I've had the Jaguar Hover Strike cart for months.  It was one of the first
two games I bought for my Jag.  I've had the Hover Strike Unconquered Lands
CD about a week.  Guess which one I finally beat tonight?  Ayep, the CD.
Maybe next time I can do it without the cheats.  :-)

A few similarities and differences I noticed between the two...

The "game over" and "game won" sequences are pretty much the same for both
versions.  Of course, the CD shows FMV while the cart generates polygon
ships, but they're acting from the same script.

I actually prefer the cart's "game over" where the atmospheric canon shoots a
spray laser-looking blasts which fragment the attacking ships. As the planet
rotates, the blasts slice through the fleet and beyond.  By contrast the CD's
canon shoots little fireballs.  And though the ship explosions are cinematic
perfection, they just don't have the same feel.

The CD's "game won" sequence wins hands down, though.  In addition to the
fleet closing in on the planet (same as the cart version), the CD actually
shows the landing forces being deployed.  The only way it could have been
better would have been to show the forces actually taking the planet.

The CD's opening FMV had my brother saying "Which episode is this from?" If
you're patient enough, the credits make interesting reading.

As promised, the cart's 26 missions have been expanded to 36 for the CD. The
10 new ones feature two new types of terrain (organic and enemy base) and a
slew of new enemy ship types.  The "feel" of the new missions and enemies is
the same as the old.  Organic missions were very easy for me. Base missions
very difficult.

Actually, those totals should be cart/31 and CD/41, as contrary to some
rumors, all the cart cheat codes _do_ work for the CD, including the 5
"secret" missions.  Finishing either version in the "hard" mode gives you the
codes for the extra missions.  Near as I can tell, all the missions that
exist in both versions are identical.

Frame rate for the CD is up from the cart, though most of the time it doesn't
make much of a difference.  A lot less bogging down when lots of things are
attacking you, though.  The CD soundtrack is nice to listen to, but during
gameplay I wouldn't notice if it was "just" a MOD.  The hovercraft "slide",
damage from terrain, getting rocked or even knocked backwards by enemy fire,
can all beturned off in the CD version.  Seems like cheating to me.  Turn
everything off, and you no longer have a hovercraft.  It's like driving a
heavily-padded tank.

Though you can turn the options off and on as you wish, the CD's "Easy"
setting defaults to everything off, "Hard" defaults to everything on (cart
controls), and "Medium" sets half the options on (I forget which).  You can
also turn off the FMV, or abort by hitting a fire button.

The CD version does indeed have 2 save game slots and a save options slot, as
opposed to the cart's 1.  The CD's save files take up 512 bytes in the Memory
Track.

I haven't gotten around to trying the headphones and seeing if the stereo
sound cues, which are backwards in the cart version, have been corrected in
the CD version as rumored.

The light-sourcing from every individual photon, laser, or missile, seen only
in the night missions of the cart version, are seen in every mission of the
CD version.  I didn't realize how much of a difference this made until I went
back and checked it against the cart.

I wish every game written by Atari's internal Jag development teams matched
Hover Strike Unconquered Lands.

--- ScanMail 0.70

[+/331 of 500/112 Mins] = * FIDO: ATARI_ST =: Next...