| Soulstar | |
|---|---|
Cover art |
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| Developer(s) | Core Design |
| Publisher(s) |
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| Designer(s) | Guy Miller[1] |
| Version | [1] |
| Platform(s) | Mega CD / Sega CD,[1] Sega 32X (unreleased), Atari Jaguar CD (unreleased) |
| Release date(s) | [1] |
| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up[1] |
| Mode(s) | Single player and Two player |
| Rating(s) |
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| Media/distribution | CD-ROM (Physical) |
Soulstar is a pseudo 3D space shooter in a similar vein to Nintendo's Star Fox, released in 1994 for the Sega Mega CD.
Contents |
The game is a shoot 'em up viewed from a behind-the-ship 3D perspective incorporating scaling and rotating sprites style of graphical effect. Soulstar was amongst a handful of games developed by Core Design using this graphical style among Battlecorps, BC Racers and Thunderhawk. The game also features a CD quality orchestral soundtrack.
"A thousand light-years away, across a yawning gulf of space and time, the six planets of the Soul Star system perform a peaceful celestial dance around their youthful suns, unaware of the horror soon to come. A horror in the dreaded shape of the Myrkoids, an alien species older than the stars themselves, with a unified mind far colder than the space between those stars. The Myrkoids - killers of worlds - descend upon unsuspecting star systems, sucking them dry and draining every planet of its internal energies. They leave nothing in their savage wake but empty husks drifting lifelessly in space. Following the destruction of his home system, Bryk Hammelt, the last of a noble race of warriors known as the Cryo-commandos, sets out in his great starship, the Treaghon, to hunt down the merciless Myrkoids. He has hunted them for centuries, tracked them across the trackless wastes of the Great Divide, searched for the destructive evidence of their presence in the starfields of Maldrum Tau, and chased them at light speed through the hypergate at Viridum Plus .... For eons he has followed, and they have always eluded him. Until now. Now he'll face this ancient enemy in a battle for the soul of a star ..."
Gameplay is based around three vehicle types, that the player space combat vehicle transforms into. The first mode is an on rails shoot 'em up, similar to the Star Fox and Space Harrier. This mode involves flying a Strike Craft through space towards huge scaling sprites of a planet or space station and flying across a texture mapped planetscape. The second mode involves controlling a hovering Turbo Copter in 360 degrees of freedom, allowing the player to move freely across the map. The third mode uses a similar 360 degrees mode, but this time the player controls a Mech Strike Walker.
Two-player cooperative gameplay is also available, allowing the first player to pilot as normal while the second player controls the ship's weapons systems.
At the player enters the space station at the end of the first level, there are three warp gates to choose from. Each warp gate determines the difficulty of the game (from easy to hard), of which each have a set of levels. At the end of each level set, the player returns to the space station to choose a remaining warp gate.
An unfinished outsourced port of the game also exists for the Atari Jaguar CD. There are some poor quality screenshots of the game available on the web:[1], but other than that very little information concerning this game port exists. Judging by the appearance of these screenshots, the game runs at a higher screen resolution than the Sega CD version and has better texturing. A copy of this game can be seen running at the Jaguar Connexion 2005 [2].
A short video comparing both Sega CD and Atari Jaguar CD versions can be seen here:[3].
A version of the game for the Sega 32X, called Soulstar X, was once in development.[2] A prototype of it was found sometime in 2009-2010[3] and released to the public.[4]