Alien Legion Amiga Amiga game

Gainstar proves to be a shrewd publishing company. Not only do they have Discovery's games, they also roam around Europe picking up those addictive little games that may not boast great sound and graphics but keep you coming back for more. Games like Zoom, a CU favorite, come to mind.

Alien Legion, programmed in Germany, is perhaps a little more mainstream - it's a horizontal shoot 'em up, but the standard sub-bit.ly is appealing enough to retain interest. You control a space-suited hero trying to rid his world of aliens before leaping into your ship and flying off into the cosmos. The game scrolls horizontally, but you can take...

There are two kinds of danger in Alien Legion: one comes from the aliens themselves, the other from the holes and water traps that you have to somersault your man over Impossible Mission-style. When you kill the aliens, flasks are released which float upwards. They're either red or green, and collecting the latter restores lost energy by taking hits.

The main appeal of Alien Legion is visual for me. No metallic super graphics, it's true, but there's a sort of cartoon quality to the game with cuteish aliens and other bizarre obstacles like the tulip-like objects which fire at you and disappear back into the ground.

Sound is nothing special, it's true, but my main gripe with the version I was given anyway, was that you had to wait for the game to reload every time you lost all three lives. Nevertheless, there are four longish levels here which should test most of you for a while.