Red Rat Software
£19.95
Screaming Wings from Red Rat is another game to be
converted across to the ST from the eight bit micro's. The game is
basically a vertically scrolling shoot 'ern up, loosely based on the
arcade machine '1942', however the ST version has been brought up to
date. Instead of old World War Two planes, you now fly in a '520ST
Strike Fighter', which, in the instruction booklet, looks remarkably
similar to an F16 strike fighter.
The game loads with a fairly good picture of a jet fighter flying
towards you with the Red Rat and the Screaming Wings logos behind
it. Accompanying this picture is a digitised tune which although
fairly good quality, is a little monotonous being just a bassy
guitar sound repeating itself over and over.
Once the game has loaded you are shoot as many enemy
planes as possible, and to pick up various features (such as
shields) for your plane along the way. Shields only last for a short
time, but enable you to fly anywhere without being shot out of the
sky. A 'drone' plane can also be activated which flies along with
you and shoots whenever you do. This particular feature is very
useful when there are a lot of enemy aircraft about. A bomb enables
you to destroy all enemy fighters on the screen by hitting the space
bar, and finally you can pick up a 'rapid fire' icon.
Upon completing a level you must first destroy the large enemy
bomber by shooting it many times, before landing at the airfield.
Having landed, another distorted voice says 'Good shooting' and
greeted by a cheerful voice telling you that 'Red Rat software
proudly presents...' followed by a distorted voice sounding like
somebody yelling `Screaming Wings' with a mouth full of corn flakes.
Pressing the fire button on the joystick causes the game logo to
disappear and the computer screams something totally unrecognisable,
which no matter how many times I hear it I can't work out what it
says!
The graphics in 'Screaming Wings' are clear and colourful, as are
the sprites which are reasonably well animated. The background shows
the sea and the islands above which the action takes place and
scrolls by extremely smoothly. It's nice to see one of the cheaper
British titles with scrolling that doesn't make your eyes hurt.
The aim of the game is merely to you are rewarded for the number of
planes you have shot down. When you are finally killed the familiar
'Game Over' comes up on the screen, and a squeaky voice yells "Game
over man,...game over!". If your score was good enough, you can put
your name in the high score table, but before doing this, the guy
with the corn flake problem comes back and says something
unintelligible again!
Overall it's not a bad little game which is reasonably playable.
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