Mega Apocalypse

Synthesised speech back then was kind of a big deal - but the feats of audio legend Rob Hubbard knew no bounds when it came to the C64, and somehow he even managed to devise a means of overlaying the crystal clear speech on top of one of his trademark three channel tunes.

All this and a great game too. As the follow-up to the neglected-but-promising Crazy Comets, Mega Apocalypse was easily the most impressive game ever to emerge from the rather patchy Martech stable (a cottage industry publisher, based in Pevensey Bay, East Sussex, no less), and, hilariously, was referred to at the time by critics as being retro. In 1987.

The gameplay was utterly compulsive, and charming in a hypnotic, repetitive, one-note kind of way. The idea was simply to shoot all the approaching planets, by guiding your triangular-shaped spaceship around the lower portion of the twinkling starfield.

There was a fine risk-reward balance, with more points gained from waiting until the planets were nearer to you, but if you waited too long, it'd require more shots to take them down - oddly. With approaching planets continually joining the scene, you'd risk having to dodge your way through several of them - but you could always use your stock of missiles to get yourself out of trouble.