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| Welcome
to Game of the Week! Each week there will be a
new featured game on this page. The game may be good,
average or diabolically bad, it really doesn't matter!
Just look at the pics, read the text and enjoy the nostalgia!
:-) Game of the Week! is open to contributions so if you
would like to contribute
a game article for this page you're more than welcome
to! Every article we receive will be considered! |
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Vortron
1985 Budgie
Programmed
by Ian York
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| Most
text of the present article comes from the review published
in the sixth issue of the British C64 magazine ZZAP!64
(October 1985). |
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VORTRON
Budgie/Alligata,
£2.99 cass, joystick only
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Vortron is a rather unusual shoot em up from
Budgie, and the second one in their new range. It's
the usual 'defend your planet against the invasion forces'
stuff but has a few nice twists in the gameplay that
make it quite an unusual little game to play.
You
control of a thingy of indeterminate structure, a sort
of alien that shoots laser bombs. In the middle of the
screen is a planet and this is what you fire at. Aliens
come from all sides of the screen and you have to blast
them, quite tricky with the way the firing works.
Some
pretty neat manoeuvring is needed to blast them all,
especially on higher levels where the aliens are fair
whizzing around the place and it's up to the old manual
dexterity and reflexes to keep you alive. The best tactic
is to keep to the edges of the screen, although not
close enough for you to be taken by surprise when an
alien bursts onto the screen. Watch out, too, for the
strange gravity conditions and inertia that send your
thingy tumbling all over the screen if you're not concentrating
properly.
Once
all the aliens have been shot (a set number shown at
the beginning of each screen) you can enter a transporter
and automatically go to the next level, and there are
nine in all.
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Vortron
is yet another nicely presented budget blast'em up.
The firing mechanism is neat and, despite its apparent
awkwardness, it is very easy to master. Even though
Vortron
is a regular zap-the-different-aliens-with-different-movement-patterns
game, there's enough different combinations and permutations
to keep things interesting. Shame about the sound effects,
a nice little background tune would have livened things
up a bit. Movement is good and smooth, though there's
no animation involved. An annoying feature is the large
pause between losing a ship and starting play again.
Vortron
is a pleasant game which is fun to play, but I'm a bit
dubious about it's lasting appeal. Still, for the money
it's a bargain.
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You
may think shoot em ups are a thing of the past
-- or should be! But this budget game from Budgie/Alligata
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just
goes to show what can be done with a good simple
idea and by ringing a few changes. What at first
looks simple to play (and get high scores on)
turns out to be rather more difficult, and the
way the aliens hurtle at you from all over the
place is satisfyingly mean. But what really makes
this little game into a bigger one is the fact
that your fire power can only be aimed at the
planet in the middle; which means you have to
dart all over the screen to be able to fire at
the aliens you want to hit. In fact, this is a
far better game, in my opinion, than Alligata's
Shoot
Em Up.
It's certainly worth forking out three quid for.
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Presentation 67%
No instructions, but then
the game is simple.
Graphics
63%
Simple, but effective graphics.
Sound
58%
Just blasting sounds.
Hookability
85%
Especially with the interesting
firing.
Lastability
61%
Good fun, but does get repetitive.
Value
For Money 81%
A nice shoot em up for
three quid.
Overall
71%
Good ol' fashioned blasting.
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Htmlized by Dimitris
Kiminas (10 Mar 2003)
Other
"Games of the Week!"
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