Super Stardust 96

On the first of April in the year 2038, Earth was destroyed by the madness of the evil mutant penguin, Doctor Schaumund. Driven only by vengeance since his unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the princess Voi Levi, his twisted mind imagined the worse fate for mankind, a total extermination.

Fortunately, you were in the Starbase Foak-474 when the end of the world happened, which saved you from an early death. Now, it is time for revenge as Doctor Schaumund's horrible crime must not stay unpunished. Armed with your trusty Panther PX2 fighter, you must fight his evil agents controlling entire fleets of spaceships and asteroids, and ultimately reach the crazy penguin to make him pay for his crimes.

In "Super Stardust 96", the latest game published by Gametek, you control your ship through successive waves of asteroids and enemies. The game alternatively features overhead and 3D sections. In the overhead part, you must eliminate enemy ships and asteroids. When shooting at one asteroid, it will divide into two pieces of a lesser size that can be split up as well. Asteroids don't always have the same size and color, and depending on these two factors you will have more or less difficulty to destroy them. Each part of the asteroid will usually leave a token when you blow it up. These tokens can give you points, boost your shields, increase your engine power, initiate a wheel of flames that eliminates everything in range, give you more gunpower, replenish your energy, trigger a mega bomb, or give you an extra life. Tokens are rotating while floating on the screen, and they change with time when you wait too much to grab them. If you wait too long though, they will blow up and disappear.

The game play is fast, but may be tricky at first. While you control your ship with the keyboard or the joystick, you must avoid collisions with anything around if you want to keep your ship undamaged. Using left and right arrows on the keyboard to orientate the ship, you must also give thrust with the up arrow. However, don't forget we are in the space, and inertia will therefore heavily influence your movements which is not going to help you with the threatening asteroids coming from all the directions. One thing you must get used to is the way you move on the screen. If you go to the left, you will come back from the right, and in the same manner, you will go back from the top of the screen if you go too far beyond the bottom. It may sound hard to play, but after one or two tries, you will get into the game as if you always played with it.

The 3D sections only appear when you complete six levels. They consist of tunnels that link one world to another and they are each defended by a guardian you must defeat. In the tunnels, you can move up, down, left and right to avoid the projectiles and asteroids coming towards you. What you will see on the screen is a view from behind your ship, with the linings of the tunnel passing on your sides at a fast speed, giving the impression of being inside a real tunnel.

Super Stardust 96's graphics have nothing to envy to the arcade games you can find on the consoles nowadays. The cinematics used for both, the introduction and end sequence, feature nice 3D rendered animations. Even in the game, the various asteroids and enemies look like they were rendered too in 3D with beautiful light effects.

The soundtrack hasn't been forgotten by the developers who included over 50 minutes of an original music that mostly relies on techno. The game play finds itself boosted with this rapid rhythm that immediately plunges the player into the action.

Conclusion:

For hard core shootem-up players, "Super Stardust 96" is definitely unavoidable. There are plenty of levels, various weapons, furious action and a tremendous soundtrack that literally rocks the whole thing. If you don't like arcade games however, and think the PC should only be used for spreadsheets or traditional games like adventure, simulations or strategy, this one is way too much for you.

Ratings:

Graphics:	80%
Sound:	75%
Music:	88%
Gameplay:	85%
Interest:	80%
Overall:	82%

Click here for screen shots.

System Requirements:

386 DX-33 MHz or higher,
Min 4Mb memory,
MS-DOS 5.0 or later,
Hard drive required,
Double speed CD-ROM drive or faster,
VGA video graphic card (VESA Local Bus or PCI).

Developers

Housemarque Games Inc.

Publishers

In North America:

Gametek Inc.
2999 Northeast 191st Street, Suite 500,
Aventura, FL 33180.

Web site: Gametek

In Europe:

In UK:

Gametek UK.,
258 Bath Road,
Slough, Berkshire SL1 4DX.

Technical Support: +44-(0)1753-531831

Fax Support: +44-(0)1753-554340

In Germany:

Gametek Deutschland GmbH,
Steinmetzstr. 20,
41061 Monchengladbach.

Technical Support: +49-(0)180-5304525

In France:

Gametek France,
5 Rue Jean Rostand,
B.P. 380,
Genas Cedex.

Technical Support:	+44-(0)1753-531831
Fax Support:	+44-(0)1753-554340