Jonathan Nash

I was so unhappy about this.

It'd been decided I'd review the game, and I was looking forward to it greatly.

(For the poorly-memoried, Stardust was a Robotron-to- Smash-TV updating of Asteroids, with unbelievably fast and thrilling tween-level 3D tunnel sections. Super Stardust was the A1200-only more-everything version of it.)

As it became apparent the game wouldn't be complete for the review, but equally that we were committed to having the review that issue, I faced a terrible dilemma. Sternly I could refuse to review the unfinished game - but that would achieve nothing, as someone else would merely do it instead. Lots of people would have to run around to accomodate the last-minute change, and lots of people would be hurt.

Conversely, if I went through with it, principles would be betrayed left, right and centre.

(Dramatic, eh?)

In the end, I convinced myself that there was enough of the game there - the entire first three (of five) levels* - to form an opinion of the whole, and wrote the review grimly lip-bitingly, telling it like it was. Of what there was. (Perhaps fortuitously, no one worked out the carefully-planned paragraph headers, which echo single deliberately-placed words, and which if rearranged read "ONLY SIXTY PERCENT COMPLETE," or the caption about coming to a dead stop after the level three boss.)

I then strongly made my feelings known to JD about being asked to review unfinished games in the future, and that was that.

(Months later, I got to play the completed, CD32 version, and, eventually, the PC release. Ironically, after all my conscience-stricken worries about getting it wrong (the difficulty level had been rollercoastered at least a dozen times by Team 17, who regarded the original Stardust as absurdly difficult. A-ha ha ha) they both played exactly the same as the review copy. This just goes to show something, although I'm sure I don't know what.)