Reviews

It's an conversion of an arcade shmup and it's not really too bad, I mean I love a good shmup and this where it probably wouldn't interest some people sure as heck interested me, but the hit sound is so irritating! It's the same constant sound throughout and it really does get irritating, it becomes a headache. Not bad all the same but I know I've played better games of this genre on the ZX Spectrum.

Converted from the eponymous Sega coin-op, Scramble Spirits is a competently made vertically scrolling shoot-em-up which came a bit too late at the party, so to speak; in 1990 the genre was already filled with plenty of titles and it ended up being slightly uninspiring. A standard example of its kind, with everything you would expect - power-ups, stage bosses etc. so if you like the genre, check it out. 7/10

It's another shooter, and another arcade conversion as it turns out. Sadly however, it has nothing to do with Scramble, instead it's a conversion of the Sega arcade game Scramble Spirits which I don't remember playing. Already I'm pissed off with these keys, T, F, Z. X, Space and then W to change formation, I hate this layout, no wonder Sinclair 2 is chosen by default. This is a game I must have come across at some point and it was exactly how I remember it, monochrome blue, meaty sound effects and fast and pretty smooth gameplay, smooth until there more enemies on screen that is, but still I've seen a lot worse framerate on these games compared to this. The keyboard controls aren't as bad as I anticipated but the up down keys are confusing, left and right isn't so bad and you can only change formation when you pick up another plane to fight alongside you but up and down was a major problem. So I then played with the the keys mapped to Kempston joystick, left and right are reversed and thus they now become the major problem. Perhaps I should have stuck with the default option of Sinclair 2 and finally the controls make sense third time around, except I'm still crap. It's not a terrible game but it's severely let down by a problem a number of these shooters have, Terra Cresta, Gemini Wing. Slap Fight to name a few, the bullets are quite transparent and hard to see, which makes progression all the more difficult, even if they give you five lives and five credits. I've played worse but it's no Flying Shark, so stick to that for shooty goodness.