Gazzillionaire Deluxe is a straight forward economic strategy game. You pilot a large transport ship through space , hauling cargo and passengers from planet to planet in your quest to rule the shipping lanes. Using the supply screen you can decide what items are plantiful on the planet you are on, ad what is needed somewhere else. Then you buy low and sell high. Along the way, paying crew salaries, taxes, outrageous insurance rates, loan debts, and many more things that tend to wipe out the hard working, small businessman.

This basic model has been expanded since Gazzillionaire. Now you can play the stock market on each planet. This can be a great source of easy income, or it can really slow you down. I found that you really son't need to play the stock market until you start playing on the arder levels of the game. You can work your money easily enough that you should have no trouble whipping the computer.

The biggest addition to Gazzillionaire Deluxe is the play by e-mail feature. Finally you can play a more interesting game against live opponents without having a bunch of people crowding around the same screen. This one feature has done a lot to bring Gazzillionaire's score up from the really low score the original got from us when it was released.

Just to make this strategy game a little more interesting, Lavamind has thrown in a whole bag full of random events to keep you busy. Generally these are visits from pirates, dimension travelling salesmen, the ocasional offer to upgrade your ship, and of course the rare total loss of cargo due to fire, which can be a real bad thing in space.

Overall Gazzillioaire Deluxe has grown quite a bit since Gazzillionaire, but it's too light hearted for most hard core strategy gamers. I think I'll wait till Gazzillionaire Deluxe Gold is released to give it a must buy score.

--- Steve Gerencser
--- krell@psyber.com