''Swoop'' is a clone of Namco's ''

Galaxian is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco. The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter in its mission to protect Earth from waves of aliens. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who ...

'' programmed by David Elliot for the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an empha ...

and published in the UK by

Micro Power Micro Power was a British company established in the early 1980s by former accountant Bob Simpson. The company was best known as a video game publisher, originally under the name Program Power. It also sold many types of computer hardware and so ...

. It was ported to the

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a p ...

the game's launch in 1983 and the Commodore 64 in 1984.

Gameplay

The invading aliens take the form of wing-flapping Birdmen. ''Swoop'' differs from other ''Galaxian'' clones in that the Birdmen will lay explosive eggs if they successfully reach the bottom of the screen. If the eggs are touched by the player's laser base then a life is lost, so they effectively confine the movement of the laser base until they disappear after some pre-set time. There are a total of eight levels (called "phases" in the cassette inlay instructions), each successively more difficult than the last. The most difficult level has a total of two Birdmen and eight missiles raining down on the player simultaneously.

References

External links

''Electron User'' review
1983 video games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Commodore 64 games Fixed shooters Micro Power games Single-player video games Video game clones Video games developed in the United Kingdom {{8bitcomputer-game-stub