Codename MAT II

Codename MAT II by Derek Brewster

The red planet Vesta contains the most precious lift-giving substance in the universe: Karillium. For many light years the inhabitants of the planet have peacefully mined and despatched Karillium to the free colonies of the Solar System, but now the evil Myons have returned to destroy Vesta and its Karillium mines. MAT is sent in his sophisticated fighting machine to defend the planet and its satellites from attack and restore law and order in space.

Following on from the success of the previous game in the series, Codename MAT pushes a greater emphasis on to the strategy element that made the first game so popular with mixed results.

While Codename MAT stood out from the crowd in software starved 1984, by 1985 the standard had risen considerably with MAT looking a pale second best to Starion released in the same month and with the all conquering Elite's impending release, Codename MAT II came a few months too late to make a major impact.

Despite improving on the orginal's fault, the game still failed to capture the imagination of the public in quite the same way as it had before, Sadly Codename MAT II was to be the last ride for the Centurion.

CMII still received fairly good reports from the reviewers of the time. Amstrad Action were clearly impressed that Domark had improved the failings of Micromega's earlier game stating that "this is certainly an improvement on the original MAT, with better combat graphics and more ship functions. There still isn't much out there in space but this war of attrition is pretty testing"

Amtix bemoaned that the game was "not the fresh new idea that its predecessor was, in fact there are quite a lot of similarities between the two games... but the gameplay is pretty good. The player is under quite a lot of pressure, especially when the enemy numbers start to increase and you have to repair damage to your ship. Well worth buying if you are a space strategy shoot-em-up fan without Codename Mat the first."

• 1. Codename MAT (1984)
• 2. Codename MAT II (1985)

• Re-released as a budget title on the Bug-Byte label (1987)
• Appeared on Now Games 3 from Virgin in 1986
• Appeared on The Thriller Pack from Paxman Productions (1987)

• Codename MAT II was also released on the 48k Spectrum
• The CPC Version was coded by Brian H. Jobling

• Haunted Hedges (1984)
• Codename MAT (1984)
• Con-Quest (1986)
• Kentilla (1986)
• The Curse of Sherwood (1987)
• Speed King 2 (1987)
• Mission Jupiter (1987)
• Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager (1990)
• World Soccer (1990)

• Cover Scan & Loading Instructions (pdf)

• Codename Mat, manual (pdf)

• The Amstrad CPC Games Resource

• CPC game base from phenixinformatique

• Codename MAT II at World of Spectrum