Alien Highway

Alien Highway: Encounter 2 is an isometric 3D arcade adventure game released by Vortex in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. It was programmed by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson and is the sequel to Highway Encounter.

Developer(s)Mark Haigh-Hutchinson
Publisher(s)Vortex Software
Platform(s)Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
Release1986
Genre(s)Arcade adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

Gameplay is similar to Highway Encounter, with the player controlling a "Vorton" robot in its attempt to deliver a bomb to an alien base at the end of a highway. Various enemies and obstacles lie in its path.

A notable difference is that the player has a single Vorton with an energy meter, instead of five lives; accordingly, the bomb must be pushed by the player, whereas in the previous game it was pushed by the player's spare Vortons.

Background

Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, the developer

"After Highway Costa [Panayi] wanted to come up with something completely different again. Since I was now working full-time for Vortex it was decided that I should write Alien Highway whilst Costa developed his new ideas. I had previously written Android One for the Amstrad CPC (in my spare time at University) and then converted Highway Encounter to the CPC in 8 weeks after graduation. Alien Highway attempted to retain the essence of the original game yet expand the gameplay and introduce a random element into the game. It was also considerably faster than the original."[1]

Reception
Reception
Review scores
PublicationScore
Amstrad Action89%[2]
Amtix80%[3]
Crash88%[4]
CVG33/40[5]
Sinclair User[6]
Your Sinclair9/10[7]

Alien Highway received positive reviews.

gollark: Unfortunately, apparently no mainstream language is remotely aware of most useful language features which aren't just mildly extended C or OOP.
gollark: It has nice pattern matching syntax.
gollark: In Haskell you can actually do `let 2 + 2 = 5 in 2 + 2`.
gollark: They're near-identical languages, and in any case most of the computer-science concepts underlying them are the same.
gollark: I mean, Java is *basically* C#.

References
  1. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, "The History of Vortex Software", March 1995
  2. Wade, Bob (June 1986). "Action Test". Amstrad Action. No. 9. pp. 48–49.
  3. "Reviews". Amtix. No. 8. June 1986. p. 33.
  4. "Reviews". Crash. No. 29. June 1986. p. 23.
  5. "Software Reviews". Computer and Video Games. No. 56. June 1986. pp. 14–15.
  6. Rook, Gary (June 1986). "Software". Sinclair User. No. 51. p. 43.
  7. MacDonald, Rachael (July 1986). "Screen Shots". Your Sinclair. No. 7. p. 35.
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