The perfect star studded sky, the perfect federation high paying job, the perfect dream life and a lovely day for a stroll across the planet with the missus…. suddenly your idyllic planetary space life has been turned upside down by raiding Pirates !!!

It’s panic stations, the much sought after and highly valuable federation storage depots are being ransacked.  Every pirate on the planet is after the federations’ booty of jewels, minerals, ammo, battle weapons and anything else they can take without being caught.

It’s now up to you, to retrieve the federation’s cargo and return it to a storage facility within a specified time limit.  If you succeed, extra points and an extra ship will be your rewards. It’s going to be a tough, hard fight.  These planetary pirates aren’t easy beaters and they have activated the planetary defence systems to help their cause.  So you have to use your brain to get around these as well as your powerful arsenal to bring those pirates to justice and collect that precious stolen federation cargo.  If you fail to reach the cargo depot within the time limit or the value of your collected cargo is not enough, you must forfeit one of your Cybernoid ships.

You’re prepared though, the federation has spared all expenses and fitted you out with the best ship on the planet – the Cybernoid fighting machine. The Cybernoid fighting machine sprite, is futuristic in appearance, initially armed with shooting bullets, ‘pew’ ‘pew’ ‘pew’, is how they sound and it’s just glorious to the ears.

Game screens are beautifully designed with good colour choices.  It’s a very futuristic feel blended in with the darkness of space and very cool, odd looking enemies a cross between sci – fi and under water creatures. There’s a lot of action, enemies keep you busy shooting and collecting cargo.  There’s a range of different types and they might be moving around the screen or stationed in one position.  Exploding volcanoes spew out their lava, adding great effect and appeal, its story line and theme have been executed beautifully.

Control and movement of the Cybernoid fighting machine works wonderfully well in this flip screen shooter.  Moving between screens is much better than I had expected. To achieve your goals, collecting the federation’s cargo is the priority, destroying a pirate space craft will release the stolen cargo, all you need to do is move your Cybernoid ship over the objects to retrieve them. Collecting the fallen cargo gives you all sorts of goodies and may change your ships appearance offering protection and much more fire power including bombs, impact mines, a defence shield, bounce bombs and a seeker.

The bounce bombs and seeker are my favourites not just from their destruction they perform but I love the sounds they make. That’s where Cybernoid really gets you hooked.  The beautifully drawn graphics and sprites amaze you, the enemies are uniquely original and blowing them up watching them explode all over the screen is just half the fun. Cybernoid’s fun challenging gameplay, range of weapons, the huge explosions the sounds they make and the fabulous continuous tune make it an addictive game to play.

Choosing your weapons is easy, pressing keys 1 – 5 will select the weapon and holding down the fire button will activate the selected weapon.

Coded by Raffaele Cecco, Cybernoid was Raffaele Cecco’s second massive video game hit for software house Hewson, the first being the excellent 1987, ‘run n gun’ game,  Exolon, which won high acclaim on all 8-bit platforms. As his fame grew because of his excellent video game programming, Raffaele Cecco, became somewhat of an 8-bit coding hero in the United Kingdom and Europe, being asked in 1988, by the popular Crash magazine to write a monthly diary which documented the development of an upcoming game called Stormlord.

When you play Cybernoid you know instantly why Raffaele Cecco was much loved and admired.

Sinclair User issue 73, gave Cybernoid 10 out of 10.  Your Sinclair issue 46, gave it the Master Game status with 9 out of 10 and Crash issue 51, gave Cybernoid 96%.

Cybernoid showed what could be achieved with an original concept when executed so brilliantly, it simply blew everyone away with its fun and interesting gameplay, it’s stunning, and slick presented graphics and amazing sounds. The grab factor was instantaneous and infectious amongst the gaming public. At the time it set a new standard in 8-bit gaming.

Raffaelle Cecco’s coding group of Nick Jones, J. Dave Rodgers and John M. Phillips produced remarkable original graphics, superb animation and sounds that captured your imagination and feel of the Cybernoid fighting machine’s world.

Cybernoid’s only flaw if there was any, that it only came with 4 different levels, before repeating the same levels over again.

Overall 8.7 out of 10

Pros:

• original concept executed brilliantly
• beautiful drawn sprites and graphics
• cool weapons
• great sounds and tunes
• fun to play

Cons:

• 1 player only
• on the hard side but you need to be challenged
• only 4 different stages / levels

CPC4EVA