Alpha Shield

When I first bought my Atari 800 computer, I looked forward to playing all those great games I could never play on my Atari 2600. Unfortunately, it seems that those games for the 2600 have come back to haunt me. While Alpha Shield is decent, it would fare much better on the 2600 where such games are really needed.
The object of Alpha Shield is to destroy Alpherian Military Bases, which are all surrounded by Alpha Shields. These shields constantly rotate around each base while slowly expanding and contracting. To destroy each base, you must hit it enough times to drain its energy supply. You can do this by firing your endless supply of missiles through the gaps in the shield or by maneuvering your ship inside the shield to destroy the base from close range. The closer you are to the base, the less time it takes to destroy it. You start out with five ships which are shaped like large asterisks (not a shape one expects to find on a computer like the 800). All movement is done with the joystick but when you start firing missiles, your ship stops moving. The base also has some tricks up its sleeves. In addition to the shield, it sends out its own ships to destroy you. While some wander aimlessly around the screen, others have tracking systems which allow them to home in on your ship. You can be killed either by these enemy ships or by running into the shield or the base.
The game starts out rather slowly. The shield expands and contracts very slowly and the enemy ships are sent out in random directions and provide no real threat. As the game progresses, the shield moves faster and the enemy ships get more sophisticated. Soon another shield begins to form around the base. While this shield doesn't move, it takes up a lot of space making it more difficult to get inside to destroy the base.
My major complaint is not the gameplay, which is okay, but the way it's executed. The graphics really aren't very good: the ships could be more than just asterisks, X's and squiggly lines. Whenever you hit the base, the screen flashes. Hit it many times and your eyes start getting sore and blurry. The main sound effects are also intolerable. The dull, raspy background noise, combined with a high-pitched screeching whenever the base blows up, forced me to turn down the sound on my TV when playing.
A main advantage of computers is that they offer much better games than machines built only to play games. Unfortunately, Alpha Shield does nothing to support this idea. The way it is now, Alpha Shield would do well on the Atari 2600 but I just don't think it will make it with the Atari computers.
As the game progresses and the shield begins to move faster, try to get inside the shield and destroy the base as soon as possible before the second shield begins to form.