The Hit Squad
£3.99 re-release

The evil Emperor Bios, God Of Destrucion, has created eight little demonic helpers to destroy all the planets in the known universe. But the angry minds of the massacred millions have created two super soldiers who must defeat three of Bios's gods before facing the big guy himself. So, alone or with a friend, you blast your way through the four levels that make up the game.

Level one is titled City-Scape (for obvious reasons) and our brave hero begins his slaughter of Bios's minions before facing a big end-of-level baddy. You're armed with a low-powered laser gun but, by collecting up the blue coins left by the destroyed creatures, you can enter the weapon shops and purchase homing missiles, napalm bombs, V-cannon and more.

Forgotten Worlds received a CRASH Smash when first reviewed but I was never overly fond of the game. My main moan is that it's too easy to get through; even the end of level monsters don't pose much of a problem…

Graphically, it's pretty good, but what's the use of nice visuals if the playability just isn't there.

US Gold/Capcom
£8.99/£12.99

The civilised world is in dire peril. The evil Emperor Bios has created eight generally nasty gods with a distinct liking for destroying anything that looks remotely humanoid. Someone has to stop them, and quickly, before more mighty cities are transformed from bustling centres of activity into empty Forgotten Worlds.

It would seem that millions and millions of very worried and angry people can do some very impressive thing, if they concentrate hard enough, and I don't just mean an 'A' in French, either. No, projected from the minds of the distraught last survivors of the human race comes... Nick Roberts...! No, no, get off, Nick, I'm writing this. Comes... two mega 'ard warriors, ready to tackle the greatest challenge (except Navy Moves), and generally ward off evil and save the universe; yer average superheroes, really.

Their task is to destroy every last speck of evil in the universe - that means Bios and all his demi-gods, the Golden Dragon, the God of Destruction, and the Paramecium. Maybe they could clean up the CRASH office while they're at it...

Five levels confront the daring player of Forgotten Worlds. In each there's a horde of alien monsters, some of whom leave behind a blue blob - a Zennie coin in reality - which can be traded in the shop for all sorts of goodies: extra firepower, weapons, cans of Coke (well, maybe not).

Forgotten Worlds has an innovative control method, allowing you to swing around and fire in different directions by using left and right with the fire key pressed. Without fire pressed, controls react normally.

Though Forgotten Worlds has comparatively poor graphics, its gameplay is very good; the feel of the hit Capcom arcade machine has been represented to the highest level one could expect. Despite the fact that the scenario and game elements have been used one zillion times before (with the exception of the rotational shooting), it's addictive and playable, and though a touch pricey at nine quid, it should be considered by everyone!

MIKE

Forgotten Worlds is smarter than the average shoot-'em-up. With its excellently defined sprites, smooth animation and scrolling it's an absolute joy to play. This is one of the few shoot-'em-ups to incorporate diagonal scrolling (wow!). On later levels - and with aliens flying at you from all directions - it's a real challenge. The shop sequences are quite well done and extra weapons bought there (with your hard-earned Zennies) really help in the mindless destruction. I have a couple of niggles: the aliens you fight are not varied enough and sound is sparse. Otherwise Forgotten Worlds decidedly lives up to the standards we have come to expect from US Gold.
NICK

US Gold
£8.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

I must admit, I wasn't too sure about this one. As I remembered it the Capcom original was simply too fast, too frantic and too flash to make much sense on the Speccy.

I'm still humming and ha-ing about it. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good game by any standard, you can clearly see the effort that's been put in here. It's all very colourful (mainly red), well paced and atmospheric, with lovely smooth scrolling. We're looking at top notch Speccy programming, all right.

However, two things worry me, the first being the control mechanism (see handy dandy box), the second being the way your lives are connected to a slowly falling energy level - a system I feel works far better in the arcade. Each hit you take saps only a tiny portion of your energy, of which you have quite a lot, so the immediate fear of dying is taken away. When your energy does eventually run out it comes as a surprise and you're left saying 'What hit me?' It's uncomfortably close to the pointlessness of playing a game with an infinite lives cheat mode.

Otherwise the game is fab, one of the very best shoot 'em ups, if not quite up to the standard of the marvellous R-Type. There you are, flying along with your jet pack and a big gun, shooting everything that comes your way. All fine and dandy, set as it is against an intricate backdrop of crumbling post-apocalyptic skyscrapers, with the occasional smattering of tubing, spinning cog wheels and other industrial stuff thrown in. In fact, not unlike a recurring nightmare I used to have when I was about five years old (but that's another story).

Touch the cogs or the moving walls and your energy level drops frighteningly, but not half as badly as it does if you plough into the waves of aliens that come right at you. These start as little space ships that come in predictable attack patterns and are easily lined up and disposed of, but soon get far larger, more varied and trickier.

As normal with these things you start off rather under-armed, but soon fix this by visiting one of the handy weapons shops that pop out of the ground below you. Here you can spend the little blue tokens you've hopefully collected from dead aliens on things like four way lasers, first aid and the like. One of the best is a ball thing that floats in front of you, protecting you from aliens and firing in all directions.

This is particularly useful for taking out the most bizarre of the alien waves, a nightmarish dance of what looks like a giant geometry set. Sit in the middle of the circle that these dancing set squares, compasses and protractors form and you'll be able to do a fair amount of damage without too much risk to yourself.

Finally you get a large end-of-level alien, which from my experience didn't tend to do much, but was very hard to kill. There are four of these ('cos there are four levels, see) and from playing the arcade I should think the Smoke Dragon is the meanest, though on the Speccy who can tell?

Playing Forgotten Worlds is a bit of a strange experience in that for much of the time you feel like a pinball on a giant table, wacked out of control by aliens, bounced around by the giant cogs (they suck you in and bash you about a bit) and your own ineptitude with the control mechanism. It's a bit of a different experience from most Spectrum shoot 'em ups, much more arcady in feel, and despite my few quibbles easily ranks amongst the best blasting games.

REPLAY

Out goes Barg B, and in comes something nearly exactly the same (but covering the rereleases). PILLAR AND PELLEY remain your hosts.

Kixx
£3.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

I remember this one! Way back in the mists of time, when the SAM Coupe was still no more than a SAM hatchback and Sir Clive Sinclair was dating Bernadette (yes, that long ago!), US Gold brought this out as a full price £9.99 game. Some raved about it, others raved at it, still others said "Just what the hell does it mean in the Grand Scheme of Everything anyway?". But, far more importantly, what did YS say? I can't remember.

The basic idea is to fight your way (and a friend can fight his way too if you're in two-player mode) through the four Forgotten Worlds (planets that have been occupied and emptied of life by the Grand Baddy) and kill three demigods to get to Emperor Bios, the God of Destruction. Knock him off and you've finished the game. As with so many shoot-'em-ups, of course, when translated into English this reads "go away and blast the crap out of anyone and anything you see - and don't come back until one of the sides in this little war is extinct". On the way, of course, you can pick up money left by dead baddies (it's called Zennies - isn't that what they had in Black Tiger?) and use it to buy bigger and better weapons in the shops half way through each level.

Standard shoot-'em-up material, you might say, but the slight 'rush-job' feel to it meant it wasn't quite good enough for a full priced game. Which means it makes for a much more compensating budget buy. Featuring all the normal, um, features of a mega-amazing sideways blast, and more! Full colour, shops with add-on weapons, 128K music, eight-way firing, two (count them - two!) players at once and, best of all, no brain power needed at all - just blow everything away. It's quite brill, really, although the slightly Wacko Jacko control system (i.e. you can't fire and move at the same time or you'll end up twirling all over the place and pointing the wrong way round) is a bit of a prob. Not the best re-released shoot-'em-up ever, but still a promising contender. Has Christmas come early this year? (Er, no. It's still summer. Ed)

Label: Capcom
Author: In-house
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Bit of a weird title, this. I was expecting cavemen and dinosaurs and Doug McLure (you already mentioned the dinosaurs - yak). But no, there isn't a fossil in sight. All shiny surfaces and mysterious high-tech aliens. Yes, indeed, this is more like the US Gold we know and love (hem hem).

No messing about waiting to get started here. No thankyou, you're straight into the action, armed with the biggest laser rifle available in Halfords and a pair of sunglasses and haircut to put even the most trendy space-marine to shame. There's a backpack too, to keep you in the sky - the ground is no safe place any more and the aliens will corner you if possible, so it's of paramount importance that you keep moving.

The first wave of bad guys isn't too bad. Straight-forward attack waves coming from different vertical positions straight across the screen.

Just line up and keep firing. As soon as you decide to shifty position, though, you'll have to get to grips with the slightly wacky control options. While the direction keys carry out their normal function, moving while depressing the fire button (oh, I'm so depressed) will swing the gun, clockwise or anti - around your body. The screenshots should show you what I mean. Until you remember to let go of the fire button, which is a bit tough in a white-knuckle-everyone-must-die situation, or you become precise enough with the gun-sweep to judge exactly when to stop moving while still leaving the gun pointing in sensible direction, you'll find the aliens continually crashing into you while your equipment is facing the other way. Eyurk.

As well as the usual hazards of flying aliens and other generally predictable confrontations, you'll have to watch the scenery all the time. Huge Gigeresque pillars lurch out of the cavern wall at you, and horrid mechanical cog things grind away at you. Very Metropolis.

Attribute collision has been thrown to the wind and there's no problems distinguishing who the bad guys are. Everybody is a bad guy, and they all deserve to die ha HAAAA!

Pretty soon you'll have had about as much fun as there is to be had shooting aliens with a single-shot rocket. Time to TOOL UP!

As if by magic, a shop slowly rises out of the ground, luring you in with its glowing "Shop" sign. Quickly you've got to dive down and go in. You'll be presented with icons offering different weapon configs. You know, four-way fire/lasers etc. You can't just get the weapons for nothing, of course, so it's a good job whenever you blew away a bad guy on the way you collected the glowing blue globule that he left behind. Tokens. The more you collect, the fabber the weapon you're entitled to.

I like Forgotten Worlds. I like it stacks. There's lots to kill, lots of colour and even big end-of-level baddies to combat. There are also really weird bits when aliens that look like pieces from geometry - compasses, protractors and the like, perform a nightmarish dance about the screen. They're all as deadly as hell and need about five shots to defeat. Once you've taken out the end-of-level bad guy; each being a minor set-piece, you progress to the next, tougher stage.

Graphically it's super, and there's no danger of things slowing down even when there's loads going on. A corker!

Amiga £19.99, ST £19.99, Amstrad £9.99, Spectrum £9.99, C64 £9.99

After two disappointing Christmas releases, Last Duel and LED Storm, US Gold's Capcom conversion label has returned with a vengeance with home versions of the stunning one or two-player coin-op, Forgotten Worlds.

The plot is fairly superficial; merely an excuse for one or two hardened jet-packers to fly a suicide mission deep into horizontally scrolling enemy territory. Complete death and destruction is the order of the day - fill anything that moves full of photon bolts, blast anything that isn't moving, terminate all life forms with extreme prejudice and take absolutely no prisoners.

The let-packers start the mission with fairly standard plasma guns. When aliens are blasted, some of them drop blue orbs, which are collected to boost the player's cash total.

Dotted around the landscape are shops, where extra weapons are purchased. There are plenty of groovy add-ons available - mini satellites which follow behind the warriors and emulate their fire, napalm bombs, two-way fire, speed-ups and morning missiles amongst other things. Naturally, the better things are, the more they cost - so spend wisely.

The extra weapons are a necessity if you are to survive the alien defence system. Hordes of flying lizards whizz about, aircraft let rip with bullets and ground installations attempt to pump you full of laser fire. Each hit sustained knocks chunk off your bar - and should it fall to zero, the mission ends.

At the end of each of the game's six levels resides a large and grisly guardian which is destroyed to progress to the next level. On level one it's a bio-machine which sits out laser bolts; level two sees an enormous dragon attempt to roast the intrepid duo, or grab them with his deadly claws.

The going is certainly tough, with fast and furious action and a myriad of creatures, gun emplacements and pieces of machinery to blast into the middle of next week.

On the Amiga, the graphics are wonderful, with beautifully-drawn parallax scrolling backdrops and excellent alien sprites. It's an absolutely stunning conversion - the best I've seen from US Gold - and is easily THE BEST Amiga shoot 'em up to date.

Spectrum and Amstrad versions are of similar high quality. The graphics are colourful and smooth, and there's plenty of action to keep blast 'em up fanatics on their toes - the brilliant two-player mode is the icing on the cake. Forgotten Worlds won't be forgotten in a hurry!

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Atari ST £19.99
Amiga £19.99

NEVER MAKE A DESTRUCTIVE GOD ANGRY

Across all formats Forgotten Worlds comes across primarily as an ace shoot-'em-up (particularly excellent in two-player mode) polished to sparkling perfection by its superb graphics. The 16-bit versions, with all the flashy trimmings, have the advantage but even the humble Spectrum gives its all.

The Forgotten Worlds of the title are in a sorry state, mere playthings for a jealous god, Bios, emperor of all the worlds and the Almighty God of Destruction created eight lesser gods of pure evil, and together they wreaked terrible vengeance on the worlds. The carnage has reduced the worlds and their peoples to little more than far-distant memories.

But although Bios may have broken their backs, the inhabitants' spirit remains undiminished. Now the Forgotten Worlds try to fight back through a mind-melding which forms two psychic allies - super warriors destined to fight Bios to the death and defeat his guardians as they do so.

Even super warriors face some tough going when up against Bios's bodyguards - the Golden Dragon, The God of Destruction and the Paramecium, all vying for a firstclass conflict at the end of each level.

The two macho men of the future weave their warring route through horizontally and vertically scrolling levels, wasting all before them; business is good in this particularly violent neck of the woods. The action kicks off in the Paramecium level as the warriors jetpack through the first of many ruined cities pitted against aliens, missiles and just about the lot, all rushing to aid their wrathful leader in eradicating all intruders.

The aliens are loaded - literally - not only with weaponry but cash as well. So killing them is good for defence and profit as you pick up their dropped coins called Zennies. Collected cash can be put to good use, for despite all the destruction, amid the ruins a shop still stands where weapons, armour, lives and top-up energy can be bought.

Your adversaries become extremely unpleasant as your two warriors penetrate ever further into the enemy's defences, robotic spiders, killer cogs (!), gigantic leaping worms, stacked up garbage and other detritus prove more than a handful without the several thousand other aliens flying around.

Talk of the destroyed town are the awesome behemoth opponents at levels' ends - from the Paramecium with its rotating garbage clawing at the good guys to the Dust Dragon breathing fire. And any who survive his minions must finally face the almighty Bios, God of Destruction, in all his death-dealing glory. Super warriors only need apply to save the Forgotten Worlds in one frantic battle for supremacy.

If Forgotten Worlds is anything to go by, the rest of the Capcom releases look set for unrivalled success - roll on Strider and the others!