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 Informatique, 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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3

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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4

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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0

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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Anarchy
(Rack It, 1988)

Shoot all the blocks on each level whilst avoiding the monsters, and then when you've done that, find the exit block with an inability to fire! You also can't shoot blocks if you're next to them – you have to get a run at them, if you see what I mean. The graphics are a bit simple but they do the job, as do the sound effects and the music. It's still a good game to play with some tight time limits, although the keyboard controls are really awkward.

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7

An android has been sent to shut down a nuclear reactor which is going to explode. You have to battle and blast your way through 14 screens containing mutant monsters, and when you reach the reactor and shut down, you've got to make your way back to the screen where you started from. The game is absolutely awful, though, with ridiculously simple graphics and sound effects, and it's also too hard.

See also: Android 2.

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3

A new menace has come to invade an alien planet. You control the new improved Android 2, and have to clear five Millitoids from three zones – the Maze of Death, the Paradox Zone, and the Flatlands – within a time limit. You've also got to avoid walking into the indestructible robots and stepping on the many mines scattered about the zones. The graphics are fairly basic, the sound effects are poor, and the animation and scrolling are jerky, all of which lessen the appeal of a game which could otherwise have been reasonably good.

See also: Android One.

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Andy Capp
(Mirrorsoft, 1987)
Reviewed by John Beckett

Based on the popular Daily Mirror comic strip, you control flat-capped layabout Andy. The aim of the game is to find out who has stolen your dole money. You do this by wandering around the vast neighbourhood, quizzing your mates, while at the same time finding ways to line your pockets until your giro turns up. You can have a flutter at the bookies, even – heaven forbid – go to the Job Centre! On top of this, you've been barred from your local, and the police are after you – just another day in the northeast of England! The graphics retain the charm of the comic, but are very grey and dull, and on the whole, although it's different and fun for a while, the game soon becomes rather boring.

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6

Angel Nieto won thirteen motorcycle World Championships in the 50cc and 125cc classes back in the 1970s and 1980s, so why you ride a 500cc motorbike in this game is a mystery to me. Anyway, you're competing with ten other riders in the World Championship, with four tracks to race in. Yes, there are only four tracks! Despite this, it's actually a pretty good game. There are no qualifying sessions and you automatically start last in each race, but you can practice each track beforehand. The graphics are very good and it's not too slow either, although the engine noises aren't very realistic at all.

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