In 1999, a small group of MZXers named Arctic Fusion rose from the ashes of Autumn Dreams (which was dead at the time, and would later be reincarnated on several occasions). Though the group was mostly unproductive and suffered some internal problems in its year and a half lifespan, it did release one significant offering about a third of the way through - MZX Combat Trainer.

MCT was inspired by "Shoot 'Em!" (which you can also find in the archive), but is much more ambitious and well-designed than that game was. The basic premise is that built-in enemies and items are placed in random locations on a board, and the player does his best to try and exterminate them all. On the first board you see, you get to choose how many of each item and powerup to have randomly placed on a battlefield. You can either choose from a preset difficulty (which is required for some medals - see below), or customize the settings. These are then slapped into the battlefield of your choice. Note that each and every one of each monster and item type has the exact same parameters. The game might have been better if parameters were switched up a bit for some monsters, especially the runners, who only go north and south. I'm not saying that I'd want to deal with invincible ghosts, though. Oh well, maybe it was for the better; this game is crazy enough as it is. Trying to shoot and bomb lots of monsters with limited ammo in MZX is difficult enough, but a whole screen full of them may very well prove insurmountable. I'd only recommend Elite if you're going for the first medal, and ZZTHero if you're a complete masochist.

There are eighteen boards you can choose from in this game, and just about everyone in AF contributed at least one of them. If you're going for a high score, the difficulty of each battlefield ranges from easy and straightforward (Caves of Zeux, Forest Compound) to ridiculously difficult and frustrating (Bat Still In Hell, Smiley RPG Arena). Each level has its own special feature that you can get bonus points for. Some are just for humor, while others can be deadly. For example, in Caves of Zeux, it's possible to fight the actual demon from Caverns of Zeux, complete with lava, if you can manage to awaken him. No, I'm not going to tell you how to do that. Go play the game and find out yourself.

The other goal in this game, besides beating your high scores for each board, is obtaining the medals. There are ten different medals in MCT, all except one obtained by meeting certain criteria in one or all of the boards. Unless you're looking for a ridiculous challenge, most of these medals are very easy to get if you know how MZX works. This is mainly because those medals can be obtained with custom settings. The only medal that requires a preset difficulty level is #1 - making that the most difficult to obtain IMO. Though there is a trick to making it easier, it's still very hard this way.

The graphics... meh. Aside from the title screen, menu, and medals, they vary from board to board, but generally they range from mediocre to okay. That's what you get when you have everyone submitting their own boards in their own style. Then again, graphics obviously weren't the main focus when AF were creating this game. I'd say that the best looking board is Duct Hunting, and the worst is The Quad Warehouse. The characters, on the other hand, look pretty nice, and the animations are a nice touch, making some of the enemies less boring in appearance.

The music provided with the game is all original, and it's pretty simple, but it works. On the menu screens, you have a short guitar-driven track that fits pretty well. During gameplay, the default song is completely percussion driven, and the tempo changes when you're low on health or grab an energizer. The other song that comes with the game is standard inmate chip fare, with pretty much the same tempo, samples, and pitch as most of the music he composed around that time. During gameplay, you can press M to specify any music track in the same directory that you want to play as opposed to the default music, which is a nice feature, but I prefer the percussion driven MOD, as it's the only one that changes tempo in the aforementioned situations. The sounds are the default PC speaker effects, except the energizer and gem sounds are changed.

Like I said, MZX Combat Trainer can be ridiculously hard, and may even make you go bald. Still, in moderation, it's a fun diversion with lots of replay value. At the very least, you should try to get the special feature on each level. That alone was worth the price of admission when I played this five years ago.

This MZX Combat Trainer is pretty unique, because of how much you can customize the game (32767 health, 1000000 ammo, and 3000+ enemies= carnage). Most boards are only worth playing once at best (Bat Still in Hell), unless your working on collecting all 10 medals. Also, random problems occur due to the different styles of programming from the programmers. In Das Big Gun arena, it's all most impossible to kill all enemies, but its also possible to get trapped on the board. But it's defenitly worth playing on occation.

Simply,one of the best Hardcore MZX Shooters.

The Throphies and the ability to customize settings only increase the Replay value cause you would for example try it with 100 health,50 ammo and LOADS of enemies(Of course,you must have enough ammo items and health supplies spawn on arena otherwise it would be impossible to kill all enemies).Also getting all throphies would take some time as it's not easy to get them all.

The Customization menu(called in game "Cosmetic CONSOLE") allows you to play any MOD during gameplay if you don't like the default one,and even lets you change sound effects,charset and pallete so if you don't like the defaults,nothing prevents you to change it.

If you are fan of Hardcore MZX Shooters then MZX Combat Trainer is great choice for you.