Previous Next

Games that are able to convey the impression of high speed can certainly quicken the pulses of even the most jaded player. And Sun Star can certainly shift.

Sun Star is your space vehicle, the screen your cockpit. But you won't be flying through outer space - no twinkling stars and flashing meteorites in this one.

Instead, you skim over the surface of a massive grid, moving as slowly or as fast as you like.

The main part of the screen is taken up with your forward view. Long and short range scanners at the sides assist navigation.

The idea is to zoom around the grid trying to avoid thumping into the blue grid walls, yellow obstruction pulses and red energy pulses. Contact with any of them puts a drain on your limited energy.

YOu are looking for white disrupter pulses. Repeated firing at one causes it to get browned off and move elsewhere on the grid, leaving behind a moving green energy crystal. You have to pass above this to grab it before it disappears.

Having collected 10 greenies, you head for a evolving warp gate and blast a laser bolt into the orange hyperwarp cell in order to warp to the next grid. The plot is no dafter than most and a good excuse for doing lots of zapping and zooming around.

Movement is really fast when you let the throttle out on your machine and the feeling of motion is quite exhilarating.

The graphics are pretty basic - all you have here, when you get down to it, are loads of squares, some with different colours. But fancy graphics don't always make the best arcade games.

The qualities of Sun Star lie in the chase against time theme, the high speed and the furious but atmospheric sound effects. Fast, noisy and simple - that'll do for me.