Mars Saga

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Mars Saga

Developer(s)	Westwood Associates
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Platform(s)	C64/C128
Release date	1988
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	Unrated
Media	1 5¼-inch floppy disk
Input methods	Keyboard and joystick

Mars Saga is the first original product of Westwood Studios, at the time called Westwood Associates. It is a computer role-playing game in which the player takes the role of Tom Jetland, a down-on-his-luck space traveller trapped on Mars after crashing his ship. While searching for jobs to make enough money to get back off the planet, he discovers a conspiracy hiding contact with what seems to be alien life.

The player visits the four Martian cities of Primus, Progeny, Parallax, and Proscenium, as well as traversing the Martian surface and visiting abandoned mines.

The combat system features a bird's eye view of the battlefield. The player queues instructions for the characters of his or her party to perform in real time.

At the time of the game's design, programmers were rushed to meet an 1988 completion date. As a function of that, there are several items in the game that are illogical. 6 skills that a character can train in are useless. These are Mechanic, Electronics, Language, Mining, Strategy, and Tactics. The designers had initial plans to use those skills to aid the player in solving puzzles and advancing plot items in the game, but in the end the game was sent to print too early and the skills ended up being included but useless. In 1989 the game was completely fleshed out, retitled Mines of Titan, and released on PC platforms. The setting of the game was moved from Mars to Titan, a moon of Saturn. The mining skill was fixed and it is used to avoid cave-ins while adventuring in mineshafts. The other 5 skills were deleted.

The differences between Mars Saga and it's sister game are mostly plot related. There are more side quests to complete in Mines of Titan as well as more things that must be completed to forward the main plot. City layouts are the same and so are the enemies that are encountered.