Hi! Before you read any of the CD reviews in this issue of CD GOLD, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself first and explain a few things about the reviews, as I'll be doing things a little bit differently to most magazine reviews!
Okay, if you're a Star Trek fan, you may recognise my name. For the last 3 years, I have been the editor/main writer on the Star Trek disk magazine, THE FINAL FRONTIER, of which a copy of our fourth issue can be found elsewhere on this CD along with an advert (or three!). As well as this, over the last 5 years I have written for a number of other fan magazines for various Star Trek and science fiction fan clubs (including editing and producing two other 'zines myself), I have written for the highly acclaimed music disk mag AM/FM, the "demo scene" disk mag RAW, and I have also had regular PD review sections on the catalogue disks of numerous PD libraries. So, as you can tell, I'm a fanatical and somewhat compulsive writer!
With the reviews I'll be doing in each issue of CD GOLD, I'll be looking at a totally random selection of CD's, both old and new, across all the Amiga CD formats -- the CDTV, A570 and CD32 -- and I'll be bringing you a "no holds barred" opinion of the disks and whether they are worth investing in or if they are just expensive frisbees! I'll take into consideration the price, whether they make REAL use of the CD's potential, how much of the CD has been used and, in the case of conversions from the Amiga, whether there are sufficient enhancements to warrant the higher price often found on CD titles.
Obviously, when reviewing "normal" Amiga titles, reviewers don't necessarily take graphics and sound into account if the software itself is any good. In the case of games, for example, while Tetris has virtually non-existant graphics, the gameplay is superb. Where my reviews will hopefully be unique is that I will take the stance that, for CD titles at least, graphics and sound DO have an equal part to play. If you have 650MB of storage space on hand, at least a few megabytes can be devoted to graphics, can't they? And CD titles that do NOT have CD audio deserve to be criticised for that fact.
All of the CDTV discs reviewed in this issue have been tested on an A500+ with an A570 so if you have one of them, you can be sure they'll work! I have also tested the CDTV discs on a CD32 and I'll let you know if they work or not!
In this first edition of CD GOLD, I'll be taking a look at the following CDTV discs:-
"Xenon II", "Heroic Age Of Spaceflight - NASA: The 25th Year", "Read With Asterix: Asterix And Son", "The 17 Bit Collection", and "Battle Chess".
Hopefully, for future issues, I'll try to review between 10 and 20 discs at a time, depending on what I can get hold of!
As well as this, there are a selection of CD32 specific reviews, namely "Robocod" and "Pinball Fantasies" and , plus a couple of normal Amiga game reviews so there's something there for everyone!
Now, the ratings system we use is a straightforward percentage based system. We won't give individual scores for different aspects of software, just a single overall score and comments on things such as graphics, sound and playability. Two different awards will be given to titles that we consider to be exceptionally good and are worth selling your relatives for. For titles rated between 85% and 92%, these are great games (or whatever else they may be), but they are slightly flawed or could have been better and are awarded our Silver Medal. Anything rated 93% or above is an essential addition to your collection and the only reason you should have for not owning it is if you don't like that particular type of software. Definately deserving of a CD GOLD MEDAL!
For the other titles, anything between 75% and 85% is worth taking a look at, between 50% and 75% is decidedly average and I suggest you take a long hard look before you part with your cash and anything less than 50% is worth avoiding unless you are given it for nothing.
Well, if there's anything specific you'd like me to review, drop me a line at the following address:
