Stardust (game)

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Stardust
Developer(s)	Bloodhouse
Release date(s)	^EU 1993
Genre(s)	Shoot-em-up
Mode(s)	Single-player
Platform(s)	Amiga 500

Stardust is a shoot-em-up computer game for the Amiga 500, released by the Finnish company Bloodhouse in 1993. The game is essentially an Asteroids clone with modern enhancements, such as power-ups, shields, a high-energy techno module soundtrack, vivid use of colours and the occasional tunnel section. The game's graphics drew critical acclaim for the aforementioned tunnels and the liberal use of ray-tracing. The company has since merged with Terramarque to form Housemarque.

In a not untypical bout of Finnish humour, the developers gave several things ludicrous names in their own language, which was (and still is) highly obscure in the international market. The damsel in distress is named after a brand of margarine, and the final confrontation takes place over the planet Imatra.

The game was also ported to the PC, but not by the original programmers. This version was buggy, scant on details found in the Amiga version and severely lacking in both control and gameplay polish.

A port for the Atari STE also exists.

However, an extremely-well rewritten enhanced version was released three years later for the Amiga 1200, Amiga CD32 and finally for the PC platform as well. Named Super Stardust or Super Stardust '96, the game features a CD soundtrack from Slusnik Luna, FMV cut-scenes, high speed gameplay and completely new levels and enemies.