Starflight

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Starflight

Developer(s)	Binary Systems, Electronic Arts
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Release date(s)	1986
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Mega Drive/Genesis, Macintosh
Media	Floppy Disk
Input	Keyboard

See interstellar travel for travel between the stars.

Starflight, a computer game published by Electronic Arts and developed by Binary Systems in 1986, placed gamers as the captain of a state-of-the-art starship created to rescue a dying homeworld in a seemingly barren galaxy. Starflight, the "result of 20 man years" of work, used a revolutionary in-game planetary generation system that enabled the galaxy to comprise hundreds of explorable planets—all on two 360kB floppy disks. Electronic Arts released the game originally for DOS and Tandy, followed by an Amiga release in 1989, an Atari ST release in 1990, and finally a revamped Mega Drive/Sega Genesis version in 1991. Versions for Apple Macintosh and Commodore 64 were also released.

In a brilliant design decision, Binary Systems built Starflight so that the initial plot seemed, at first, fairly one-dimensional and linear. The end result, however, consisted of a space opera of epic proportions containing shocking plot twists and deep mysteries. The RPG-esque gameplay consisted largely of mining, alien diplomacy, and ship combat and managed to enable gamers to, in a sense, re-enact scenes remarkably similar to Star Trek. Moreover, the game contained a subtle underlevel of humor, such as an encounter with the Starship Enterprise, infrequent but consistent messages between two disgruntled smugglers, and a race using binary code to reveal the telephone number of the developers' home office.

Starflight is widely regarded within the game industry as being one of the games responsible for pioneering the open-ended gameplay featured in modern games such as the Grand Theft Auto series.

1 Plot
2 Legacy
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Plot

The storyline is set on an Earthlike planet called Arth, which has a history roughly analogous to that of Earth. About 100 years after spaceflight is first discovered on Arth, an archeological dig deep undenearth the planet has uncovered artifacts from an elder race, including a superluminal starship powered by a kind of crystal-like fuel called endurium. An independent company develops a number of new starships based on this technology, and the player becomes the captain of one of these.

In the game, we learn that an entity known as the Crystal Planet is moving through the galaxy. The planet is made of endurium, which causes nearby stars to flare up and destroy life in the system. The player must explore solar systems, gather clues, and ultimately find the planet and destroy it before the player's home system flares.

Arth is an outpost of the long-forgotten Empire; in the game, it acts as the player's space port. In order for the player to discover how to destroy the Crystal Planet, the player must unravel the Empire's history and discover the mythical planet Earth. Ultimately, it turns out that the endurium crystals themselves are living, sentient beings which are being destroyed by interstellar starflight.

Other plot elements include the excitement of the exploration of new solar systems and new alien races, the mining of critical minerals, the discovery of planets that support or can support life, and the gradual building up of the player's ship in power and capability (stronger shields, faster engines, better armoring, etc.).

[edit] Legacy

Starflight spawned a sequel, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, and was very much the spiritual predecessor to the more popular, but invariably similar, Star Control 2. An unofficial sequel released without the "Starflight" name due to the inability of the designers to gain the rights to the title from Electronic Arts is the lesser-known Protostar. One of the game's head designers, Greg Johnson, later crafted the Toejam & Earl series for Sega.

By 1996, when the DOS version of the original game could no longer be purchased, existing copies of the game were having problems running on contemporary computers due to the prevalence of much faster CPUs than it was designed for. Fan websites and discussion groups have been active since that time, mostly trading tips on how to get the game to run on a modern computer, or else reminiscing about how fun the game used to be.

A fan-driven effort to produce another sequel has been in the works for several years called the "Starflight III Project".[1] Some members of the original development staff volunteer their time as consultants on the project.