Graftgold / Firebird 1988
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: ZX Spectrum

Meta robot KLP-2 from Quazatron is back: This time, the reactors of eight satellites have to be shut down. Of course, these satellites are full of robots to destroy as well.

KLP-2 moves (or rather floats) over the three-dimensional platforms which now have a fixed distinction into screens (circumventing the problem of the rather slow scrolling). Again, it's all looking and moving very smoothly - technically, this is yet another step forward from the already high standard the predecessor set.

Graftgold / Hewson 1985
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Deep in space, all the robots on a ship have gone mad, defying all human orders. The player has to 'clean up', destroying all the robots. Sounds like your average shooter? Then be prepared for a twist: You take control of a kind of 'meta robot' which will attach itself to any other robot to take control of its functions.

Graftgold / Hewson 1990
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Graftgold never really made the big leap away from 8 bit systems. Although they created many great games on the Atari ST and the Amiga, the revolutionary and original things they had done were a thing of the past. In fact, they even 'remade' their most popular classics. Uridium got that treatment later, but for Paradroid, they at least had the humility not to call it Paradroid 2.

Graftgold / Hewson 1986
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: ZX Spectrum

Paradroid had been a huge hit on the C64, so ports were the logical step. For the Spectrum, Graftgold decided a straight port wouldn't be possible, as the game very much depends on the smooth scrolling into all directions. And while they were at it, they decided to change quite a few more things on the way.

Graftgold 1986
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

The alien invasion of Earth is afoot, and there's just no way to stop the attacking forces by conventional means. Even if the puny earthling forces manage to destroy one wave, countless more are just waiting to take its place. So the humans recognize their only chance is to go to the source and cut off the invaders' supplies.

Graftgold 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

When Uridium first came out, it was breathtaking: great looking, lovingly animated and incredibly fast at the same time. As the years went by, such qualities gradually lost some of their effect, of course. Still good, still (relatively) impressive, but not a sensation anymore.

Graftgold 1986
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Uridium Plus, released the same year as the Uridium. Not much time to change anything, but also not much need to, since the original version was very successful - never change a winning horse. So the basics remain the same: The player flies the Manta ship's assault on the aliens' huge Dreadnoughts, first taking out the numerous waves of defenders, then landing and activating the self-destruct mechanism - all that to stop the invaders' supply of raw materials.

Graftgold 1995
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Virocop was one of the games which really got a lot of attention before it was released - at least from the readers of one specific German Amiga magazine: Amiga Games. This magazine published a "developer's diary" over several months, then it suddenly stopped - but the finished game didn't appear. No explanation, no comment. A lot later, they mentioned they had dropped this article because they couldn't squeeze these pages in anymore. Never sounded too believable to me. More likely that there just wasn't enough happening anymore. Still, it was quite interesting to read every month how the idea developed, how changes to the concept were made (it changed from "Tanky" to "D.A.V.E" over time), how the graphics changed from hand-drawn sketches to actual screenshots.