gjw (04/13/83)
Several days ago I received Zaxxon for the Atari computers. On the whole it is done extremely well especially considering that it only needs 16K of memory to run. There are a few substantial differences between the arcade and the computer versions. The ship you are controlling does not change size with altitude as you fly it through the fortress. When it is out in space there is no control over altitude at all. The lack of altitude control in space was probably done to make the game more playable since one cannot judge the altitude of the enemy planes due to the lack of size change. There are a couple of other quirks;although the instructions claim XXX number of points for hitting a missle ther are no missle launchers on the playfield. Also the instructions claim that hitting the escape key will pause the game which does not work. After conferring with the company that sold me the game they told me that the disk version of the game will have missle launchers and pause capability. In addition it will be able to store highest scores. These are the only differences they are aware of at the moment. The disk version should be available in about 6 weeks. On a scale of one through 10 I'd give Zaxxon an 8. The best game I've seen for the computers is Protector II. It is an extremely playable and challenging game and is far superior to the original Protector. Yes, I have played Choplifter and Protector II in my opinion is better. Greg Wroclawski, Bell Labs, Whippany