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Far in the past, many years ago there appeared something on the 8-bit computers screens. It caused the shock to many of the gamers. It is nearly unbelievable, but it is almost twenty five years since the legend of all legends was born, the game called Elite. The vector adventure with totally unseen abilities was ported to all important platforms, and in the year 1988 it reached the Amiga as well. It is not needed to describe Elite, everybody knows it. The game established the new genre and a lot of other titles tried to harvest of its popularity. Some of them were more successful (like the sequel - Frontier, or Damocles and even Infestation), some weren't. For example today's nearly forgotten Federation of free traders, and also Starglider 1 and 2. The last mentioned is the subject of this review.
I will not avoid the comparison to Frontier, because it is the best known game of its genre to Amiga, but Starglider is more similar to mentioned F.o.F.T., because you will much more fly over the planets surface. I will talk more about this later, but now I will tell you about the plot of these games.
The main illustration, the same is on the box and the poster as well
Starglider - part one - was telling about the invasion of Egron forces to the planet Novenia. The word "Starglider" itself is the name of the invasion fleet, led by general Herman Kruud. He flies the flagship Starglider One. Our hero is Jaysan, the pilot of the small spacecraft, who - as usual - has to defeat the whole fleet alone, engage Starglider One and turn the invasion. In praxis it looks as we fly over the Novenia, shoot everything we meet and see it in the simple wired vector graphics, which is transparent so it looks very much like 8-bit. What keeps the game above the water is the strong story and also its appearance. The game has a nice music, (which impressed magazine reviewers back in those times, they ran the Amiga version out in comparison to ST original). The main plus is the game package, though. It contains a large poster and perfectly written novella by James Follet, which is really catchy. The game was relatively successful, but only for a short time. Argonaut software soon released the sequel - Starglider 2.
The story of the second part brings us a few years after the defeat of the invasion forces. General Kruud, once celebrated hero (now dead) is now unpopular, because his fleet invasion failed. The new wonderful novella by the same author begins at the moment when there is the emotional ceremony on the home planet of former aggressors. Praetor, the new ruler of the Egron (defeated, but still strong) empire has a speech about Herman Kruud. He is telling that the general was a traitor, who shamed the trust and now the Praetor is going to destroy the big statue of disgraced general using the explosives. The detonation should be initiated by the remote controller, but it fails. The angry Prateor puts the responsible army officer to the jail then where he can think about the small piece of paper, stuck to the non-functional remote controller. There is written: „batteries not included“...
The novella is highly important for the whole game. There is not only a description of the background story, but there is also the WHOLE game description, since the beginning, where the plan for the new assault to Novenia is born, through the revelation, building of the new small spacecraft (piloted by Jaysan again), first flight up to the combat missions. There is described the hunt of the parts needed around the solar system, attacking the enemy vessels and the final confrontation to the imperial battle cruiser and destruction of the ultimate weapon using the neutron bomb. The player who has read the novella knows in advance how the game will pass, what to do and how it will end. It is up to him to follow the storyline and to keep the things go in the correct order. So I can recover here the funny end of the story as is written in the novella:
Praetor calls the gigantic battle cruiser as the last defence against the Jayson's attacks, and rely on its deadly laser batteries. But at the moment when he pressed the button, nothing happens. In the message that Praetor gets just before he dies - from the once mentioned imprisoned army officer - is written: „Batteries not included“. Wonderful!
This is about the story. It is not only well written, it is also breath-taking. In the nice illustrated game box you will find beside the novella, game guide and the disk, the A2 poster and also the audio cassette with the orchestral record of the main game theme, which was composed by Dave Lowe. Wonderful again!
So we finally got to see what Starglider 2 looks like. It looks nice. At least in comparison to its prequel. There is a lot of vectors and this time they are filled, so the objects are not transparent. The interplanetary travelling was added to the game, so you have to fly over the whole solar system in hunt for the parts needed, and it leads to the main goal: assembly of the neutral bomb. It should be used against the mammoth target: the plasma projector, which should be used by Egrons to destroy our homeworld Novenia, just after the weapon is completed. The whole game is the race against the time, we have the actual info how far are Egrons with the building of the projector. It is build in the close solar system, which is now under the Egron occupation, but it is not possible to attack it directly. The construction site is guarded by the defence system, placed on the seven moons around and it must be eradicated first. We need the weapons for this and these weapons we can get from the rebellious inhabitants of the enemy-occupied planets, but they will need the raw materials first. And this is our job. The game looks that we can see the cockpit of our craft (called Icarus) and through its windows the outer environment. We will fly mainly close to the surface of particular planets, which is full of details. We can see various buildings, power transmissions, trees, cliffs, volcanoes and a lot of other objects. But mainly the plenty of various vessels of the planet's inhabitants. And because the planet is under the Egron's dominion, there are also the machines of the occupants, that attack not only the Icarus itself, but the other traffic as well. Finally the player has the very strong feeling of the war, which is really impressive. We can use the large arsenal against our enemies and we can add to it another weapons from the friendly depots. These are operated by the rebels and are placed deep in the planet core, we can reach them by the independent tunnels, that lead under the surface. It is another very original idea. In some of these centres we can let us build the special weapons including the mentioned Neutron bomb.
Stomper is the Egron weapon, basically the gun with legs
In our hunt for materials and ingredients we will have to travel between planets and we will meet a lot of interesting objects. Mostly pirates, who are very annoying and they will attack us very often. Fortunately, their ships are weak and after destroying them they sometimes deploy their cargo, which can be traded. We will also encounter the strange creatures like the mechanic whales. And of course the Egron fighters. If we have weak shields and in the close proximity there is not any suitable planet with repair depot, we can refill energy via few original ways - for example mining in the asteroid belt, gather from the volcanoes, steal from the planetary energy link or solar corona. But if the Icarus gets too close to the sun, it melts. We have to think to the time limit during the play. Tempo is not hectit, but the time passes, though.
If I should compare Starglider 2 to any game, it would be Federation of free traders. They both are really lookalikes, but FoFT is mainly in the free cosmos and it is nearly forgotten these days. So I could compare Starglider 2 to the Frontier. Technically the both are plus minus equal. Frontier has more polygons and more music. It is the game without end. Starglider 2 has the end given, and you will enjoy a lot of planet surfaces. You have exactly know what to do, though.
You will probably see that Starglider 2 is not a game for everybody. At first you have to enjoy the Elite-type games. At second you have to have a) the original novella or b) the walkthrough. Without it it is almost impossible to complete the game, it would be the great luck and even if you work out what to do next, you won't probably have time left. If you have anything of it (you can find both on the internet of course), you really have a great game, which is entertaining, but unfortunately forgotten.
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The graphics perfectly fit the game. A big improvement Starglider 1. And it moves really quickly on A500!
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The sound of explosions in the surface warfare, the noise of mechanical whales and more - all this makes you remember the game. And another +1 point for the musical score.
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It depends if you have or haven't the original novella. You should. I think the game is really funny. You don't have to play the whole game, sometimes I just load it only for enjoy the pirates or surface fight.
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| One of the best of its genre. Maybe Argonaut's best game. A lost gem. |
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