SubBlitz: a less problematic take on the classic Blitz game

If you’re of a certain age, you’ve probably played Blitz or one of its clones.

Blitz was a clone of a previous game called Air Attack, for the Commodore PET, which itself was based on a description of the arcade game, Canyon Bomber by Atari.

Blitz was cloned all over the place, not least because it’s a fairly easy game to replicate code even if you’re doing it in BASIC.

The idea of Blitz is simple. Your plane is crashing and losing height. The problem is, you’ve nowhere to land but a big cityscape. And that’s no place to land a plane. The solution? Simply bomb all the skyscrapers out of the way so you can have a clear landing.

Since 9/11, this idea didn’t sit well with Daphne Blake, and maybe some other people. As a fan of the Mastertronic’s New York Blitz on the VIC 20, she was lamenting on Twitter that someone should make a variant where you were a submarine that had to shoot icebergs out of the way.

Fellow Tweeter Jim Blimey stepped up and collaborated with Blake to create the game for the ZX Spectrum.

Blimey says:

“The aim of the game is simple: using the space bar fire missiles at the icicles above – you must clear ALL ice to win! You can only fire one missile at a time and each time you loop the screen you get one step closer to an icy mess!

If you do manage to clear the ice and escape you are given the option to go again with your score intact – let’s see some lovely high scores from you!”

The game can be downloaded here