Vengeance - TLB Commodore 64 game

VENGEANCE

Despite ten years at the top of the gamer's popularity, the bog-standard "save the world, blast all in sight, but don't lose any of your three lives" style remains a significant part of the game. The key to completing Vengeance lies in the intellectual aspect. The objective is to board all eight different types of alien crafts and then, once aboard, locate and destroy their vital circuits. To achieve this, you need to shoot at the space station in the backdrop (this builds up your power) until you accumulate around five hundred power points. Power points are essential in this shoot 'em up, a formula that has been redesigned and occasionally improved upon by software houses who understand where the profit flows.

The game is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, with your fighter positioned at the bottom of the screen, allowing movement in any direction. Its twin-gun lasers are ready to blast a hole in the green slimeball's kidney.

Are you the type to eat a banana without peeling it? Are you the type to confront an army of deranged Bristol Rovers fans under the influence of potent West Country Scrumpy while proudly wearing your Bristol City scarf? (Yep, that's me! - Ed) (Liar! - Ad Man.) Are you the type with the guts to tell your headmaster where he can stick his detention?... If you answered yes, then you are the perfect fit for the mission presented in Vengeance.

Dare you pilot your nifty little spacecraft single-handedly and face the incoming alien onslaught? It may sound familiar, but this tacky scenario has been the backdrop for many a great shoot 'em up, so I won't complain until I uncover the facts.

Your first chance arises when a group of blue attackers heads straight toward you. I was forced to let three of those foes escape, as they had already passed beyond my line of fire. Just as I was preparing to take on another fleet with my bullet-proof ego, two metallic rust-buckets appeared on either side and filled me with photon death.

Once I got the hang of the game, I discovered that there was more to it than simply blasting everything that moves. You can also blast things that don't move, like the little squares on the space station backdrop. These squares are needed to board the ships and can consume anywhere from ten to a thousand power points, depending on their distance. After boarding a ship, your remaining power points become your allotted time on the ship. You must accumulate enough power to last at least a minute on each ship, providing sufficient time to locate these vital circuits. To find these circuits, you must use a small three-dimensional ship map that appears in the top right-hand corner. They show up as targets on the map, and on the main screen, you must align your shots to destroy them. But remember, time is of the essence.

Graphics: Neat. Even neater when I discovered that shooting a particular type of square grants a random bonus. Unlike other games where bonuses are awarded upon shooting icons, here, you have to earn them. You must catch the bonus as it descends at any point on the screen, often forcing you to execute seemingly impossible spirals to avoid local alien entities. The bonuses aren't particularly groundbreaking, but there are a couple of useful ones, such as extra lives, invincibility, or more powerful lasers, to be picked up.

"So that's it! Sounds like a pretty average blast, eh?" said one hardened shoot 'em up addict to another. "No, that's not it," replied a very handsome, modest, and particularly perceptive little games reviewer by the name of Hamilton. "Inside the crispy shoot 'em coating is a smooth, velvety, tasteful little arcade adventure. This is more than your average shoot 'em up."