Return To Earth - on SynTax disk 393
             (Strategy/trading game for Amiga)

                  Review By P.J.Darke

Return To Earth is a Shareware game written by two German authors,
Ralf Bowing and Roland Hartz.  The game is a space trading game in
a similar style to Elite or F.O.F.T.  When I was originally asked
to review the game I was unable to get anywhere with it and I
thought that it was either faulty or a demo version, and so I
wrote to Ralf Bowing who kindly sent me a copy of the instructions
and also version 1.1 of the game which is an improved version and
has instructions included in a read_me file on disc, and it was
only then that I realised that my copy was perfectly OK but that I
had not understood how to play it.

The scenario is as follows. You are Golan Trevize, Senator of
Terminus and you set out to find the cradle of Mankind.  You
believe you have evidence for the existence of a planet called
"Earth" and you set out on a quest to find this mythical planet.

On loading the game you are presented with a screen which is
divided into several different areas.  The bottom of the screen
has 17 icons representing BUY, SELL, EXIT or REPAIR and 13 for
various items which can be traded.  A window to the right shows
the amount of money you have.  The top part of the screen is
divided into 3, the centre being graphics and the left being a
list of items available for purchase and the right is a list of
items held in the ship's cargo bay.  On exiting this screen you
are presented with a star chart which occupies most of the screen
and a control panel with 10 LEDs on it covering a variety of
functions such as E.C.M. hyperdrive and also disc operations.

On selecting a destination on the star chart, two panels, on the
side and on the top, present important information about it such
as name, distance, population, type of inhabitants and type of
government.  Having selected the drive, you are launched and after
a short time will encounter other ships, usually hostile.  These
vary in type from single fighters to Star Wars type X fighters
which attack in threes, or destroyers. These opponents present
varying degrees of difficulty to destroy, ranging from dead easy
to almost impossible.  You will eventually arrive at your
destination where you have an opportunity to trade and carry out
missions in return for which you may receive promotion and more
information in the furtherance of your quest.

I have not been playing this game for long but in the short time
that I have I have found it to be very addictive, the only problem
being that I'm not much good at the shoot 'em up parts and so my
progress is slow.

I really have only one criticism of the game and this is that in
combat you only have one life and if killed the game abruptly
crashes with no opportunity to restore, although if you have
managed to equip your ship with a rescue capsule you may eject
before your ship is destroyed.

Overall I consider this to be an excellent game and superior to
some products costing œ30 or more.