If you're more than a little tired of defending cities or obscure planets from an enemy who keeps coming on with unrelenting fury, Marauder is your chance to turn the tables.


There are two stages in Marauder, each stage representing a completely independent game. The first stage is a hybrid of Space Invaders and Missile Command, with you as the Space Invader. The second stage is an interesting variation of Berzerk in which you have to go through mazes and blow up a main computer. The most surprising thing about these two games is that together they take up only 32K of memory.


In the first stage you are provided with a spaceship, with which you have to make holes in a force shield protecting the target city's defense. The defenses consist of missile bases, fireball launchers and laser cannons. Of course, the aliens have every other advantage: they can fire through the shield without damaging it and all the odd-numbered screens have moving shields, so by the time you make a hole in one shield, it will have moved away from your target.


The second stage is Berzerk with some very interesting changes. First, you can only see the robots when they are in the same corridor as you. Second, you can actually have some measure of success by blowing up the main computer and watching the spectacular explosion. Then, of course, you are transported back to the beginning of a new and harder level - but that's still an improvement on Berzerk, where you just keep going on and on and on.


Marauder has excellent graphics, good game sounds and absolutely glorious explosions. When playing the first stage, you might enjoy running into a projectile just to watch your ship explode. The game also provides a rapid-fire feature for the first stage: all you have to do is keep the button pressed down.


Sounds like a fine game for everybody, right? Wrong: this game holds very little challenge for better-than-average players. In the second stage, you can outrun everything on the board from enemy robots to their bullets. You can also run into walls and enemy robots and have absolutely nothing happen to you. All you have to do is stay to the right or left side and you will be completely safe from the fireballs.


So, if you are just starting out playing action games or if you have a younger member of the family who likes to play games but finds most of them too hard, Marauder is an absolute must-have. But if you are an experienced player, the novelty of this game will soon wear off.


If you are playing an odd-numbered screen in the first stage, all you have to do is blow a hole in the shield and move along with it. This saves you the trouble of blowing away most of the shield.