Subject: REVIEW: Stardust
From: [email-masked] (Mike Schwager)
Date: 3 Mar 1994 05:58:57 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Stardust, version unknown

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Blow up rocks!  Asteroids on steroids!  Explosions!  Chaos!  Mayhem!
A modern version of the classic "Asteroids".  Gameplay fully updated and
modernized, with cool graphics and sound.  Awful copy protection, though.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Bloodhouse Oy, Ltd.	Bloodhouse UK Ltd.
	Address:  	P.O. BOX 40		Bromley Lane
			00331 Helsinki		Chislehurst, Kent BR7 6LH
			Finland			England

LIST PRICE

	$49.95 (US); it can be had for about $27 (US).

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		1 Meg Agnus required.

		Must boot in PAL mode.

		Works fine on my 68000/68030 based, accelerator-equipped
		machine.

		Reportedly works well with a basic 68000-based machine.
		Does not work at all with a 68040-based machine

	SOFTWARE

		None.  Chris Hames' "Degrader" may come in handy for you,
		though.  Get it from Fish Disk 866.  It allows you to boot
		in PAL mode on an older Amiga like mine.

COPY PROTECTION

	Disk based.  Not hard disk installable.  This game uses a terrible
copy protection track loader scheme.  May the programmer never create
another program again.  The world will be better off.  If you want to save a
game, it will attempt to save it on disk 2.  It comes on 3 disks; all of
them are copy protected.  Stupid.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 500, 4 Megs 32-bit Fast RAM, 1 Meg Chip RAM.
	CSA MMR 68030 Accelerator w/FPU  (ran it on 68000-only mode, too).
	2 floppy drives.
	Supra SCSI controller.
	157 Megs of Hard Disk space.
	AmigaDOS 1.3

INSTALLATION

	None.

SUMMARY

	On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with a plus sign for extra credit
(same as the comp.sys.amiga.reviews "micro review" format):

	Action:          ***+
	Graphics:        ****
	Gameplay:        ****
	Lack of bugs:    **
	Copy Protection: *
	Manual:          ***
	Overall:         ***+

REVIEW

	I bought this game from a poor soul who couldn't get it to work on
his A4000.  Well, it works fine for me, but it took a little hacking about.
At first, I tried to get it going on my stock configuration.  It ran the
introduction just fine, but when it finally got to the main map-screen
(where you select your missions), the screen had some horizontal lines
spaced regularly down the left 1/3, and it would not respond to any input.
So I finally got it to work by doing the A500 Fatter Agnus PAL hack - a
hardware switch which allows me to boot in PAL mode.  Then I discovered
Chris Hames' Degrader program, and that allowed me to boot in PAL mode
without any hardware hacking.  I guess those of you with newer Amigas don't
have to worry about it.  But make sure you boot in PAL!

	Here is what it's like: You put your Disk 1 in and boot up.  An intro
screen comes on that was shamelessly borrowed from Star Wars.  In it, words
scroll up telling some silly story about how these rocks are out to destroy
the universe.  You can press the joystick button to continue on immediately,
but watch the whole thing the first time.  There's some animation in there
that's cool.

	After a few minutes of disk grinding, an options screen is
displayed, and you can make some selections.  You can decide if you want
the music on or off, how many lives you get (3, 5, or 7), and a few other
little details.

	Then you press the joystick button, and you get to the "map-screen."
I will try to describe it... really it's much simpler than what I've been
able to write.  Your ship is a little sprite.  There are 5 rectangles on the
screen, each one representing a "world," and your ship is in the rectangle
on the upper left.  As you move your ship left and right, up and down within
the rectangle, you see on the bottom of the screen a brief description of
the "level" - its difficulty rating, any special enemy ships present... that
sort of thing.  So you position your ship over a level you want to go into,
and press the joystick button.  Your ship spins around, the disks grind, and
soon you find yourself in an asteroid field.  But such an asteroid field!  I
don't know how they did these rocks, but they look great.  Apparently
they're all texture mapped, ray traced images.  They really look nice.  Your
job, of course, is to get rid of them.  So you shoot at everything and
anything that moves.

	Just like in real Asteroids, the rocks blow up into smaller and
smaller pieces.  Finally, you blow away one of the smallest pieces.  You may
or may not get a little token.  The token is labeled, and it gives you bonus
things - maybe a faster gun, an extra life, some points, more shields, more
"energy" (you lose energy whenever you collide with something), etc.  If you
die, you lose a little bit of your gun speed.

	Once you clear a level, you are back on the map screen.  There you
can select another level.  Once all the levels are clear, a mother ship
comes to get you.  You destroy the mother ship (it's not so easy), and then
you are done with that "world".  A "W" icon appears on the map screen in
your rectangle.  You move over to it and press the joystick button.  Now you
"warp" to the next level: your ship spins around, floppy disks grind, and
soon you are heading down some sort of tunnel.  Rocks and mines are zooming
past you.  Your job now is to avoid the mines and avoid or (preferably)
destroy the rocks.  It's not too hard to get through the tunnel, but it is
somewhat hard to get through AND destroy a decent number of rocks.  Again,
the graphics here are excellent.  How did they make those realistic-looking
asteroids come towards you and grow gradually larger like that?  Nice job.

	Some levels have weapon transports.  If you kill them and pick up
the icon that's left, you get different weapons.  Some of the weapons have
different abilities and/or a higher overall speed.  For example, each shot
of the basic gun shoots three bullets simultaneously in a small fan
arrangement.  The next weapon available to you is a bouncer, and though you
get only one bullet with each shot, the bullets bounce.  It also has a higher
available firing rate.  The next is the "plasma" gun.  I'm not sure yet if
it's better or worse or what.  It seems like a regular gun, with maybe a
higher available firing rate.

	Eventually you'll die, and Stardust will tell you how horrible you
are at playing the game.  If you've gotten far enough, when you get back to
the options screen you will see a code.  Write that down; when you start the
game again in the future, you can get to the warp tunnel just prior to the
"world" you died in by typing in that code.  You will come in with the same
number of lives that you had at the time you originally did the warp level.
That's nice, so you don't have to start all the lower levels again.

DOCUMENTATION

	A small manual, written in English, Francais, Deutsch, Italiano, and
something else - Finnish, I think.  It covers the basics, but there's not
much necessary for a game like this.  I wish it explained what the little
numbers on the left side of the screen are for:  they appear when you are in
the meteor-blasting screen.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I like the graphics and the sound.

	One nice thing about real Asteroids was you could have 5 bullets in
the air at once, but they came out as fast as you could shoot.  This gave
you at least a feeling that in an emergency, if you needed to shoot fast,
you could.  Stardust's gun is sluggish.  What a drag.  That's the one
gameplay criticism I could make of the game.

	I like not having to start over all the way after I die.
  
	I really, really, really HATE that trackloader (copy protection).  I
want to be able to install the game on my hard disk, or at least run
something from s:startup-sequence before the game comes up (like "pal" by
Nico Francois).  I wish they'd used key disk copy protection at worst.  Disk
2 is used the most, and I wish I could copy it, because it won't last too
long the way the game makes it spin constantly.
  
	You must un-write-protect one of the disks to save the high scores.
I don't like that either.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	As games go, it's pretty good.  Compared to the original Asteroids,
Stardust's graphics and sound are generations better.  The ship is
frustrating to control because you just can't always blast off a quick bunch
of shots in an emergency, like you could with Asteroids.  But in every other
respect, Stardust is light-years ahead of Asteroids.

BUGS

	AUUGH!  DAMN!  Lousy, lousy loader.  It's fast enough, sure, but you
can't put the game on hard disk, the floppies spin endlessly, and my disks
sound like they're going to give birth to a cow.  Some guy named "Wanton"
was supposed to have programmed the loader.  He needs a spanking, badly.
And the company deserves a verbal lashing for accepting it.  I haven't seen
a gross disgusting loader like this in years.  Of course, I'm not normally a
shoot-em-up gameplayer.  But I wonder what the publisher is thinking when
they sell software with these "features"?

	Reportedly does NOT work on the A4000.

	REQUIRES that you boot in PAL mode.  I didn't have a hardware
switch on my A500, so I installed one to get it to work.  But then I found
Degrader, and so I'm a little happier.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	Unknown, for they are in England and I am in Chicago.

WARRANTY

	If your disks go bad, send them to Bloodhouse along with 2.50 pounds
UK and they will replace them.  At least, that's what they say.

CONCLUSIONS

	Explosions!  Destruction!  Chaos!  Rocks!  Stardust takes Asteroids
a step further with cool graphics and sounds.  After a while you get used to
it and the game play still is... pretty good!  It's fun.  Rating: ***+
AmigaWorld gave this game an "A" rating, but it was a pretty quick review.
They didn't even mention the compatibility problems with the Amiga 4000.  To
me, I can give a product a solid "A" only if it demonstrates consideration
for the customer.  Stardust's trackloader is a big slap in the face:  it's as
bad as the game itself is good.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1994 by Mike Schwager.  All rights reserved.  Permission
is granted to spread this far and wide over the known galaxy.  Go ahead and
quote bits and pieces of it if you like.  Just don't alter its contents, and
make sure to credit me with the text.

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