Scorpius

A demo of Scorpius by Arxe had pride of place on the November 1992 Archimedes World cover disk. Unfortunately, however, that's all that ever did appear of it since the full game was never released and Arxe have now moved on to other things. Nevertheless, this demo shows off the first level of what would have been a truly superb sideways scrolling shoot'em'up complete with brilliant graphics, masses of enemies to blast away at a whole host of power-ups to boot. The game area is large since as well as scrolling left and right it also moves up and down a bit - the demo's single level is big enough to keep you playing it for quite some time.

The demo has a ready powered-up ship facing ridiculous odds (the demo's actually quite hard) which you have to pilot through a vast array of baddies to kill the end-of-level baddy. As in any good shoot'em'up you can hold down the main fire button to power up your main weapon and release a furious fire ball, or hammer away at the keyboard to rapidly fire small rounds at the enemy. You must manoeuvre between closing gaps, lightning-streaks and hoards of bullets coming at you from all directions - easier said than done!

This is a truly stunning demo that leaves you dreaming of what might have been. A landmark in Acorn games, even so! (Unfortunately it only works on pre-Risc PC machines)

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