Nether Earth

Nether Earth is one of those pre-Dune II strategy games that was released long ago on ZX Spectrum by a well-known developer, Icon Design Ltd. eons ago before Dune II itself (in the year 1988, to be exact) and had a lot of gameplay elements, including so-called 'direct control', later reused in both Herzogs, Tanktics, Warzone 2100 and several first-person RTSses. A less known Commodore 64 version also exists, but let's not stop just on it, considering we have a little bunch of remakes as well.

Gameplay
You control a so-called 'device' which floats around a straight line map. You start the game with only one warbase, while the opposing side, Isignians, have three of them. So your aim is to punsih those cheaters once and for all good.

To help in your quest, such things as robots exist. To spice the things up, you decide which parts the robots will have. By default, it should have a chassis (three types), weapons (four types, ending with an atomic bomb) and AI (only one type out of there).

In order to create robots, you need credits. Depending on what config your robot will have, the price will be big or little. You don't really acquire credits yourself, you get a minimal dose of them every day. But sooner or later you need more, so the first thing you do is... capturing neutral factories. How? Give your robot an order and sleep well. Or maybe not well, since the pathfinding of the robots kinda sucks. But that's fixable as well: land on your robot and use the 'Direct Control' feature. Slow but it helps.

Pretty much, the game is really hard to beat, despite its' ease of concept, because, right when you start the game, the Domination Gauge is kept not on the middle of it, but closer to the enemy side.

Similarities

 * To a hell lot of arcade games: well, obviously, the device thing you control.

Remakes and expansions

 * A little nifty 3D remake for the PC is available on the nets. It has more than one mission to play, but, sadly, without that kickass theme tune.
 * Several remakes are available for the mobile phones, with Wasteland being one of the prime examples.

Reception

 * ZX Spectrum version - Old Krank's Reviews