Starflight
| Developer: MicroMagic | Graphics: |
 | |
| Publisher: Electronic Arts | Sound: |
 | |
| Year: 1990 | Difficulty: |
 | |
| Genre: Adventure | Lastability: |
| |
| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
7/10 | |
If I were to ask you to name a pioneer of the “space exploration” subgenre, you would doubtless think of Elite (1984), that galactic sandbox centred on trade and combat. Younger folk would be more likely to mention Mass Effect (2007), a role-playing game driven by cinematic presentation and branching dialogues with all sorts of alien species; and their children would bring up No Man’s Sky (2016), with its millions of algorithmically generated planets and creatures. What do these three have in common? Not much. Allow me to introduce you to the missing link, the other precursor unjustly forgotten…
[Today I learned that doubtless is an adverb! – Ed.]
Starflight was first released on PC-DOS in 1986. Highly ambitious for its time, it was adapted for the Amiga four years later (as well as for the Commodore 64, Atari ST and Mac) in an almost unchanged version, save for more colours, mouse support and a more flexible save system (in the original, due to space constraints, saving directly modified the game files, risking rendering the diskette unusable). Needless to say, it no longer impressed many people technically by 1990. It nonetheless retains historical value. Its well-crafted game concept, its accessibility (compared to Elite and Frontier in particular) and some innovative ideas influenced other classics, primarily Star Control 2 (PC-DOS, 1992).
The setting, outlined in the manual, recalls Fondation. We are in 4620, Earth has long been forgotten. Once, an empire was formed, then collapsed. A small group of expatriates settled on a remote planet in order to preserve humanity’s knowledge (and that of associated alien races – this is one difference from Asimov’s universe), but they partially failed… Recent archaeological discoveries suggest they were attacked by another extraterrestrial power. You play as a descendant of these colonists. Your (initial) mission is to assemble a crew and set off in search of your origins…
The adventure begins in the spaceport, which serves as a stylised main menu. Indeed, it took me a while to realise I was controlling the little astronaut with the mouse. I felt enormous latency in the controls before realising one had to wait for the fellow to walk to one of the doors to display the corresponding screen. In the personnel room, for instance, one creates crew members as in a role-playing game: name, race (human, alien, robot), function aboard ship (captain, navigator, engineer, etc.) and a statistic sheet is assigned to each.
Opposite, the hangar gives you a preview of your ship and the equipment accessible later (cargo bay extension, shield, weaponry…). A market also allows you to buy or sell ore and “artefacts”. Your first objective consists of accumulating enough credits to upgrade your jalopy and perfect your team’s training. Unfortunately, this economic aspect isn’t developed enough. A few round trips to the neighbouring planet to mine, sell, then buy everything suffices (I even treated myself directly to “class 5” of all available equipment, skipping the intermediate tiers). After that, money serves almost no purpose, nor does mining. As for a merchant career, forget it. There exists no other spaceport or trading post in the entire galaxy.
The interface is simple but not very intuitive by today’s standards. I spent a while clicking vainly on the galactic map to travel to another system, before realising it wasn’t interactive. One only uses it to visualise one’s position and choose the next destination. You then have to close the window, resume control and slowly head towards the desired coordinates. Manual navigation is an integral part of this game, as is note taking. Personally, I love this and even regret that it’s no longer common practice in today’s games. I wouldn’t want to read a “logbook” that filled itself in automatically. This is one of the reasons for my rejection of Outer Wilds…
Even if long journeys can become tiresome, the impression of freely exploring the galaxy is well rendered. Analysing planets to determine whether they’re colonisable, responsible fuel management, the stress of encountering a group of unidentified ships in unknown territory, the well-written dialogues with extraterrestrials (only in English); all these activities (not forgetting the Star Trek references) contribute to establishing a credible atmosphere. Moreover, each race encountered is distinguished by its manner of speaking and personality traits, like the slug species (Spemin), pretentious and cruel when they have numerical advantage, but fundamentally cowardly and quick to betray their allies as soon as they sense the wind changing.
Speaking of atmosphere, an i̵͕̿n̶͚̔t̶͔̀r̴͕̂a̸̙͒d̸͔̍i̷͉͌é̶̳ǧ̵̩e̸̜͘t̷̰̅ị̸̈́c̶͗͜ copy protection asks you to type in a code each time you leave the spaceport. If you get it wrong, the space police descend upon you! Original and amusing, though somewhat irritating in the long run (the code in question is obtained using a cardboard wheel).
Obviously, after several dozen hours, the illusion no longer conceal the cogs, the mechanical process that governs the game. The dialogues loop endlessly and you end up regarding the extraterrestrials as information desks, reduced to dispensing sets of coordinates.
The difficulty is manageable in the sense that you don’t feel in immediate danger, and good preparation (accompanied by frequent saves) advantageously compensates for deficiencies in reflexes and judgement (trust my abilities…). On the other hand, it’s important to be methodical so as not to miss a crucial clue, and to avoid unnecessary detours. The “accelerated” real time (an hour in the game passes in 10 seconds, even when you’re not moving), combined with the limited time to accomplish the main mission, makes the chances of succeeding on the first attempt infinitesimal. This doesn’t matter, because your notes remain usable in subsequent playthroughs.
The planets, numbering 800 and distributed across 270 solar systems, are procedurally generated. Whilst the location of deposits and life forms are random, the key locations don’t change, which limits replayability once the adventure is completed.
I’ll wrap up by addressing its weak points, because you know how I love to slate my forty-year-old games… Essentially, combat. It’s basically a race to find which submenu of this … uncooperative interface … hides three buttons: “raise shield”, “arm weapons” and “fire”, while you’re being mercilessly blasted to pieces. All that remains is to click once on the first two … before hammering the third like a hog on ecstasy, until the battle ends. Depending on the size of the opposing fleet, two possible outcomes: either you annihilate the enemy effortlessly, or you get blown to bits without a chance to react. Boredom or frustration.
Sure, the graphics are basic and there’s no soundtrack to speak of – but ironically, it’s the game’s one attempt at sophistication that bothered me the most: that wretched 3D animation during takeoffs and landings. Long, jerky, pointless. You can skip it, admittedly, but the option has to be selected each time, and the general input lag made me trigger it by accident far too often.
It should be noted that an adaptation, which I could describe as the definitive version, was released on Sega Genesis in 1991 (the same one that cost 80 dollars, for those following Randy Pitchford’s latest controversies). It’s much more pleasing to the eye (particularly the planetary surfaces), the battles are more dynamic, and numerous other details have been changed. However, it contains some bugs (one that makes the reconnaissance vehicle suddenly explode). I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The manual even includes a short story by an author I quite like (and detest) (to be honest, I’ve no idea…). This story forms part of a collection published in 2021, Starflight: Tales From The Starport Lounge.
|
