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After an unfortunate incident on 61 Cygnus when a rookie pilot messed up his approach and half the planet when he tried to dock with its central reactor the Gal-corp set up the Academy. Its aim was to train rookie pilots to produce an elite corps of pilots and prevent such disasters while providing a new challenge and sequel to CRL's excellent Tau Ceti.

To graduate from the Academy a cadet must complete 20 missions and achieve an average rating of over 90%! The missions are grouped into five levels of four missions that are stored on a separate data tape. Most players won't need this tape as they'll still be struggling with the first four that are loaded in with the master program.

A main menu allows you to register as an Academy cadet, view and select the missions and the skimmers to complete them.

The first four missions range from the less-than-subtle "If It Moves..." annihilation run to the search through a minefield for base mission called "Softly, Softly", "Meltdown" is a race against time to close down a critical reactor on a polar world, finally "Red Dawn" a Tau Ceti style mission in which you must destroy robot factories in all quadrants connected by jump pads.

Whichever mission you choose (and you have to tackle them all sooner or later) you'll be attacked by robot droids of both familiar and new designs. Four types of laser-firing hunters lead the assault supported by mines, super mines, droids, hoppers, guardians, trackers and aptly-named kamikazes. Therefore it's important that your Gal-corp skimmer is armed and shielded for the mission. Three skimmers are ready for take-off, each offering a different range of equipment from the GCS Wilson complete with jump unit to the weapons and shields tank known as the GCS Lenin.

If neither of these or the balanced GCS Lincoln suit your needs or tactics then you can design your own as long as it remains within the weight and cost limits set down by the Academy.

Your basic skimmer consists of low, medium or high-powered laser, main drive, shield and steering units which you can then arm with missiles, anti-missiles and delay bombs then add whatever anti-missiles, jump units, scanners, compasses and trackers that you need and can afford. Finally you can customise the skimmer view screen and save your amazing design to tape for further missions.

Once the newly constructed GCS Rambo had wiped out the robot factories and mines that stood in its way I was ready for the next set of missions but still a long way to go before graduation. Ahead lay the dubious delights of such encounters as "...at the OK Corrall", "Don't Panic", "Hide and Seek" and "Mission Improbable".

Finally as a bonus the gamepack also includes a star map program so you can find your favourite stars and constellations. A game featuring 20 missions each as challenging as the original game doesn't need a bonus program.

A Monster Hit.