S.D.I.

The Good
A new addition has been made to the MS-DOS port: a subordinate named Roberts. You may leave him in charge of the missile defense minigame if you anticipate being away from the S.D.I. station for a long time, and you may ask him to put you in contact with Natasha, the Russian commander -your secret lover-, so that you may ask her which Russian air bases will not be launching their fighters; then you may use this information to read a map of Russia and select two bases to sabotage, resulting in you having to fight less enemies in the space simulator minigame. These additions are exclusive to the MS-DOS port, making it slightly easier and vastly more playable than its Amiga and Atari ST counterparts.

The final minigame -a long missile defense that you can't delegate to Roberts- is very difficult, but this plays in its favor, doing a great job of conveying the same feelings of tension and excitement as the final action scene of a movie - Cinemaware living up to its name.

A similar effect is achieved when communicating with Natasha, sometimes communications will be interrupted by the villains, and sometimes they'll kidnap Natasha and sometimes they won't. This also ends up working in the game's favor, as it fills you with the need to see the heroes triumphantly reunited and the villains defeated; it makes you care about what happens to the characters in the end.

While I normally would criticize the 4-color graphics for not being appropriate to a game like this, there is one screen that achieves a rather cinematic effect considering its limitations; the face of McCormick -your character- as he looks down on his communications monitor. They pulled off the effect of the screen illuminating his face quite nicely for CGA.

The Bad
A lot of the game does not look good in 4-color. The Earth has green oceans, for example, and the flight simulator minigame looks more like the Star Wars vector game than flying over planet Earth. There should have been an EGA release, as there was with Defender of the Crown, but alas, we never got it.

PC speaker sounds and music. Sorry, I just don't like those most of the time.

The Bottom Line
Amiga and Cinemaware fans usually hold S.D.I. as the worst Cinemaware game. I think the MS-DOS port elevates it to one of their best, especially when you look at what it has instead of what it doesn't have.