Starbase Fighter. (evaluation) Arthur Leyenberger.

When I first booted Starbase Fighter, I could feel all the excitement of that early VCS experience. My thoughts ran immediately to Asteroids, because the game begins with vertically scrolling rocks. Your mission is to find the enemy satellite and enter it through the bottom portal. This is done by manuevering your ship through the asteroid field while dodging enemy space ships that are determined to destroy you.

The vertical and horizontal scrolling is good. Once you reach the satellite, you enter the enemy city. Now you are flying horizontally, maneuvering around the enemy gun emplacements and avoiding contact with enemy scout ships. After safely passing through the city, you arrive at the Alien Brain. There you must destroy the brain by shooting at the moving wall surrounding it. Kill the brain, get your butt back to your home ship, and you will be rewarded with the next, more challenging level.

The asteroids themselves are not depicted in the finest detail, but this is one tough game. For $15.95 it is a steal. Once you play the game, which was writtne by John Petritis, it will be difficult to stop. Good job, John.

There you have it. Not exactly "no frills" software, but certainly generic pricing. I hope that Gentry's intelligent pricing policy starts a trend. By lowering the price, the amount of software piracy may also be decreased. No Frills Spreadsheet

I have been using VisiCalc for several years. When I first bought the Atari computer, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this ubiquitous spreadsheet was available for my home computer--then I heard the price. At the time it retailed for $250. I gulped and bought it anyway, needing it for my work. However, I always thought that it was terribly overpriced.

For those of you who want to use a spreadsheet on the Atari but are not prepared to pay the close to $200 tariff, there is hope. Home-Calc from Sim computer products may meet your needs.

It is billed as the first spreadsheet for the mass market and sells for only $30. What do you get for one-sixth of the cost of VisCalc? You get a program that will do most of the financial calculations needed in a home application at the cost of slow execution speed.

Products: Gentry Software Starbase Fighter (video game)