Pete Cooke‘s Earthlight is an unusual side-scrolling shoot ’em up with extremely nice graphics. It was originally published for the ZX Spectrum by Firebird in 1988.

Presentation throughout the game is stunning. From the menus, to the moving shadows on the battlefield, to the panel readouts, to the colour variation through the levels, to the rotating Earth in the background, to the spaceship designs.

Earthlight is so beautifully-produced that it doesn’t really matter that the gameplay is relatively simple. It is a classic of late ZX Spectrum game design.

More: Earthlight on Wikipedia