Producer: Reaktor
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Realtime

The eight-planet Hyturian system has long been surrounded by the Rubicon, a peacekeeping protective cube. Now the Rubicon has been breached by an aggressive ninth world which is popping fighters into space. Their progress must be halted.

You pilot the powerful fighter Starfox, looking into hostile space through the upper half of a horizontally-split screen. The lower portion consists of three small rear-facing scanners which alert you to approaching enemy space fighters and convoys.

The enemy can be engaged using Starfox's laser, and you can get updated weapons by travelling down a wormhole to a planet and carefully docking with the mothership which orbits it. Three weapons can be held at a time.

The mother ship can also repair damage sustained in alien attacks - damage is shown on the shield indicators in the cockpit window.

Starfox has limited fuel reserves, which fall dramatically when turbo boost is engaged - speed bars show the ships velocity. Extra supplies can be offloaded from a supply ship when you're notified it's in the area.

Two logs can be called up. A general log indicates the coordinates the of dangerous ice-crystal storms, the make-up of the weapon pack and details of attacking enemy craft. And the autopilot log points the ship in the right direction for travel to logged planets. Coordinates of planets, convoys and storms can be compared against present-position coordinates, shown on the centre crossbar of the main viewing screen.

When planets and enemy convoys are located, they're put on the holocube, a 3-D map of the universe which you can zoom in on or rotate to any angle.

At first your task is simply to destroy enemy fighters. At higher levels, more difficult missions are set. When all eight levels have been finished, the Hyturian system is safe.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Use of colour. monochromatic
Graphics: excellent
Sound: Spot FX
Screens: the view from the cockpit

Starfox is impressive, to say the least. The graphics are good - easily matching, even bettering those of the classic Starstrike II, which is an accolade! There's playability and addictivity in bundles, and I'd recommend this shoot-'em-up to anyone.
MIKE

Despite the brains and neat ideas behind Starfox, it becomes boring once you've learned the basics. The combat phase is very slow and the controls are much too cumbersome to use effectively. Some features add to the gameplay, but the make it confusing too. I wouldn't recommend this - it's monotonous and unplayable.
BEN

Starfox isn't instantly as playable as some Realtime games, such as Starstrike. But the graphics are better, with smooth-moving shaded 3-D spaceships. Yet again sound is limited to a few odd effects, though. And at first the many controls are a bit fiddly - like other space epics (Code Name Mat, Elite), Starfox has a lot in it but takes a while to master. Then it's a joy to play. The fight sequences are great, reminiscent of Elite - the odds are stacked against you and it can be a real battle of wits. And Starfox has some innovative features, such as the 3-D Holocube, which is useful for navigation if you know how the 3-D coordinates work. Starfox is very good if you put some effort into it.
ROBIN

Ariolasoft
£8.99

Starfox is another of those games which looks familiar the first time you load it in, even though you've never actually seen this particular program before.

You're the gallant defender of your star system. You have to do battle with the nasty aliens and their swarms of spacecraft. At the beginning of the game, you find yourself piloting the Starfox, armed with a Laser Mark 1. As you destroy successive waves of enemy ships, you'll be able to travel to friendly planets, land on the motherships you'll find there and upgrade your weapons systems. But as you upgrade your weapons, the enemy picks up what you've thrown away, so the tougher your weapons are, the better armed the enemy is as well and there are lots of the little stinkers.

The screen is effectively your cockpit. The top two thirds show your forward viewscreens, while along the bottom you have your rear screens. Both sets of screens show you a very nice selection of stars, and there are no surprises here - little white dots. Scattered about in various places you have gauges and readouts and such like, although with the screen in black and white as it is, it took me quite a while before I realised where half the displays were, and even longer before I got the hang of what they were showing me.

There are also various bits and bobs you can call up at will, including a holographic display of the galaxy, instruments which locate enemy convoys, auto-pilot... The instruction manual tells you what everything does, but I'd have liked a little more explanation on some of them.

Unfortunately for Ariolasoft, Starfox is automatically going to be compared to Elite. Nor do the designs of enemy craft help much - one at least looks the spitting image of the large dart shaped transport thingees that are such a joy to turn into colanders in Elite. But, as yet, I can't really say whether Starfox measures up to its more illustrious predecessor, although I'm inclined to say it doesn't.

So far my progress as hero of the universe hasn't been conspicuous by any sort of success. I haven't hit a single thing yet! Maybe I'm just not up to it, but the enemy craft seem to appear almost at random and disappear at will. No matter how hard I try, tracking them is an impossible task,

Not, so far, the most satisfying of games. I have no doubt that there are Your Sinclair readers out there who will take to it like the proverbial ducks to water, but I have to admit that Starfox not to my taste. Some how I just couldn't get into this one no matter how hard I tried.

Label: Reaktor
Author: Real Time
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Starfox has the ability to be excruciatingly infuriating. It's also a damned good shoot-out involving solid 3D wire-frame graphics and lots of aliens to blow away OK so far - but don't even think about the plot - which is devastatingly unoriginal.

I'll keep it brief the eight planets of the Hyturian System have shut themselves off from war in the rest of the universe by constructing a cube of anti-matter around their galaxy through which nothing can pass. Or so they thought. Now the system's gone wrong and aliens have infiltrated the cube (the Rubicon). They've got to be expelled, and it's your job, as Hawkins, pilot of the Starfox to carry out the messy business. See - I told you it was about as innovative as a pack of ready- salted crisps.

As well as the obvious 3D Starstrike elements in Starfox (both programs were written by the same team - Real Time) there is a considerable degree of strategy involved. The Rubicon acts as a three-dimensional map, and you can call it up at any time to see the location of your ship, alien forces and nearby planets. It's very important that you don't fly out of the Rubicon before wiping out all of the aliens, as leaving its protective area will throw you forward in time, and you'll have to fight more advanced aliens.

After a short time flying around, you'll come across a planet. Handy things planets. In order to use them to their best advantage, you should fly down the square wormhole affairs is la Alien, and guide yourself down to the surface. After a few seconds the mothership will appear. Fly up to it and dock. This is actually far more difficult than it sounds, as you have to reverse into the ship. Apparently this is because you've got to get your fuel lines round the right way. or taking up more than one parking space of something.

After docking you can up date your weapons. Fuel, on the other hand can only be obtained by finding a fuel ship, which will be located wafting around in space Considerably less traumatic than the docking procedure, all that's necessary is to find one and press F.

Like just about any kind of pilot, you'll have to pay close attention to the weather conditions. There are few things worse (other, perhaps than falling in a gorse bush while having a piggy back fight) than running slap bang into an ice-crystal storm while you're heading for an urgently needed re-fuel.

While the theme and plot is getting near to having been done to death, Starfox has enough inventive touches to make it interesting - like the rear-view video screens and the holocube-map.

Starfox is yet another very high quality game, though I did reckon it lacked a certain oomph.