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No console ever succeeds without a good base of games to support it, and the first game is possibly the most important of all. The SNES and Mega Drive consoles, as well as having an installed base of disciples from the lesser 8-bit platforms, also had the Super Mario and Sonic games to sell them. And they succeeded...

But can you spot a certain similarity between the two games? Yes - they're both platformers, starring a certain character jumping around lots of colourful levels picking up goodies and bouncing off baddies' heads. The main reason for this similarity is because both consoles were primarily designed for scrolling and shifting sprites around the screen. So naturally the main genre for them has always been platformers and shoot-'em-ups.

While the Jaguar's power can obviously be turned to producing cracking shoot-'em-ups - for the first one take a look at the Crescent Galaxy preview on page 88, Atari have taken the brave step of packaging something rather more complex along with their new baby. It's still easy to play, it's difficult to master, and it's technically stunning. And it's Cybermorph.

The basic premise is that the Pernitian Empire (the baddies) are taking over lots of planets with the view of expanding their business. Along the way they have hijacked most of your people, their weaponry and scientists, and sealed them into Pods. Then - hey, where would we be without storylines? They've gone and spread the Pods around 40 planets throughout the universe, the little tinkers. In true Rambo style, you're left to stop the rot and recover all the Pods single-handedly.

You and your ship are automatically beamed to the planets, so all you need to do is nip in, complete the mission, and nip out again. To help you along your way you have Skylar, an advisor, and a small radar screen. An arrow on the radar points to the nearest free Pod, but on later levels some Pods are trapped in Pod Prisons which don't show up on the radar. The scanner also detects the presence of enemies. Technically anything that moves is an enemy, but some shoot at you while some just go about other tasks, like shifting cargo of power-ups and collecting pods. The more friendly enemies, if enemies can be friendly, are displayed on the radar as green skulls, and the nasty attacking ones shw up as red skulls.

Added into the equation is a pollutant unit known as a Vortex Tower. This is a sort of yellow totem pole which sits on a small island on some of the planets. You can disable it by offloading the odd missile or two, but if you leave it alone it spreads a thick black layer of pollution over the landscape - showing an excellent use of the Jaguar's Gouraud shading capability. The Pod Collectors try to grab pods and deliver them to this area, so that they become poisoned and die. The Pod Collectors continue to deliver the yellow pods around this area, so you can often pick them up for a song. Occasionally, you can find more than one Vortex Tower on one planet, especially on later levels when things get difficult.

First impressions of Cybermorph are that it's a flight sim, but before you yawn and turn over the page, fear not, it isn't a knob and dial game.

It's been made in true arcade style, with high-quality graphics and growling sampled sound effects adding to the coin-op atmosphere. And while you fly, all the flight mechanics are kept to a bare minimum.

At the heart of the game is your ship, the T-Griffon, a "morphing attack craft", apparently. It seems it's called this because it changes shape depending on which direction it's flying, and what weapon is being used. Controlling the T-Griffon is simple - you use the direction pad to turn left and right, and to climb and die; while the three fire buttons are for accelerating forwards, backwards and firing (what a surprise). The Option button flips between your weapons, which are many and varied, while the keypad buttons detonate Super Weapons, and do little fiddly bits like changing your view of the craft.

You can look at the action from directly behind the T-Griffon (if you've ever played Starwing you know what we mean!), from the left, right or front, or you can sit inside the ship and look out. A cross-hair can be switched on if you want to know which direction you're firing, which is kind of useful but not essential. While that might sound hideously complicated, it isn't really. You need only learn the basics at first, then move on to the stronger stuff later on.

The worlds of Cybermorph are made up from fractals; gorgeous, colourful landscapes which can move along at breath-taking speeds. The coders have made great use of the 24-bit graphic capabilities of the Jaguar to create wonderfully smooth colour gradients, using Gouraud shading to add texture to the landscape. The story of each level is slightly different to help keep the interest in the game alive, because what we have is 48 levels which are very similar - just collect Pods and shoot enemies.

Cybermorph throws in some different enemies towards the later levels, and lots of puzzle elements such as mazes and clues to further bonus missions. Also lurking in the landscapes are portals - colour-coded teleporters to take you to different places on the planet - this is when things start to get hard. After Level 24, this is probably one of the hardest games you're ever going to play - but you won't be put off, just spurred on to complete more levels.

Oh, yes, and the levels are split into five levels of eight planets each. These are accessed by level codes which are given to you as you complete the last one. In any given level, you can choose which planet to try first, and you get as many attempts as your lives can withstand; so if you find one planet hard you can zip into another one first.

And now we come to the real problem: Skylar, the advisor, who's programmed to tell you where you're going wrong and to congratulate you when you're doing well. She has a soft, feminine voice, like that which has formed the basis for computer-generated voices for years - Blade Runner, Red Dwarf, the Austin Maestro. Well, the latter at least for a while, until drivers got sick of the patronising voice informing them that "Your door is open" and "Please fasten your seat belt". And this, folks, is the one bugbear with Cybermorph. Yes, we need fast action; yes, we need good gameplay. What we don't need is a patronising voice which bleats "Avoid the ground," and "Where did you learn to fly?" every single time you make even the slightest contact with terra firma.

There is an option to turn her dulcet tones down, or even off. But then the problem arises that you can't hear the important things she says, such as "Portal now open," thus taking away a key point of the game. Six people have now played Cybermorph in the ST Format office, and everyone has slagged off Skylar within five minutes. This is a basic design problem, and in such a technically clever and complex game, you don't expect to find such a flaw.

That tedious and bothersome detail aside, this is fantastic. It's a good showcase for the Jaguar, showing off some of its finer features, but above all it's a great game to play. If this is the standard of Jaguar games at the moment; hell, we've got a bright future to look forward to.

Graphics 70%
Very fast 24-bit fractals, Gouraud shading.

Sound 70%
Stonking coin-op quality sampled effects.

Capability 50%
No music, little variation in gameplay.

Gameplay 90%
Smooth, responsive control. Easy to pick up and play.

Overall 87%