Thought I better do a review and seeing as I'm currently patching one of the games what better opportunity.

Ah Phobia. Written by the bedroom C64 coder Anthony Crowther, or RATT to his Zzap! friends.
He wrote some really cool games for the beige door stop including Killer Watt which I bought cheaply from Withernsea market as a boy.

So to Phobia, load up a Thesaurus and type "mind numbingly hard”, “unfair”, “difficult in the extreme” or  “frantic action with no hope of survival”. The word “Phobia” will appear at the top of your list. 

But give this baby a chance, the graphics are well drawn with an eerie nightmarish title screen greeting your ST screen.  The game is bog standard R-Type fare with the added feature of vertical scrolling as well! A barrage of bullets hail onto your position within seconds of pressing your Comp-Pro button. Have I told you this game is hard.
A nice feature is the ability to turn your ship into a dual fighting force by hitting the return key. Even this helping hand from Ratt won’t delay the inevitable ‘Game Over’ sign after one minute of play.

If you manage the impossible you’ll get to the end of level boss. You thought Ratt would go easy on the player, having somehow got this far…. oh no no… you have ONE attempt at the boss, if you die you have to start the entire level again!!

But fear not shoot-em-up fans, for in the distance I see a patched version of Phobia coming ever forwards from the mist, this will add infinite lives and make you invincible to nasty bullets spawned by your foes.

Later levels have some lovely graphics including a water level with large giant taps dispensing acidic water on your poor ship.

Give it a go.. or wait for my patch!

Shw