User Summary
Loading extremely quickly, Cyber Zone is a very simple arcade game. A large space ship hovers above you, as you slide back and forth along the bottom of the screen, shooting away at its defence screen, scoring lots of points. Once you have removed enough of this, you need a direct hit up the centre of the craft, and the green alien's head explodes, before the whole thing resets.
But the alien ship has its own defences. Lasers zap down at you if you stay still for a moment. An energy beam blasts vertically down from the centre if you pass underneath the ship. But best of all, tiny bomber planes whizz back and forth, climb, turn and then dive bomb you, all with amazing sound effects. ZAPZAPWHEEEEEBOOMBLAMBLAMZAPZAPBOOOOM!!
The game is mental! It's a mad frantic scramble to keep hitting the bombers, chip away at the defence screen, avoid the lasers and beam, and finally pop a shot in accurately to kill the alien. Then the next screen has more bombers, faster lasers, quicker beams, and it just goes on getting harder and harder.
Cyber Zone is a blast to play. Very simple, but with a rhythm and pace not seen elsewhere. The early screens are easy if you're not too stupid, but as the game progresses, it gets harder and harder to attack the centre of the ship, without which you cannot get to the alien.
Sadly, nobody ever heard of the game and Spectrum fans missed out on a riot.
The game also included a voice-activated feature. By connecting up your cassette player, and using a blank cassette to let you switch to record, you could supposedly use the cassette player's inbuilt mic to trigger your lasers. It didn't work.