Space Attack

Overview

The object of the game is to defend the player's hidden mothership from attacking squadrons of alien fighters. The player has three fighter squadrons of their own at their disposal with three ships per squadron. The aliens have six fleets of various sizes; only three of which will appear on the radar screen at any given time. The goal is to destroy the alien fleet and protect the mothership.
 

Gameplay

The game starts in radar mode, where you will see alien fleets moving towards the inner rectangle where the mothership is hidden. The player must select an alien fleet to attack and then dispatch a squadron (blue, white or gold) after the aliens. The player can dispatch all three squadrons at once, however, only one squadron can be dispatched against one alien fleet a time. The player squadrons will only appear in the center of screen after being dispatched.

When contact has been established, the game moves on into Battle mode. A dog fight occurs, where the player is represented as a gunsight (resembling < >). The players's attack is fired from the bottom of the screen and converges to where the gunsight was at the time of firing. The alien ships will also be returning fire; any hits to the player's gunsight will lead to one of the player's ships being lost. The player will be returned to the radar screen when either all alien ships or player squadron are destroyed. A warning siren is played as the mothership is under attack. The siren gets faster as more damage is sustained and the game will end if the mothership is destroyed.

Difficulty Modes

LEFT: Controls how well aliens fight in battle. Battle is more fierce in Hard position (A) than in Easy position (B). Aliens ships will be much more maneuverable, fire more frequently and the blasts will fire at a much faster rate as well.

RIGHT: Controls the activity on the radar screen while in battle mode. Easy (B) has no activity occurring while in Battle mode, while Hard (A) has all activity continuing while the player is in battle mode at 1/4 of the normal rate. If a dispatched squadron reaches its target fleet, battle will begin with the computer fighting for the player, losing roughly one ship for every four it dispatches. This adds an interesting element of real-time strategy not seen in many games of this time period.