite good, but if you're after a game with lots of depth than forget this one l Sorry Activision, but you've a way to go yet...

Program Techniques
£7.95

Ain't it always the same? Every time you go to load up a new game there's someone looking over your shoulder. This time, he said to me wistfully, "You know what I'd really like to see is a souped-up version of Galaxians." I'd only been playing Xcel for a matter of moments when he started jumping up'n'down yelling, "That's it, that's it!"

But first the story so far - it seems that the Sentinels have muscled in on our galaxy and it's your job to muscle 'em back out again by destroying their thirty or so planets.

The game initially looks like an Elite clone. There you are orbiting a planet with the option of choosing your next destination. But pressing the fire button sends you off into a Xaivor-type game - just dodge the obstacles and shoot the aliens. Okay, I suppose, but it's a bit slow though never fear it's just for openers.

Next comes the bit when my mate had to be sedated. And for once the programmer's taken trouble over movements and formations. He's taken his cue from all those old westerns - the aliens form up into a circle. Tricky!

The graphics didn't quite live up to their original promise but you won't have time to take in the scenery as you're locked into a life-and-death shoot'em up! A treat for arcade addicts.

Publisher: Activision
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Cursor, Kempston. Sinclair

Few remember mankind's great achievement, a series of 30 planets constructed to protect their creators. They are called Sentinels and keep the balance of power in the galaxy.

Those planets have grown into conscious entities and have acquired a taste for power. Mankind has become too dependent on them and they must be destroyed.

First you must locate one on your sector map and then warp through hyperspace to go into orbit around it. The planet beneath the ship is shown in 3D at the centre of the main display. It rotates in a downward direction in relation to your ship.

Once you have arrived you can launch a shuttle which descends to the planet surface, ready to take on the alien fauna. You must shoot everything except the trees.

The alien hunt on the planet is the weakest part of the game. In the first 30 phase a downward scrolling movement is used to bring the aliens onto the screen. They are sitting targets.

XCEL depends heavily on graphics and not much else. The game is yet another version of Star Trek, Space Invaders and Centipede rolled into one. If you like turbo-charged graphics and hybrid plots the game will appeal to you. If, however, you are a battle-hardened hack you will find better shoot 'em ups on the market. Try Glass for one!

Label: Mastertronic
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

The future is going to be a pretty grim place if we believe the storylines of many computer games.

Xcel, from Mastertronic is a particularly doomladen example.

In the future, we are told, machines come to rule over people. It's pretty bad already, and we've only been going for a couple of minutes!

Anyway, after watching millions of your fellow human beings downtrodden by the evil and very tyrannical machines, you decide that enough is enough and you... (complete the sentence in no more than seven words)

Yeh. It's THAT storyline again. Deary me.

Right. Well, off you set in your stolen space-craft finger on the Fire button, heart in your mouth.

Your mission is to destroy everything mechanical. What ensues, therefore, is a shoot-em-up of moderately large proportions, guiding your craft through strange landscapes, ducking and weaving as if there's no tomorrow.

As soon as this stage is complete, you'll be confronted by swirling aliens who are very scary indeed. These guys swoop around and bomb with amazing ferocity. If you can work out a safe place to stay, you'll be OK.

Should you survive this level, it's back to a different maze of strange green things. This time, there are more dead-ends, and you'll have to take your chances with passages that look the most safe.

Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, and the fact that it's been done a million times before, Xcel is actually quite entertaining to play.

I'm not quite sure why, but the smoothness of the ship and the uncluttered screen and the top-bottom scrolling make the game 'feel' nice.

A large number of inventive touches (indicating that space left could have been used to improve gameplay) add to the general good feeling.

Xcel is neat. It scores zero on originality, but major points for good value for its 'nice' feel in play.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Program Techniques
PRICE: £7.95

This game is so well put together it's hard to fault it - but some parts of Xcel are so frustrating to play that it almost put this reviewer off totally.

But if you are a thinking zapper, you'll take to Xcel like an alien to hyperspace.

The basic idea of the game is this. Computers called Sentinels are ruling the universe and mankind has become a completely servile race dominated by the machines. You have stolen a spacecraft from the Oceania Museum of Technology - and are embarking on a deadly mission to destroy the Sentinels who inhabit 30 planets dotted around the galaxy. Each Sentinel is protected by venoms mechanical nestles.

You have to hyperspace around the galaxy, visit planets, find the Sentinel installations and destroy them. Sounds easier than it is.

You have two shipboard Computers, one which keeps you informed about the status of your craft, the other which tells you about the planets you have visited, a communications channel which you can call on for game play hints if you get into trouble, a hyperspace drive, a galactic chart and five attack shuttles which you use to make low level attack runs on the planets.

When you start the game, you get a view through the front screen of your ship with a planet spinning below. The screen is surrounded by icons representing the various functions described above. When the icon is flashing, your computer wants to tell you something.

To explore a planet you have to send a shuttle down to explore. Then the screen switches to a plan view - Dark Star style - of the planet's surface.

You fly your craft through a series of obstacles - zapping them as you go. Then the first wave of Sentinel defenders appear, Zalaga fashion, spiralling down at you dropping deadly bombs.

You have to fly your shuttle through a "maze" of trees and sometimes there seems to be no way out! If you're short on shuttles then this could be the end of the game for you. This reviewer managed to get through on about the fourth or fifth attempt - after visiting a number of planets to see if they were any easier! Immensely frustrating!!!

The game features some really nice graphic gimmicks - like the "communications" which appear in "computerese" then get translated into English by your shipboard computer. And then there are the screen "wipes" which happen when you enter various stages of the game.

There's a useful help function which tells you just what all your controls can do for you and that communications link which gives game tips as you play. So many nice touches - shame about those trees.

Xcel is a really well presented game - one of the best on the shelves right now. If someone can tell us how to master the trees we'll give it a Blitz rating! Play it before purchasing.

MACHINES: Spectrum 48/128/Amstrad
SUPPLIER: Mastertronic
PRICE: £1.99
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum

This game was originally released a few years ago by a company called Program Techniques at an asking price of £7.95. Now Mastertronic has brought the copyright and re-released it. This not only makes the game excellent value but will be one of the best budget games of the year.

When you take out the cover to have a look at the instructions you will wonder why there is so much. But you will need to read them all to get the idea of the game before you start playing. Included with the instructions is a very informative background to the game.

The game has that nice basic ingredient of shoot anything that you want to, but you cannot destroy the trees. You also have a hit/miss ratio so your aiming has to be spot on. On most of the planets that you visit immaculate control of the spaceship is required, to get you through some very tight spots. If a sentinel base is on the planet that you are visiting, and are good enough, you will see it blow up at the end of the playing area.

There are over 300 planets for you to discover (that save option will come in handy after all), this is spread over 100 systems. Some of the planets may seem similar, as some are mirror images of earlier planets. Out of these 300 planets you have to locate the 30 sentinel planets and destroy them. So this turns out to be a very big search operation and you will have a one in ten chance of finding a planet. The map option will certainly come in handy to show what you are in store for. When you decide to send a probe down to the planet use the "P" key instead of the stated "O" key.

The graphics may be a little dated but beats much of the software that is just being released. The scrolling is very smooth in all parts of the program, especially the landscape and map screen.

On the main screen the planet of your choice is seen rotating. Occasionally an alien message may decide to appear on the screen, which will take a lot of decoding to be able to understand it. No sound has been included in the game so you will have to make your own explosion sounds.

On the whole Xcel is a game that is well worth the asking price, and will keep you amused for a few weeks at least. Shame about those that bought it when it was first released, they are missing the bargain of the year.

Spectrum 48K
Program Tecniques
Shoot-'em-up
£7.95

After one of the prettiest loading screens in Spectrum history, you would expect a pretty devastating game. A log zaps in from both sides of the screen, wow, this must be some game, you start orbiting a planet ready to whiz down onto the surface for a dazzling 3D shoot-'em-up, right? Sorry, wrong.

As long as you don't actually try to play this game, you might think it was something pretty special, but underneath it all is a sort of cross between Zalaga, Galaxians, and every other shoot-'em-up all the way back to Space Invaders. There is a spurious plot and a lot of spurious alien writing which you're meant to pick up clues from, but the guts of the game are to shoot anything that moves, or, on other screens, avoid the trees - simple really.

Mastertronic
£1.99

XCEL was originally released as a full price game about a year ago and it didn't exactly set the world alight, however as a budget title it's worth a look if you're into shoot 'em ups. The game has a few bells and whistles attached in the form of some icons, but these don't really shift the emphasis of the game from much other than straightforward alien blasting.

The action takes place on a group of planets which are controlled by Sentinel computers and it's up to you to fly from planet to planet bombing everything in sight in order to return control to the human population. You fly over the scrolling surface of the planets, avoiding trees and other objects in order to blast the computers' control centres, and after each bombing run there's a Galaxians style wave of attacking aliens.

The action isn't as fast and furious as some other shoot 'em ups, and at times the game looks a little dated, but there are about 300 planetary locations to blast your way through so at least there's a fair bit of variety in the game. Mind you, I did find it a bit irritating that each time you get killed you have to go right back to the start of a particular sequence (rather than carrying on from where you got killed), which means that you can find yourself going over the same screens over and over again.

Still, the game is nicely presented and at £1.99 is much better value than when it was first released.