Nova Strike

Short description

A first-person wireframe space shooter for the ZX Spectrum Next. Fly through six stages of dogfights, asteroid fields and trench runs, with a boss at the end of each tunnel, and every lap through the stages gets harder.

Full description

Nova Strike is a vector-style arcade shooter in the tradition of the 1980s coin-op classics. You fly a lone fighter in first person, using a crosshair, and everything is drawn as glowing wireframe lines on the Next’s Layer 2 screen.

The six stages repeat in a loop, and each lap is harder than the last:

1. Open Space: shoot down the raiders. They strafe, fire aimed fireballs and make suicide runs.
2. Asteroid Field: blast or dodge the tumbling rocks. The big ones take two hits.
3. Tunnel Run: weave through barriers and mines, then destroy the core at the end.
4. Swarm Attack: a bigger wave of raiders at once.
5. Meteor Storm: a denser, longer asteroid field.
6. Deep Trench: a narrower, faster tunnel and a tougher core.

You have three shield bars. Each hit costs one, and clearing a stage restores one. A stage only ends when every enemy is destroyed. The game keeps a high score for the session.

Requirements

A ZX Spectrum Next, or a Next-capable emulator, running the .nex file. It needs the Next’s Layer 2 graphics mode and its AY sound chip, so it won’t run on a standard 48K or 128K Spectrum.

Controls

Action	Keys	Joystick
Move up / down	Q / A	Kempston up / down
Move left / right	O / P	Kempston left / right
Fire	SPACE	Kempston fire
Music on / off	M

How to play

1. Load novastrike.nex and press fire on the title screen.
2. Move the crosshair to line up enemies and fire. Your bolts travel in a straight line, so lead moving targets.
3. Shoot the enemy fireballs. They are worth points and they stop the damage.
4. In the tunnels, move to dodge the barriers, which can be horizontal or vertical. The walls are tight, so use the whole screen.
5. Kill every enemy to finish a stage. In the tunnel stages, destroy the core.

Scoring

Target	Points
Raider	500
Asteroid (per kill)	100
Fireball	100
Core	900
Stage-clear bonus	500

Tips

• Fighters fire most while strafing. Pick them off as they arrive.
• Shooting fireballs is often safer than dodging them.
• Take out the nearest threat first. At most three fireballs are in flight at once, so clearing them gives you room to move.

Created using Claude AI.