Our planet is once again being attacked by aliens, and a special squad known as Alien Busters is formed to save the day. In this game you may choose from three characters (Gordon, Scooter and Karla) who have different attributes and special moves, in order to complete six big levels, each of which is divided into several stages. Graphics are colourful MODE 0 with 16 colours on screen, and a lot of effort has been applied to make them look very detailed. The sound has a variety of effects which help the game maintain an atmosphere, and the main music theme is also fine. The gameplay is enjoyable because of the variety of players' moves, the good controls and the different gameplay stages of each level. You may have to face aliens in close combat or shoot them in first person perspective! Overall this is a very good and balanced game which you will most probably enjoy playing.

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This game was first released in the USA before it was released over here. As one might expect, it's based on the film of the same name, although unlike the UK version, which concentrates on one section of the film, the US version contains eight sub-games, each of which is inspired by a different section of the film. Unfortunately, the sub-games combine to make a rather unsatisfying and incoherent game. It starts off promisingly, with a nice comic book-style introduction and an easy first level in which you identify your equipment, but the second level, which sees you landing the drop ship, is almost impossible to complete. Thankfully there is a built-in cheat to allow you to select and play the other levels while you're playing this lousy game. The graphics in some of the sub-games are laughably bad as well.

See also: Alien, Aliens.

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Alphakhor
(Loriciel, 1989)

In the year 2006, a deadly virus is threatening humanity's existence. However, there was an outbreak of an identical virus in 1463, and it was stopped successfully. It's up to Xavier Nollevo, who has invented a time machine, to go back to the Middle Ages and save humanity! This is an adventure game where you must explore a mediaeval town in the search for the magic formula, helping various characters as you go along. You have to be careful, and eat and drink all the time, and watch your money as well. The pictures are excellently drawn, and while it's not a particularly large adventure, it'll keep you occupied for some time - provided you understand French, that is.

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The master of all Gods, Zeus, commands you to rise from your grave and rescue his daughter. How could you refuse? After all, Zeus will send you some power-ups to increase your fighting abilities. Whenever you collect a few of them, your character will turn into a beast - either a werewolf or a dragon, depending on which level you are playing. This is quite a bad coin-op conversion. You'll see graphics close to the original game, although the sprites lack definition. Apart from that, your character moves slowly, the scrolling is awful and hitting the enemies requires patience most of the time. There's a tune playing throughout the game, but it doesn't improve the overall impression of this game.

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4

The city of Amaurote has been invaded by a plague of giant insects, and rather than getting out a can of fly killer, you have to eradicate them by using bouncing bombs - and with 25 districts of the city to clear, that's some task. The first thing you should try to do is destroy the Queen insect with a Supa Bomb. The isometric view is impressive, but the use of bouncing bombs makes it very difficult to aim them at the insects, and you can't unleash another one until the first has exploded. The game is too difficult and takes much too long, but the music is arguably the best of any CPC game!

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You're the best marine in the Astro Marine Corps, and you've been sent to the planet Dendar to rescue some of your fellow marines. Dendar is host to all manner of horrible monsters and robots, but fortunately you're armed with a huge gun that'll sort most of them out, and you've got a supply of grenades too. There is also a healthy range of power-ups to collect. In short, it's your usual sci-fi shoot-'em-up, but this one is good. The graphics are absolutely luscious, the scrolling is fast, and the explosions when you kill monsters are great. It would get a higher mark if the levels were shorter.

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Amélie Minuit
(ERE, 1985)
Reviewed by Guillaume Chalard

Amélie is a young woman who works in a skyscraper. She figures out that she has forgotten an important file and decides to return to her office. But it's 11pm and she's got only one hour to find it. At midnight, the building will be closed and the power turned off. There are 29 floors and 224 rooms to explore, and the lift randomly stops, wasting precious time. Amélie must find her glasses, keys, and other items to reach her goal. Now, I doubt you'll have the patience to help her. The graphics are dull; every room looks like the previous one. Amélie looks like she's made of matches and even at the fastest speed, the game is desperately slow. To make things even worse, you have to be exactly in front of a door to open it - and there are 336 doors to open!

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Drive your car around six obstacle courses while avoiding other cars, as well as the bombs that are dropped by 'planes and helicopters. You'll have to memorise each course thoroughly - if you don't, you'll probably reach a dead end and have to reverse your car, which costs so much time that you'll have to start again anyway. The graphics are average and while the tune is excellent, there are hardly any sound effects, and your car is totally silent. It's quite a slow game as well and not really worth bothering about.

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Amstrad Rovers take on IJK United in the worst football game that has ever been released on the CPC. There are only four players in each team, and none of them can run fast enough to catch up with the ball, which bounces around the pitch like it's on ice; it doesn't have any friction at all! Every time the ball moves past the edge of the screen, you have to wait for several seconds while the screen scrolls to reveal the next section of the pitch. Scoring goals is more or less impossible, and the graphics and sound effects are abysmal. How on Earth such an awful game was ever released is beyond me.

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This is a collection of eight card games, with two separate parts containing four games each. The first part contains the traditional game of patience, where you arrange cards in columns in descending order and alternating suit colours, as well as clock patience (a bit boring), row patience (much more interesting), and pairs (a memory game). The second part contains the more complex games - carpet patience (much too easy), raglan patience (a much harder variant of traditional patience and very hard to get anywhere), sultan patience (which uses two packs of cards and is quite challenging), and blackjack. If you're familiar with patience, you should be able to learn the rules easily and enjoy some of the games a lot - I certainly did.

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