Rare's long-awaited space epic provides the ideal tonic for Nintendo gamers suffering from those Perfect Dark delay blues. The biggest blast since Lylat Wars?
Martin Kitts

Let's face it, there hasn't been a really innovative shoot 'em up since Lylat Wars in 1997. In fact, because there have been virtually no shoot 'em ups at all on the N64, we've had to content ourselves with replaying Miyamoto's classic for the past two years. Lucky for us then that Rare's fantastic Jet Force Gemini is at long last finished, and it's every bit as spectacular as Lylat Wars was.

If you've ever played Factor 5's classic Turrican games then you should be familiar with Jet Force Gemini's mixture of platform exploration and all-out blasting. It's all in 3D now though, and on a far grander scale. You begin the game as Juno, separated from your feisty sister, Vela, and rocket-powered dog, Lupus, after staying behind to protect them while they hopped into escape pods and zoomed off to save a race of furballs called the Tribals. The Tribals are taking a pasting from an army of evil ants, and the Jet Force team are the miniature equivalent of a UN peacekeeping force with a penchant for indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry.