Cybermorph: one of the first reasonably impressive releases on the much maligned Atari Jaguar. That said: it’s a very simple ‘fetch’ game with light shoot ’em up elements, and – apart from some impressively coloured graphics – there really isn’t much to it.

The basic aim of the game is to visit eight different planets and collect a number of pods from the surface, while at the same time shooting enemy craft that shoot and fire rockets at you. Some enemies will also pick up pods and move them around the landscape, so you have to keep an eye on your direction scanner to locate them.

Playing Cybermorph now it does feel a bit empty, and while it’s fun to fly the impressive-looking ‘Transmogriffin‘ around the Gouraud-shaded landscapes the view does judder a bit as you bank left and right. You could be forgiven for dismissing Cybermorph as “little more than a tech demo”, which is what it feels like at times (ironically Cybermorph began life as a tech demo on the Konix Multisystem – a console what was much anticipated but never released). The game certainly doesn’t have much depth, although you do have to work out how to survive attacks from certain types of enemies, and also how to access some pods that are held inside alien structures. It’s hardly what I would call challenging, though, and the limited draw distance also holds the game back as well.

Cybermorph was developed by British company Attention to Detail and first published by Atari Corporation in 1993.

More: Cybermorph on Wikipedia