Saw this on Facebook.
Huh, didn’t know there were Light Force budget clones! Still, nice scrolling in that one.
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This is a famous game! Pioneered the smooth vertical hardware scrolling technique which is now used in all the homebrew shmups and games like Pinball Dreams.
It runs at 50hz which is seriously impressive.
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I also had a copy back in the 80s and it got a lot of play.
Such an impressive game, loved it back then, and still enjoy it now (especially since it’s been converted to the GX4000 and plays great with its joypad).
Coded by the legendary Paul Shirley, of Locomotion and Spindizzy fame, the smooth scrolling and use of overscan made this look incredible on the Amstrad monitor
I prefer the original title of ZTB (Zap The Badstars) though.
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Funny how the publisher must have thought that having genocide in the title was less offensive than using an initial that stood for an anagram of bastards.
Paul Shirley’s work on the Amstrad gave us many classics. Splat! and Quack a Jack were a couple of other great games I had in the early days.
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I’ve never played Quack a Jack but you’ve just reminded me that I watched a YouTube video on that recently and it looked great, so I need to give it a go.
yup! When I saw the title I was quite surprise… Maybe the sequel could’ve been “Mission Ethnic Cleansing”?
Had never played it, but looks pretty decent for… 1984?!
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I didn’t realise Quack a Jack was based on an old arcade game called Checkman!
I was watching this episode of The Spectrum Show (yes, I’m a traitor to the CPC as the Speccy was my first love) and it’s the same game:
But Paul Shirley’s game is much cuter 
I knew about Checkman but never knew there were so MANY versions of it for the Spectrum. Although QAJ seems to be a better implementation.