Mega Typhoon

You start your mission with a lone starfighter with some very puny lasers. At this stage it's still got a very handy set of lasers with which you can take out just about anything moving, but you'll have to set your joystick to auto-fire. While Mega Typhoon is a typical vertical shoot-em-up, you can move a little to the left and right while picking up some useful extra laser power ups, missiles, homing missiles, side-shots and extra lives. You can also press the space bar which activates a smart bomb weapon that effectively wipes out any opposing enemy ships in the vicinity. Once you've got to grips with what's going on, it's on to the next world. The game is fast, and the action is as frenetic as anything you've seen on the Amiga in a long while... but the in-game graphics are pretty basic and colourless. The sound is sadly lacking with only a few effects for explosions and lasers and a racey-but-unobtrusive soundtrack at the beginning. Mega Typhoon is a playable game, it's just that I've seen the Amiga do better with Hybris, Battle Squadron, Swiv or Xenon 2. It is an average game that hasn't really much to offer the already saturated shoot-em-up genre. Which is a shame because we all know that the Amiga can do so much better than this.