Richard Jones, AF's esteemed production editor, has a novel way of tackling the solid rocks that menace the skies in Super Stardust. He careers wildly across the screen unloading bullets with complete abandon.

"It's what I used to do in Asteroids", he suggests. "And if you just keep going around in circles in the middle, that does the trick, too." Just a minute, deadline is always the time of the month when everybody has to really buckle down, not least the production editor for 'tis he who must ensure the magazine becomes an er, magazine. So why is Richard constantly disappearing into the back room to play Super Stardust? I've got to do the screenshots and he should be subbing pages. Oh, damn. Sorry Rich, I've just remembered that publishers read magazines. Richard is disappearing into the back room to check film, OK? That's where it's always checked. Honest.

Super Stardust is posh Stardust was posh Asteroids. Super Stardust is the game that toffee-nosed aliens who might happen to inhabit asteroids would play, if they had an Amiga. And it's a game that everyone in the AF office is playing, some, it must be said, considerably more successfully than others.

Our friends in Amiga Power think Super Stardust is rather smart, though perhaps a tad easy over the first three levels. I feel inadequate. I'm having trouble on the second level - not that it's ridiculously difficult, but I can't sail through the first level without losing lives, which becomes a terrible handicap after the first tunnel sequence.

Handsome beast
I know that there are power-ups for extra lives, increased firepower, better engines and shield reinforcers; I just can't seem to get them at the right time, or indeed, enough of them. I've tried using a joystick, keyboard and joypad - I like the joypad - But I can't do the business to a degree I find satisfactory.

Super Stardust is possibly the most handsome-looking Amiga game ever. The 256-colour graphics; the rendered visuals; the stunning tunnel sequences; the amazing ray-traced alien craft. And the rest of it - it's all very beautiful. The explosions are a sight to behold and the tunnel sequences (of which there are four) are breathtaking, if occasionally swearword-inducing.

After six levels, you get to zoom through an extraordinary-looking tunnel at a speed Luke Skywalker would baulk at, while attempting to shoot asteroids, avoid death bolts and collect pick-ups. Pick-ups indeed. They're way past even before you've had a chance to register their existence, let alone pick them up.

Space - it's big
Not only is this game a visual feast, it can play a bit too. Whether you prefer the gung-ho tactics of flying at pace, bullets spraying haphazardly, or the more measured approach of floating carefully around centre screen, edging left and right, back and forth, letting go the odd round at the correct juncture, Super Stardust takes the Asteroids gameplay and shoots it firmly into the mid-nineties.

I guess the question must be: "If I've already got Stardust, is it worth getting Super Stardust?" The answer, most emphatically, is Yes. Most folk ignored the original for some unfathomable reason (Stardust reviewed AF55, 88%) and that was priced at only 17 quid. Why, you fools? ("Don't call all readers fools, Steve" - S Carey, Publisher, Bath). All the levels (there are 30, in all) have been redesigned and the guardians and enemies were re-rendered. In fact, it looks far better than the devilishly-pretty original.

Of course, if you haven't got an AGA machine, you won't be able to play Super Stardust, but it's a game every Amiga owner ought to take a look at, even if they think computer games are Satan's business.

Soft. That's the word for Super Stardust. Not only has the astoundingly highly difficult level of the famously non-selling A500 version been wound down a crank or two, but the graphics have been given a plumper, smoother look and the music (and even the explosions) a warmer, rounder sound to create an altogether 'softer' feel.
No, it's no good.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? WE TOLD YOU D/GENERATION WAS TERRIFIC, WE TOLD YOU IT WAS ASTONISHINGLY CHEAP, AND YOU IGNORED US. THEN WE TOLD YOU THAT STARDUST WAS TERRIFIC, AND IT WAS EVEN MORE SHOCKINGLY INEXPENSIVE, AND THAT IF YOU DIDN'T BUY IT FOR BEING FABULOUS AND NOT-AT-ALL PRICEY AFTER COMPLAINING ABOUT ROCKETING GAME COSTS THEN YOU WERE ALL OIKISH HYPOCRITES AND DESERVED THE INEVITABLE PRICE HIKES WHEN THE PROGRAMMERS QUITE SENSIBLE LICENSED THEIR GAME TO A SOFTWARE HOUSE RATHER THAN RELYING ON YOUR GOODWILL AND SELLIT IT MAIL ORDER, AND AGAIN YOU IGNORED US, AND NOW BLOODHOUSE HAVE DONE JUST THAT AND IT'S GOING TO COST YOU MORE TO BUY SUPER STARDUST AND, INDEED, STARDUST WHICH IS BEING RE-RELEASED, AND YOU KNOW WHAT?
YOU'RE ALL GOING TO BUY IT NOW, BECAUSE YOU'VE GOT SOME STUPID PRECONCEPTIONS THAT BECAUSE A GAME IS CHEAP IT HAS TO BE POOR AND THAT HAVING IT TAKEN UP BY AN ESTABLISHED COMPANY AND GIVEN A BIG BOX AND ADVERTISING SOMEHOW MAKES IT BETER, AND YOU'RE GOING TO FEEL SO MUCH HAPPIER ABOUT PAYING MORE FOR IT IN SOME HIGH STREET SHOP RATHER THAN BUYING IT DIRECTLY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO DID ALL THE WORK AND MAY YOU SOON BE AS FINANCIALLY BANKRUPT AS YOU ARE MORALLY, YOU UNBELIEVABLY STUPID WHINGERS.
That's better.

FINISHED
Well, um, here I am with four pages to write about what is, essentially, Asteroids with a 3D section. Looking back at the review of the original game, (("Cam"... this joke is really getting tired. - Uncle Joe Stalin) cunningly exhausted all possible topics (describing the aim of the game and its merits and drawbacks (Fiendishly cunning, yes. - Ed), outlining the ingenious power-up system, er, shouting about people not buying the game) leaving me in a right old pickle. Crumbs. And you're probably just interested in looking at the pictures anyway.

Actually, there's one thing I could say. In the review, Stuart (Rejoice! Our comrade has been cleared of the terrible crimes trumped up by the diabolical head of the oppressive regime overthrown by our glorious counter-revolution. - Comrade Nicky Kruschev) complained about the lack of keyboard control. It was, he said, a fatal error considering the amount of pixel-perfect manoeuvring required. Well, such is the influence that AMIGA POWER commands. Bloodhouse have fixed things for Super Stardust. There are, in fact, two keyboard options, to do with the positioning of the thrust and fire keys or something (I'm unswayably inclined towards the office fire-buttons-replacing-up-and-down joypad actually) so all hail to AMIGA POWER! Um.

I suppose... I suppose I could talk about the basics of the game, because, technically, it's not quite Asteroids. That venerable game, as you will no doubt recall, being fans of old coin-ops and not, for example, young people living for the here and now, had you shooting at big rocks, which split into smaller rocks, then tiny rocks which finally exploded. In Super Stardust, there are different strengths of rock. The ordinary grey rocks (except they're more ruggedly silver. Look at that raytracing! But that's talking about the graphics, which has been done. Jiminy) for example take but a few hits to demolish, whereas the mauve boulders are substantially harder than the intermediate blue ones. (Gold boulders are very bad news.) In fact, not only do the rocks vary in resilience, the different chapters move at different speeds, so rather than have a predictable Asteroids screen where you know that the titchy boulders will zoom around faster than the big ones, the game litters the playing area with tricky blighters that tend to take you by surprise.

Actually, taking you by surprise Super Stardust is a speciality of Super Stardust. Quite apart from the difficulties of playing a game where using the screen wraparound is of tremendous importance (and it's a breakthrough moment when you stop frantically trying to stay in the centre of the screen where, fairly obviously, the concentration of boulders is at its highest and work with the wrap to speed out of danger and pounce on something from behind) the introduction of monsters with the second level causes near-panic. These monsters - unlike the feeble bleep of the original game, heralded with a piercing, jangling alarm klaxon - try their damnedest to do away with you in so many nasty ways, the very least of which is following you doggedly around the screen. (The very most involves something remarkably unpleasant to do with the overwhelming odds, spinning spiked arms that overlap the screen edges so you're in danger from three directions at once, and leisurely bombers spilling proximity mines). It makes each new screen an adventure, with you whittling away at the rocks then being expertly frightened by the klaxons, flitting around the screen nervously trying to anticipate where the monsters will appear, and then getting taken by surprise. I do like that in a game. (But so did Stuart. Ooogh.).

SIXTY
The tunnels then. The bits where you get from one level to another after defeating the big monster, except that's like calling ('Standing atop the Blackpool Tower in a high wind with a big flappy coat' and not, for example, anything to do with the Big One. - Legal Ed) reasonably invigorating. You really can't appreciate the devastating majesty of these sections until you're there, bobbing in your seat to the jinks of your ship and screaming in empathic fear as it detonates against a razor-edged wheel the size of Peru. Again, the programmers have shamelessly looted an old coin-op (the sticking your head out of a car going 60mpgh-rushingly 3D Space Harrier, to be exact) but have trampled all over it in terms of speed, impact and nerve-zapping gameplay. The rogues.

PERCENT
There is, however, one thing wrong with Super Stardust. One quite big thing, actually. It really is 'soft'. After the terrifying challenge of Stardust, you'd expect Team 17 to impose a 'friendlier' level of difficulty on the game (as they did with the re-release of Project-X). But, oddly, they've gone almost to the other extreme. You can be blasting away, marvelling at the presentation, goggling at the horrendous destructive power of your guns as rocks splinter around, sweeping around to catch out the monsters, tackling the power-up-laden sub-levels early on to charge up your guns even more and endangering your thumb in the tunnels, when suddenly you realise you've just completed level three and there are only five altogether. And there are passwords.

It's not necessarily a bad thing (Stardust just tended to make you angry on the later levels with its absurd over-aggressiveness) but the almost supernatural ease with which everybody who played the game sailed through it smacks slightly of compromise. And compromise is, of course, a tool of the devil.

ONLY
But you'll probably not be interested in our reactionary mumbling. You'll be justifiably excited about the game's engulfing playability, constant variety, truly cinematic moments (the bit where this gigantic rock - and we're talking ship-dwarfing - rolls in from one corner, and you speed off to avoid it, and another gargantuan boulder tumbles out from the opposite corner and the two squash you in between demands to be shown on a big screen to a breathless audience), bizarre percentages (such as shot-to-hit ratios and, er, power-up icons missed) and frankly astonishing presentation. Good for you.

Stardust was nothing more than Asteroids for the Nineties. This is something that was accepted from the start, but nobody seemed to mind at all. There were no cries for more up-to-date gameplay, more originality or anything else that could be deemed to be negative. The magazines lapped it up, and so did the public: Bloodhouse found themselves with a major hit on their hands. So, changing publishers from Daze Marketing to Team 17, work began on Super Stardust, an AGA expanded version of the original game, and we've been waiting hungrily ever since.

THE ORIGINAL
By way of explanation here's a quick recap: the original game had you flying a solo spaceship, armed with a rudimentary shield and laser cannon, flying through an asteroid belt chock-a-block with huge rocks, which you then have to blast into smaller and smaller fragments until they disappear. This is done against the clock, and bearing in mind that every time you shoot a rock it splits into two, you end up with a hell of a lot of small rocks floating around, all of which need to be avoided if you want to stay in one piece.

So far it sounds nothing more than Asteroids, but then that's because I haven't told you about any of the bonus parts of the game. For a start, there are barrel loads of enemy craft that visit you on various levels, such as the flame thrower - a round disc-like craft that follows you around the screen blowing streams of fire in your directions, or the Predator, an unusual cloaked ship, that causes a ripple in the backdrop as it moves around before it appears and starts firing homing missiles at you. Hardest of all, though, are the end of world enemy ships that appear when you have completed all six levels of the current world. These are larger than any other ships in the game and as you might expect, are far harder to kill.

Another new addition to the Asteroids format are the bonus objects that appear when you destroy certain rocks. These can be anything from an extra life or a shield bonus up to smart bombs and a strange spiralling explosion that takes out everything within a quarter of a screen radius.

THE BUSINESS
The best part of all, however, and the one thing that most A1200 owners (including Tony Horgan) have been waiting for is the tunnel section. This takes the part of a warp gate between worlds, and looks like a large bitmap tunnel with your craft viewed from behind (third person) flying forward at an incredible speed while trying to avoid other asteroids and attacking ships. In the original Stardust this effect was incredible, on the AGA update it's one of the most impressive pieces of game programming ever. You can see from the screenshots on this page just how impressive it looks when it's still, and you really can't imagine how amazing it looks when it's moving at a speed of knots.

The biggest selling point of the whole game has to be the graphics. The original Stardust impressed everyone from the point of view that all the asteroids had been rendered with full light sourcing, but that can't prepare anyone for the sight of Lightwave-rendered asteroids the size of half the screen rolling around. It all looks fabulous, to say the least.

Thankfully, the gameplay matches up. Somewhat faster and smoother than the original Stardust, this is the kind of game you can pick up in a moment, and then get hooked in the next. A solid game from start to finish, Super Stardust has the kind of sheen that not many games ever get close to, and if you're an AGA machine owner, you'd be insane to miss it.