Superior side-scrolling shoot 'em up of the old school. Up there in heaven with R-Type.

Originally an arcade title by Temco, the game found it's spiritual home in a superb port to the Amiga 500, where it recieved vast amounts of well deserved praise. As with any decent Amiga title, copied disks of this were flying around the playground like wildfire when I was a boy. Ah, the utterly corrupt innocence of youth.

The game lets you play as either a jeep, with a 180 degree rotating gun and the ability to jump, or a helicopter, which was fast as hell and could, well, fly. The game really got fun when two people stepped up to the ockey, one on jeep and the other on copter. The helicopter player would invariably last longer, as the Jeep was frankly a bit shit. But it was cool anyway. I used to love teaming up against the weird composite helicopter sub-bosses we called goosenecks. Of course, infinite lives cheats were nice, as we were young and lame.

If you've not played this game, imagine a more military version of Revenge Of The Mutant Camels. It was followed up by the arguably superior/inferior (I go for the latter) sequel SWIV, using a top down view that made the jeep unusable as well as crap. Bizzarely, SWIV apparently stood for SilkWormIV (4), but no-one knows what happened to the other two titles.

Silk"worm` (?), n. [AS. seolcwyrm.] Zool.

The larva of any one of numerous species of bombycid moths, which spins a large amount of strong silk in constructing its cocoon before changing to a pupa.

⇒ The common species (Bombyx mori) feeds onm the leaves of the white mulberry tree. It is native of China, but has long been introduced into other countries of Asia and Europe, and is reared on a large scale. In America it is reared only to small extent. The Ailanthus silkworm (Philosamia cynthia) is a much larger species, of considerable importance, which has been introduced into Europe and America from China. The most useful American species is the Polyphemus. See Polyphemus.

Pernyi silkworm, the larva of the Pernyi moth. See Pernyi moth. -- Silkworm gut, a substance prepared from the contents of the silk glands of silkworms and used in making lines for angling. See Gut. -- Silkworm rot, a disease of silkworms; muscardine.

 

© Webster 1913.