There is also some menu-style graphics for the various status screens you can access. Some care was taken in making the Stock Market screens, Intergalactic map charts, and the screen that displays your current supply of various stocks. These too seem to lack detail despite the polished look that these screens do offer.

Although Cyberion does try to capture the arcade experience, a game with a world so huge (you have to fly through almost 10,000 screens to solve this game) should at least come with some space music. I'm not asking for the greatest music in the world, just something a little original and jumpy to keep me going as I jet through this 8-hour space road trip.

The main part of your mission is to locate the 500 planets by navigating your ship through a galaxy of Asteroids. If you accidentally crash into an asteroid you needn't worry; but you'll lose some credits in the process. Credits, which are earned by blasting the asteroids to kingdom come, can be used to purchase stocks at the stock market, conveniently located whenever you land on one of the planets you've found.

The world in Cyberion is pretty gigantic, so if you want to travel back to a planet that had a great bargain in the stock market, you can zip your ship up to Hyperspace. There's only one catch: In Hyperspace, you have to travel quickly through a wormhole. If something hits you along the way, your ship is toast.

Despite the depth that this game offers, the problem in gameplay lies in the fact that finding the planets is really your only real objective in this game. You can win Cyberion simply by floating your ship through the cosmos, which sometimes gets stuck in the thrust position if you fiddle enough with the keyboard handler. Then, while the ship is stuck moving forward, you can watch your ship crash into all the asteroids while you're inching yourself closer to solving the game. The other elements, the Lander, Dodgem, and Stock Market parts, need to somehow be seamed into this game's concept.

The bulk of the challenge will be making sure you've checked every nook and cranny of outer space for the 500 planets you're supposed to find. If you fly a little clumsily, you may miss part of the grid and possibly fail to record the coordinates of one of the planets. Then it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The key to beating this game will be your ability to perform an organized search.

The good news is Cyberion has plenty of arcade elements to turn any QB afficionado into an addict. The bad news is that there needs to be a little programming done to make all the elements of this game more seamless. This trading game emphasizes too much on asteroid blasting and not enough on the Lander and Dodgem components that help give this arcade shooter some variety.