Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Insight (Peter Gough)

Alien faces are seeking to take control of Earth and have invaded in great numbers. It's one fighter plane against a myriad of alien craft... a pilot's lot is not a happy one. Wave after wave of nestles come towards the lone plane, determined to zap you out of the sky. Survival depends on swift reactions and deadly aim.

The screen scrolls from right to left, your fighter plane staying near the left hand edge of the screen so that there's a clear view of the alien forces and time to try and dodge their lethal missiles. The action takes place over a broad blue river - on the far bank the scenery changes from mountains to cities to forests and back to mountains again.

The nasties come in a variety of forms and colours and dance about as they approach. Not only must their missiles be avoided but a collision can also cause your plane to explode. Fortunately, you are equipped with limitless missiles and powerful shields which together provide formidable protection. Your fuel supply, however, is not limitless - the amount left is shown in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

Once all the aliens in a wave have been killed, the game proceeds to the next level. Sometimes, no missiles are involved at all and it's a matter of weaving and dodging your way through a barrage of rota-droids and meteors. Most lethal of all, however, are the heat-seeking Mutile missiles which are very accurate.

Periodically, a mother ship appears and a successful docking restores fuel and shield power. This makes it possible to proceed to even higher levels and pit wits with even swifter and more deadly alien swarms. Should the docking fail, then you are forced to move on to the next level with less protection and less energy, making your chances of survival slender. The docking procedure must be very accurate - if you're slightly out and miss the jaws of the mothership, then the plane explodes.

Eight points are awarded for shooting an enemy craft: twenty five, fifty, or seventy for a Mutile and more for successful docking. Bonus points are awarded for docking and completing waves. The score, lives remaining and shield power are all indicated in the status area at the base of the screen.

A high score guarantees you a place in the Buccaneer Hall Of Fame so it's possible to see how you fare against the best. Time to save the world from alien invasion again, pilot!

COMMENTS

Control keys: redefinable: pause, abort, up, down, fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: reasonable
Use of colour: quite good, but clashes occur often
Graphics: flickery sprites, but nice parallax scrolling
Sound: limited to spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling levels

At base level, this is just a polished Scramble without the hills. The graphics, with the exception of the fantastic parallax scrolling, are flickery and rather unattractive, and the game, although playable, gets pretty boring after a while. The docking section is too easy, and the missile attacks frustrating, as they materialise when you're halfway through a screen. INSIGHT did better with Vectron, and I would recommend that they stick with products of that quality, 'cos I don't like Buccaneer much.

When I heard that this was from the people behind Vectron, I nearly flipped. How can a company release a brilliant game like that and then produce something as sloppy and unplayable as this? As a rule, I'm very partial to good blasting nestles games as I'm sure many other people are, but I'm afraid that this one really isn't good enough to be compelling or playable. The graphics are fairly large and the screen scrolls from right to left nicely but there are plenty of attribute problems. The sound is about average for cheapo FIREBIRD games. Overall, it's not too bad for its price tag of two quid, but I started to get bored after a couple of goes.

Ho hum! Another budget game pretending to be a slick fast action shoot 'em up. Well you're not going to fool me mateys! The graphics are extremely flickery and move about in a very jerky manner. The sound is very basic and the colour is used much too lavishly - resulting in loads of attribute problems. I didn't find the game at all enthralling, mainly due to the fact that every screen has its own little flight pattern and it's easy to judge where the baddies are going to end up next. Then it's just a case of how fast you can press the fire button - which isn't very responsive. I found Buccaneer very boring to play and nothing like what I've come to expect from the top budget houses. Buccaneer is definitely a 'no no'.

Insight
£7.95

I haven't a buccan clue what is going on. It's a curious mish-mash of a jet fighter and space ship whizz-bang shoot 'em up arcade. This really is a cheapy in fairly expensive wolf's clothing. Your Buccaneer has up and down but no lateral movement during the early screens and a very slow fire response. But don't worry, the aliens are so moronic that often you can stay where you are and top 'em as they queue up. The quicker you blast, the quicker you move through the remarkably similar screens. Even the most amateur of arcaders will have been this way before.

The Buccaneer is all but redundant as a modern day fighting plane - as is this game compared to many excellent alternatives.

Firebird
£1.99

Sideways scrolling shoot 'em ups may be flavour of the month again, but this re-released cheapie didn't get my raspberries rippling. I scream every time I see it now.

This game doesn't even warrant a budget status as all it consists of is a ship which you can move up or down the left side of the screen and wave after wave of pretty boring aliens to zap. As far as playing goes, I found that you could kill most of the waves by just sitting in one place with the fire button down. Yawn!

Label: Firebird
Author: Team
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

I think Firebird must be trying to corner the market in the very, very tedious wave after wave genre of arcade game. The kind of thing we used to have to endure before people discovered how to program properly. Last month it was Cosmic Firebirds or some such, this time we have Buccaneer - 'you must shoot down all the aliens before progressing to the next wave,' it says in the blurb. They tell no lies.

We have aliens in various shapes including rabbits, cooking equipment and. most horrible of all, frogs. All seem to follow exactly the same attack formation (the bouncing up and down one), all fire missiles on a sporadic basis. Every so often a deadly heat seeking metallic thing comes flickering towards you. It's very threatening.

Sometimes you have to refuel by docking with a sort of silver boomerang, in later stages deadly meteors and Rota-droids which cannot be destroyed by your photon blasts (they look quite weedy actually) come hurtling towards you. By this time you probably won't care either way.

Graphics are tedious and can barely even be described as animated since all they do is waft up and down. The central playing area is blue, and the top and bottom edges depict a scrolling landscape that seems to belong to another game. I was so enthralled by Buccaneer I found myself reading the foreign translations of the box artwork. Did you know the Dutch (maybe it's Swedish) for "Shoot" is "Schiet". Seems appropriate.

Firebird Silver 199 Range
£1.99

I wondered when this one would make its appearance! I reviewed three games from a company called Insight some months ago and since then two of the three have been repackaged and marketed by Firebird. Now this completes the set.

Described as a challenging arcade game in the classic style it means just that. A game on the lines of the classic "Space Invaders" type, wave after wave of nasties to be shot at while they try to shoot or crash into you. The action is different in that you are supposedly flying a Buccaneer aircraft and the aliens attack horizontally on an earth based scrolling background.

Just the kind of game I love to finish off a night of mind stretching arcventure reviewing. Sit down and zap away mindlessly. There are some extra features to alleviate the mind numbing effect, a docking sequence and a dodging sequence but in the main it's a good old fashioned kill 'em all game.

At the original price of over seven pounds it was not worth having, but at the new £1.99 price it is the kind of program everyone should have, if only to compare how far the latest programs have progressed from the good old days.

Sophistication is out, but great fast and furious action survives with Buccaneer. Graphics and animation are average for this kind of game and sound bluzzes away merrily while colours clash cheerfully and death and destruction abound.

Not one for pacifists. You have five aircraft, or lives, and have to keep an eye on fuel and shield levels, controls are simply up, down and fire. Keyboard indentification and a full range of joystick options are included.

It's no good, I known I should hate this game and be all arty and snobbish but there is something about it which appeals to my inborn sense of mayhem. A no nonsense, out and out warmongering program to appeal to all our more basic instincts.