Dalek Attack

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

It’s Doctor.

Doctor who?

Exactly!



OK, so it’s a lame joke, but still… I bet all sci-fi fans know who Dr. Who is. And I might add that those Daleks were the most annoying, weird looking and improbable villains ever! And now they are attacking in Alternative Software’s Dalek Attack.

The premise is a very simple and easy one. You have the evildoer who wants to conquer the world and you, as a good guy, must prevent it. The twist is the typical Dr. Who plot. Davros is trying to turn Earth into a Dalek production planet (destroying humanity as a side effect). In order to stop him you need to run to the police phone booth and travel back in time, to the point when the invasion began and prevent it.

You’ll need to fight many Daleks and other enemies, jump and climb through many levels in order to finally succeed. Luckily the game has a two player option, so you can get help saving the world. I must warn you though, that you can not configure the buttons so you’ll be stuck playing the old keyboard layout of O/P moving you left and right, Q/A moving you up and down and SPACE to fire.

The sound consists mostly of the shooting effects and a spring sound when jumping, while at points you will hear the irritating Dalek phrase “EXTERMINATE” in their typical high-pitched voices.

The graphics are good enough and the animation is smooth, although you may want to slow the DOSBox down a bit so there will be no flickering while the screen is scrolling forward (around 1000 cycles should do it).

The game is a fast paced action platform type typical of early nineties and you can find several similar games to this one (but none with Doctor Who in the lead role). I guess if you’re not a particular fan of the series the game will have no special appeal and will just remain unnoticed in the multitude of other similar games of the era.