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REVIEW: JUPITER PROBE by Richard Karsmakers

For  millenia,  it  lay benign in the sky.  Three  hundred  times
greater than Earth;  a Gentle Giant that dwarfed all the  planets
in our solar system.  But...Jupiter concealed a deadly secret.  A
hostile race of beings programmed to conquer.  Mysterious aliens,
about  whom we know nothing...except their desire to destroy  our
Earth.

Quite  something to come up against in Microdeal's 'follower  up'
of "Goldrunner",  "Jupiter Probe".  A lot had been expected  from
this  game  (An  even  faster  scroll?   Even  more   magnificent
graphics?),  but I am afraid Mr.  Steve Bak,  the programmer, has
let us down a bit.
Not  that  "Jupiter  Probe" is a bad game  -  no!  But  the  fast
scrolling has disappeared - the landscape just scrolls down on  a
defined  speed.  The  game thus gets  many  characteristics  from
"Xevious",  although  the overall graphics (by Chris Kew) are  of
course better,  the ship's movement faster and the music (by  Rob
Hubbard) excellent though a bit short - less than 2 minutes.

The  people  at Microdeal should have  launched  "Jupiter  Probe"
before  they brought out "Goldrunner" - something to  wetten  our
appetites, so to say. It just isn't as good as its predecessor.

Actually,  "Jupiter  Probe" is much like  "Goldrunner",  but  the
status screen and the action screen have swapped places.  You fly
a well drawn spacecraft (that,  unfortunately, cannot turn around
as beautifully as the one in "Goldrunner") and you have to  shoot
the enemy to pieces that appears in the action screen from  above
or,  in later levels, from the sides. This way, you must complete
a multitude of levels with very well done graphics.  The game  is
very  difficult  - much more  difficult  than  "Goldrunner",  but
easier than "Xevious" and the like.

Though  not  as good as "Goldrunner",  "Jupiter Probe"  lies  way
ahead  of  all comparable shoot-'em-up games.  This  is  probably
because  of the good graphics and the terrific music  (the  sound
effects, by the way, are a bit 'soft'). The whole is completed by
digital speech like in "Goldrunner" - 'Formation', 'Mutation' and
'Shield' are some of the words in the game's vocabulary.

Let's get to the point - the game rating.

Name:                              Jupiter Probe
Author:                            Steve Bak
Company:                           Microdeal
Sound:                             9
Graphics:                          8
Hookability:                       8.5
Lastability:                       8.5
Overall rating:                    8.5
Price:                             59.50 Dutch Guilders
Remark:                            Still very good

Many thanks must go to Homesoft,  Haarlem,  The Netherlands,  for
sending a review sample of this new Microdeal game.

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s) was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes, bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.