
Galaxians ZX81 Review: The Formation Fights Back
Artic brings Namco’s diving-formation shooter to the ZX81: the enemies leave the ranks and come for you personally.

Artic brings Namco’s diving-formation shooter to the ZX81: the enemies leave the ranks and come for you personally.

Konami’s frog reached the ZX81 in its arcade year, courtesy of Cornsoft — a game that thinks in squares, on a screen made of squares.

Sinclair’s own Space Invaders at £3.95 with Bomber on the B-side: unambitious, well made, and on the shelf of every new ZX81 owner in 1982.

Carnell’s graphical adventure spreads the kingdom of Beroth across six cassette loads — the rings, the tower, and the first great British fantasy quest.

The founding quartet of British text adventures ends with a spy caper — Charles Cecil’s ZX81 finale, played in capitals.

A graviton beam, a helpful android named Fred, and a cruiser harvesting brains: Artic’s third adventure is the sequence’s darkest hour.

Charles Cecil’s first adventure: an Inca temple full of priced treasure, where one piece gets you out alive and all of them get you remembered.

Artic’s first lettered adventure strands you on an alien planet with a captured ship, a two-word parser and a whole genre to invent.

Instruments, beacons and a perspective runway on a £70 black-and-white wedge: the best-selling ZX81 program and the yardstick for all the others.

David Horne’s Artic program plays legal chess in 672 bytes on the unexpanded 1K ZX81 — a size record that stood for thirty-three years.