Night Stalker ZX (ZX Spectrum)

by Aleisha Cuff

Night Stalker ZX is a port of Night Stalker, a single-screen maze shooter released in 1982 for the Intellivision video games system, created with AGDx. The original Night Stalker, developed by Steve Montero, was a successful attempt to bring an original arcade style title to the Intellivision system.

In Night Stalker ZX you play as a marooned space soldier trapped inside a hedge maze with a bunch of relentless killer robots, spiders and bats for company. Luckily a gun appears at one of five random locations in the maze and can be used to blast the evil inhabitants, but each gun only has six bullets which once used cause another gun to appear. The only safe place for your space soldier to hang out is a bunker in the middle of the maze. As you progress through the game smarter killer robots start to spawn.

Controls are up (Q), down (A), left (O), right (P) and fire (M or Space). There is also the option to use a Kempston or Sinclair joystick. Lives remaining and score are shown in the top right of the screen. You begin each game with six lives. Each level of the game introduces new, more difficult to despatch killer robots. Levels increase based on your score.

The first level has a grey robot, a spider and a couple of bats. Spiders and bats don't kill you, they just paralyse you temporarily, but this can become a problem if a killer robot is in the vicinity because they too have guns but with unlimited ammo.

Level two is reached at 1000 points and introduces the smarter blue robot. On reaching the next level, at 5000 points, there's an even deadlier red robot, whose bullets can block yours, and any bats shot on this level respawn as grey robots.

Level four arrives on 10,000 points. This number of points also grants you an extra life. The bats are replaced by grey robots from the beginning and a fearsome genius magenta robot comes into play

 

The fifth and final level appears at 50,000 points when the ultimate in robot tech is introduced, an invisible robot which can only be detected by it's gun fire. Definitely not the droid you're looking for.

 

The single maze in the game has quite a few strategic locations where you can ambush your enemies. It's also worth noting that a single bullet can pass through multiple enemies standing in a line.

 

The graphics are Intellivision in style and look great. I Especially like the animation of the players character. The audio pleasingly retains the pulse sound of the original along with various spot effects when you collect the gun, fire it, blow up enemies, etc. There's no in game music but there wasn't in the original and I think it would detract from the whole feel of the game in any case. The free game download comes with a wonderful deluxe PDF manual which gives the low down on the game and also covers the details regarding the original games place in Intellivision history.

Just like the original the gameplay is simple but enthralling. It's addictive, I really wanted to see the invisible robot....eerr.... if you see what I mean. I love this style of graphics and the audio does it's job, not intrusive at all. I think music may have crushed the atmosphere of the game so I'm glad there isn't any. I would have liked a few more different mazes though instead of just the sole original.

This is a perfect rendition of an Intellivision classic for the Spectrum. This is the second Intellivision ZX game by the developer and I really hope she decides to do more. Tron: Deadly Discs next please.