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If there ever was a misleading title for a video game this is it. Upon hearing the name Spice I can’t imagine that anyone would think of a Defender clone! And that is what this game is, a pretty much straight copy of the Williams arcade classic. For those who somehow don’t know the object of Defender is to fly over a planet surface killing aliens and saving the humans. The levels scroll both left and right with scanner at the top showing the position of your craft, the humans and the enemies. Your ship is equipped with a laser, smart bombs and hyperspace (the last 2 being limited). The aliens will pick up the humans from the bottom of the screen and take them to the top, if they manage to do this they mutate into super aliens. If all the humans are captured then its game over. It is possible to save humans by shooting the alien mid flight then catching the person and putting him back on the planet surface below. Spice has a few small graphical upgrades along with some really stonking music and digitised sound. The one small fault comes in the gameplay, the graphics are a bit too large (much like Defender 2000 on the Jag) leaving not much space to fly into. This combined with the way it seems to stop for ages when you change direction leads to some cheap deaths. Still it does have all the basic gameplay of Defender so there is some fun to be had.

Steel Talons was a 1991 arcade game by Atari that used the same 3D game engine and board as the wonderful STUN Runner, released just over a year before. It involved you piloting an armed helicopter on a series of missions in enemy territory. Unusually for a coin-op game it took on many attributes of a flight simulator style game. Atari themselves released this Falcon version in an early effort to provide some games for the machine. The game revolves around completing various missions, before each one it gives you a map and a break down of what to do as well as some nice speech. The missions vary a bit with things like canyon runs and straight shoot-outs too. Your chopper is armed with machine guns as well as a limited amount of missiles, it is best to save these for the more heavily fortified targets. The ‘copter also has armour so can take a limited amount of hits before it goes down. The 3D polygon graphics are identical to the original coin-op and all move very smoothly. In the sound department there is lots of nice speech but the sound effects do seem a bit weedy. Overall I have to give a big recommendation to Steel Talons, not just because there isn’t many games out there for the Falcon but also because it’s a lot of fun to play too!

Towers II is sequel to a title that originally appeared on the Atari ST and was later converted to the Jaguar and Gameboy Advance. Although the story follows on from the first game you don’t need to have played it to be able to get anywhere here. Towers II is pretty much an amalgamation of the classic Dungeon Master and Doom, a role-play game crossed with a first person shooter. You must make your way through 11 levels of the tower in question getting stronger as you go. At the start of the game you can choose between several characters, all with their own unique abilities, but the key to the game is learning and discovering the magic. It would take too long here to describe every intricate feature of this game but I was surprised by the amount of depth it has for a game of this type. When you first play it you will wonder what the hell is going on or what to do so this is one title where I do recommend you read the manual! Graphically Towers II is excellent with a nice smooth 3D engine, albeit in a small window, and it’s good in the sound department too. While the Falcon lacks a traditional RPG this game will certainly fill a gap in the library for owners seeking a complex battle-orientated adventure.