Magnetron is the sequel to Quazatron and is another interpretation of the classic C64 game, Paradroid, but with an isometric viewpoint. It was first published in 1988 by Firebird Software.

You once again play as the droid “Klepto” (KLP-2) who has this time been teleported onto the orbiting space station, Magnetron, on a mission to shut down the reactors powering the Quartech weapons that are pointed at Earth. There are four reactors in each of the eight separate orbiting space stations – all of which need your attention – but if we’re being realistic about this: most people will be happy with just one space station under their belt… And to shut down the reactors you have to access special terminals and mess around with the reactor settings, to cause either a shutdown or an overload. Whichever’s quickest.

Trying to prevent you from completing your mission are an army of hostile robots, but with Klepto’s improved grapple and combat system he can remote clone himself with the abilities of a defeated enemy. While you’re controlling the clone, your original form is protected. As a clone, you can grapple with other droids and go about your robot business normally, but when you’re destroyed you’ll return to your former chassis at the last location you grappled.

The grapple minigame has been changed to a sliding puzzle game-type thing. And it works okay, although it’s not as satisfying as the Paradroid/Quazatron grapple game. You can acquire upgraded weapons systems from grappling too. You take the parts from defeated opponents. There are disk-chuckers, mortars, boomerangs and even bouncing bomb weapons systems to scavenge.

Just like in the previous game, Klepto moves around a series of large isometric levels, observing droid behaviour and either avoiding, terminating or taking over every robot he encounters. Like in Quazatron, each droid has a type and a rating and these are shown as a letter and a number on their chassis.

This time, instead of the screen scrolling, the view automatically jumps to the next area, which makes the game run smoother and faster than Quazatron. Which is a good thing.

Each level in Magnetron is large, with criss-crossing, interconnected walkways. The structure of levels in this is considerably different to the previous game, which had large single rooms, broken up into complex mazes. In this – if you look at some maps – you can see a kind of ‘hub-style’ structure to most of the levels.

Magentron is beautifully-presented, is playable and does have some great ideas. Steve Turner introduced a new system to handle screen movement and it sped up the game. He also much-improved the look of the game overall. Where he tripped-up, in my humble opinion, is by changing the grapple game. Which he probably had to do, but to be honest I don’t really like the grapple game in this – but I do like everything else about it.

More: Magnetron on World of Spectrum