YOUR MISSION IS ... SHOOT EVERYTHING!
more games for your ST
Microdeal
£14.95
Your
mission in Jupiter Probe, the latest release from Microdeal is to
fly above the surface of Jupiter sending back photographs. However,
a hostile race of beings whose only desire is to destroy Earth is
trying to stop you from discovering the dark secrets of Jupiter.
The mightiest powers on Earth have united and
supplied three scout ships with which to scour the surface of
Jupiter. These ships are equipped with twin laser cannons and a
limited number of 'advanced features'. These advanced features are
Ultrasonics, which cause a disturbance in the area around your ship,
thus destroying all aliens in your vicinity, and Shields which
protect your craft from enemy fire for a short period of time.
As you can probably tell from the above, this is yet
another shoot 'em up game. In fact it is very much like many other
games of this type. Vertical scrolling, nice bold graphics, neat
soundtrack, lots of aliens and plenty of action. Considering this
game is 'yet another vertical scrolling shoot 'ern up' it does have
a surprisingly impressive pedigree. It was programmed by Steve Bak
who was responsible for many superb games including Goldrunner and
Karate Kid II.
The graphics were done by someone I've not heard of
before, Chris Kew. Now don't get me wrong, they're good but there's
just something not quite right about them. The many craters,
mountains, rivers (on Jupiter!!!?) and ground bases are all well
drawn and very colourful, however they appear to be very 'chunky'.
They're good, but on the ST I expect something a little better.
The sound is, in most respects, excellent. Like many
other games at the moment, Jupiter Probe contains sampled speech,
however it is not very clear and only says a few things. The speech
warns you whenever a formation of aliens or a mutant space craft
(one which can't be destroyed by the Ultrasonics) is approaching. It
also tells you which advanced features have been awarded at the
appropriate moments. The Jupiter Probe theme music was written by
Rob Hubbard, and is considerably better than his last attempt on the
ST — Goldrunner.
The game is very playable as it is just about the
right difficulty level for most people, making it fairly hard but
not impossibly so. Control is with either mouse, joystick or
keyboard.
Jupiter Probe is a good value for money game, the price (£14.95)
being something which I hope to see more often from both Microdeal
and other software companies.
'a good value for money game'
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