Special Weapons Interdiction Vehicle, Silkworm Four, or Silkworm is vertical. The choice of explanation for this strange acronym is entirely up to you, since the craft involved are termed as Interdiction Vehicles, the game scrolls vertically and it could well be considered the sequel to the classic shoot-em-up Silkworm. The precise name isn't particularly important, as the plot pretty much takes a back seat to the action.

The basic scenario places you and your partner as a search-anddestroy team. Intelligence agents have sent back information hinting of a large number of enemy troops amassing beyond the frontier. Your job is to confirm the reports, ferreting out enemy installations and blowing them away before they can launch an attack... and that's about it!

The original Silkworm blessed the player with a serious amount of firepower, but who in their right mind would want to play the jeep? Stuck down on the ground, trundling along at the mercy of mines and missiles launchers... It's a real nightmare!

The vertically-scrolling playing-field gives both the helicopter and the jeep more room to manoeuvre, giving larger scope for enemy targets and the jeep a lot more chance of surviving. The choice of vehicles in SWIV is entirely down to personal taste.

So Why Incline Vertically?

The game itself takes place over one, incredibly long, scrolling level, which blends from one area to another. The ghost town, the desert, the lake and Xevious Land are just a few of the areas you will come across. New areas are loaded in from disk as you play, to make a single, virtually seamless mission. For one thing this means that you have to stay on your toes, since there are no inter-level breaks for you to get your breath back!

The game is broken up to a certain extent by the appearance of the odd guardian, which are fairly easy to spot, that is they're much bigger, meaner mothers than the others! Once you've destroyed it, the screen recommences scrolling.

Seriously Wild Intensely Violent

Random Access have come up with some seriously impressive coin-op conversions in the past, from Silkworm, through the Ninja Warriors to Saint Dragon. Despite the high quality of these products, SWIV must rate as the most polished so far.

The graphics are, without a doubt, arcade quality, with some superbly drawn sprites and backgrounds to portray the action. The sound too, is excellent, utilising the Amiga's sound capabilities to produce true stereo! If you move to the left the sound comes from the left speaker - move to the right and the sound shifts with you. The effect is superb!

Well presented vertically-scrolling shoot-em-ups are few and far between these days, so SWIV comes as a glorious return to the genre. It looks good, sounds wonderful and contains some of the most frantic action yet seen in a shoot-em-up. So get it and try pumping some lead!

Good sequels are an art form - and Sales Curve have produced a masterpiece in SWIV, an original game 'follow up' to Silkworm, their 1988 smash arcade conversion.

Though great as a one-player game, SWIV works best with a partner. Player one controls a helicopter, while number two runs around the screen in a tank. Each vehicle comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The helicopter doesn't have to worry about crashing into ground targets, but it can only fire in one direction. The tank, however, is the complete opposite. A rotatable turret allows you a shoot in a 360 degrees arc, but has plenty of buildings and gun emplacements to avoid.

By making it vertically scrolling its programmers leapt back some years in game design. The trend for the modern shoot 'em up is to use incredibly technical scroll routines, which tend to cloud the products gameplay. But, although it might sound old fashioned, SWIV's coding certainly isn't simple.

It's the clever technical features that you don't instantly notice which really make the difference. All sprites and background graphics are loaded in while you play. This means there's no loading between levels, so you can go from start to finish without stopping. Clever sprite routines are used giving dozens of enemy craft on screen without the game slowing down. It's these tricks that give SWIV a genuine arcade feel.

Next to the lives counter there's a star rating. The higher this is, the more weapons you can keep should you die. Initially, this is set at two so you only keep the second power-up level, although it does increase by one for every six bonus icons collected. Why anyone hasn't thought of this before? It's so incredibly useful.

Enemy superbases lie in wait for you at the end of each level. These buildings are built up from several component parts which need to be destroyed separately before the building finally goes belly up.

By way of tribute, the programmers admit they've borrowed ideas from older shoot 'em ups. Level three is almost identical to Xevious (a seven-year old arcade classic), which is a nice blast from the past for crumbly old journos like me.

Some of the enemy craft are particularly innovative. On level three a hovercraft drifts on, releasing a craft which spews out homing missiles. Missile launchers, guns and tank silos are built into the background, surprising the unwary player. Ideas like these are what separate SWIV from the ten-a-penny blasts which periodically return to haunt the Amiga.

A number of things have been carried over from Silkworm, in particular the awesomely-armed Goosecopter. Its component parts drift onto the screen then form into a helicopter that's ten times bigger than the player vehicles. When it explodes, it leaves behind several bonus icons which can be collected for extra points or firepower.

SWIV difficulty level is set according to how well the player is doing. If you've gone straight through to the second level without losing a life the alien attack waves intensify, as do their rate of fire. Should you find yourself struggling on level one the aliens will be firing infrequently and there'll be a lot less of them.

This is one of the elite band of Amiga shoot 'em ups which is truly arcade quality. The graphics are outstanding, it plays very well and the presentation is top notch. Exactly the sort of game Amiga owners have been crying out for.
A classic follow up to a classic game.

Right let's get things in the open. (Put that away! Ed.) This game has absolutely nothing -NOTHING- to do with Silkworm, but they could stand for other things as well. (Like what? Ed.) Well, like er, Soviet Willies for example, or Sausage Watch, or Seduction Wedge, or... or... lots of things. (What about the 'IV' part then? Ed.) Well, 'IV' stands for... for... intra-venous. So the game is not actually the sequel to Silkworm but in fact called 'Starch Wobbly In Vegetable'.

Okay, so it has a helicopter and jeep working together, providing cover for each other, penetrating the vastness of enemy the terrain. But it's just sheer coincidence that Silkworm involved much the same thing.
And yeah, they might be programmed by the same team who brought you Silkworm, but that is, as the Russians say, how the economy crumbles.

The story is that while converting the coin-op Silkworm to 16-bit, the programmers were tutting and moaning about how much better a game they could make of it. Unfortunately, they were working to a contract so the arcade had to be strictly adhered to.
So as they worked they steadily built up a reservoir of good ideas, improvements and new features. Finally when they could contain their ideas no longer, they desperately needed to 'spurt' them out into some vessel. That vessel happened to be SWIV and the rest, as Julio Iglesias would say, is biology.

SWIV would be a big step from Silkworm (if in truth they had anything to do with each other). For instance the original had the mountainous scenery scrolling right to left and the graphics were flat and two-dimensional.
SWIV's huge playing area glides vertically this time, and the graphics are rounded, light sourced and have shadows to create an illusion of depth.

The programmers have been a-leaping and a-bounding technological hurdles, and as a result this version poops on the original Silkworm from a great height. C'est, as the Swedish say, la vjurk.

THE LEVELS

It would be wrong to denounce SWIV and say it has 'levels'. Levels, as you know, are the bourgeois invention of subversive autocrats trying to undermine the democracy of this country by pigeon-holing the working class in social strata known as 'levels'.
SWIV has one single massive unfurling carpet of a level. The programmers use their DLS (Dynamic Loading System) to ensure the game scrolls continuously and keeps the 234 landscape screens going for a full forty minutes.
The 'carpet' is segmented into twelve zones. Each one is divided by a mega installation which must be totalled before you can progress. The segments are based loosely on landscape themes.

Stage one is set in a ghost town, which spreads into desert that finishes as an airport. Other zones incorporate volcanoes, oceans and high-tech vistas.

The enemy change with the terrain. You have the usual cannon fodder (helicopters, tanks and such like) who are always present, and then there are the more specific enemies, designed to blend in with the scenery.
For instance in the desert there are some pyramids looking nice and touristy. You fly over them, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sphinx or Tutankhamun's Curse from the air, and splang! The tip of the pyramid slides open and a mass of missiles splinter out!

Also, making a guest star appearance is the goose-copter. If you remember the original, it arrived in flying segments and built up lego-like in the air.
This time you get to see it from above, and thankfully it's no harder to destroy. It's also partnered with several inventions like dome bases which emerge from the sand and huge Jolly Green Giant motherships, which 'give birth' to thousands of deadly miniatures.

Shooting any of the larger, bigger, fuller, faster muthas may well provide you with a floating power-up or a shield icon. Power-ups double, treble and expand your firepower in all sorts of way, while shields can be worn for obvious effect or shot for an apocalyptic smart-bomb effect.

JEEP! JEEP!

In the first game controlling the jeep was akin to being elected to go up and ask the headmaster for "more" or being the first to pull your trousers down to the barmaid in an after rugby-match beer binge, i.e. a bit of bad luck (for the barmaid). Travelling along the ground and jumping to avoid hails of enemy fire was no easy task. In Swiv the jeep driver's lot has improved substantially.
The copter and the car are now on equal terms. Both can now move in eight directions, although the jeep is still restricted by the scenery. But what are guns for if not blowing tremendously large holes in the landscape?

HELICOPTER

At first glance, the helicopter's role still seems to be a cushy one. After all, the sky is a completely empty place at the best of times, just the odd cloud or seagull here and there. Swiv's sky is a tad more cluttered than most.

Flotillas of helicopters, waves of missiles, squadrons of jets, hails of bullets - and lots of other collective nouns. The time you're not swerving and twisting in mid-air to avoid the enemy, you're swerving and twisting in mid-air to avoid the enemy's bullets. You can't win.

Macca: Right from the start Silkworm was going to be a hard cookie to crumble.
If it had flaws, you couldn't see them past the sweat that was covering your eyes after a couple of plays. I remember purposefully handing over the wrong joystick to my play-pal just so I could play the helicopter, while gullible chum had to play the booby jeep.

Not that playing the jeep was crap, it was just harder than the heli, and besides you could make all the Airwolf noises you wanted to in the chopper.

Anyway, if you're in the heli you have more chance to admire the delicious scenery and graphics as they unfold. They are very detailed and have come in leaps and bounds since the arcade was converted. The programmers warp the pallette all through the game so the colours slowly change and evolve the further you progress.

The twelve mega installations at the end of each section are a sight for sore eyes (and yours will be - guaranteed).

The sound is fairly standard: explosions, clanking metallic parts, gun shots. Each object seems to have a sound and there's so much on-screen at a time that the game actually roars as you play it.

The scrolling is quite slow and sedate, but you're distracted from this by the sheer velocity of the enemy attacks.
They're completely remorseless. The action never stops and if it does it's because you're dead. The difficulty has been well staged so it's easy on the first couple of stages (to build confidence), a little more difficult on the next two (to make you sweat) and then nigh on impossible on the later sections (to teach you not be an arrogant git).

The sections aren't just simply an excuse to change the graphics and attack patterns, but really an excuse to slip in some rather neat features.
For example, as you cross the airport, you see some rather vulnerable jets taxiing for take-off. If you blast one, a convoy of fire engines and ambulances race out across the airfield to douse the flames.
If you feel remorseful and decide to spare the rest of the planes then don't. These 'vulnerable' planes take of and catch up with you later in the game.

Okay, so you've got the most joyously radiantly beautiful graphics in the universe (You like them then? Ed.). You've got a huge unfolding mattress of a level that is bound to keep you occupied for at least a month. You have all the massive explosive sounds you could ever wish for.

And you have a wonderful voluptuous sexy two player mode (You like them as well I suppose? Ed.) The question is, what's the playability like?
If I said that once you start playing SWIV you will forget all plans of going for cinema-nooky with your girlfriend, that you will throw all your mortgage reminders out of the window, and that once you clap eyes on this game you will give four week luxury holiday to Florida away just so you can stay home and play it, then I'd be exaggerating. Badly.

SWIV will probably leave you with sore eyes from staring at the screen for so long and a sore hand from wibbling your joystick so much (oo-bloody-er).
You have been warned.

After going down a storm following their first victory against a group of mad generals, all seemed well for Hot Wheels Hooliha, Armoured Jeep commander extraordinaire and his Helicopter Gunship buddy, Rotor Head Ralph. Together they're the Special Weapons Interdiction Vehicles team and they'd just begun to take in some R and R when an alert came in.

Looks like another bunch of mad generals is on the loose with secret factories producing new weapons by the ton load.

So start the rotors up, Ralph, jump-start that Jeep, Hoolihan and kick some mad ass! (Nothing like a quick start to the mayhem, don't you think!)

Of course the mad generals only accept the very best in killing machinery, with helicopter gunships. Be it bouncing, bomb-dropping, missile throwing or just plain suicidal - you name it, they've got it and it's hovering around waiting to terminate H'N'R's tour of duty. Where would we be without a good hundred of so tanks, howitzers, flame throwers and BIG laser-firing installations thrown in as well?

And will you welcome the Mama helicopter which unloads mini-choppers by the dozen, seaplanes and some extraterrestrial guest stars too.
And let's not forget the natural hazards littering the enemy's back yard alongside all those shopping trollies.

Volcanoes, craters, chasms - the usual terrain that Jeeps have to be overcome with a nifty leap in the air. On the stretches of water, Hoolihan can use his aquatic arsenal by jumping into a speedy gunboat for a watery blasting session.
With this lot up against our comrades in arms it's a good job there's shields floating around (with free smart bomb when things get really crowded).

And not forgetting the power-ups: shoot them a few times to cycle through a variety of weapon and craft upgrades.