| The Years |
|
1962-1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 |
| The Games |
Adventure Arcade Arc. adventure Beat 'em up Platform Shoot 'em up Simulation Space Sport Strategy |
| Other |
Home Pioneers Interviews Goodies Credits About Sign guestbook View guestbook |
  
(Firebird - 1985) Elite was originally written for the BBC Micro in 1984 by Ian Bell and David Brabben. It managed to combine space shooter, with elements of adventure, strategy and role-playing, tied together with brilliant vector graphics - and all in less that 30K of memory. It was such an epic achievement that BBC owners were able to crow about their computer purely on the basis of this one game. The envy of Spectrum owners was short-lived, however, because a year later Firebird released the Torus-developed conversion. By this stage the game had almost become the stuff of legend and expectations were deleriously high. It lost nothing in the conversion and its Spectrum release popularised Elite in a way that was impossible on the BBC. You are a space trader, travelling between systems, buying and selling goods. The galaxy is a dangerous place though and you need a good ship to combat the pirates and the law (should you get on the wrong side of it). This costs money and there are different ways of making it. You can play it straight, trading legal goods and scraping a living. You can visit anarchic systems, blast every ship that moves and scoop up its cargo. Then there's slave trading and drug running, but these will put the police on your tail. As you battle and deal your way through the game, your rating will elevate from a lowly Harmless towards the ultimate accolade, Elite. Space combat is as 'realistic' as you'll ever find it and the technical details of your ship and those of your opponents are beautifully considered. Elite is undoubtedly one of the finest games ever made, for any computer.
(CRL - 1985) This is not a 'space' game in the purest sense because it is not set in space, but it shares many features of the type and deserves its place in this top five. Author Pete Cooke, previously known for games as diverse as adventures and a skiing simulator, decided that he would like to improve upon the current trend of wire-frame graphics by making them solid and adding shading. So he came up with Tau Ceti. It is set on the third planet of the titular sun, where man's colonies have been abandoned and the world taken over by a race of advanced robots. It's your mission to shut down the main reactor which powers the defence droids. Your mechanical foe are smart and well armed though and their ships will be all over you like a rash the moment you leave your planetary base. A large, complex game that captures the best of many different genres.
(Realtime - 1984) When Crash Magazine moved into 'Ludlow Towers', the landlord of a nearby house they rented, Mr Onions, urged them to take a look at the game his son Andrew had written. 'Yeah, whatever,' was probably the reaction, but it turned out to be rather good and was eventually released as 3D Tank Duel, one of the best Battlezone clones. His next project was to work on 3D Starstrike. Put simply, at the time of its release this was the best of the Star Wars copies ever seen. Unlike the Atari classic this used solid 3D graphics. You begin by battling enemy fighters in space, before swooping down towards the 'deathstar' and destroying its gun emplacements. Finally, you descend into the trench to do battle. Things get a little slow when the screen fills up and at times you can almost hear the Speccy's humble CPU creaking. It's still a corker though.
(Melbourne House - 1984) Starion is a fascinating combination of gorgeous space shooter and a puzzle game. It seemed to be Melbourne House's attempt to steal Elite's thunder by being released a couple of months earlier, but the game is radically different to Firebird's classic and in many ways more complex. In short, you must pass through more than two hundred different time zones by riddles given to you by fighting enemy spacecraft. Sounds odd eh? Well, it's certainly unlikely, but it's a massive game with the best wireframe graphics I've ever seen on the Speccy and which will keep you busy for weeks.
(Micromega - 1984) This was probably the first title to take the old Star Trek games a step further. As Mat you must defend the solar system against attack from the dreaded Myons. The usual Trekkie features of long and short range scanners are featured, but there are also some good 3D graphics which come into their own when you become tangled in bitter dogfights to defend mother Earth. There's plenty of strategy to the game too and although it may not look as good as the likes of Starstrike or even Elite, it offers a different kind of challenge to either of them and can hold its own as an important early space classic. There was a sequel, also written by Crash magazine's adventure reviewer, Derek Brewster but it was far too similar to the original.
Here are some other top quality space games for your consideration. 3D Lunattack (Hewson - 1984) No, not a violent altercation with some nutters, but with a force far more threatening: the Seiddab. The more observant of you will have noticed that Seiddab, is spelt Baddies spelt backwards. They appeared as the villains in a series of games, culminating in this cracking moon-based shooter. You must guide your hover fighter through the three rings of defence about the Seiddab base, battling past tanks, mines, missiles and enemy fighters. The sound and graphics are top notch and the game is only let down by its dismal use of the cursor keys. The Black Planet (Phipps Associates - 1983) Pirates - scourge of the spaceways. It's your job to wipe out their sorry hides and track down their home, the Black Planet. The only problem is that this treacherous sphere is invisible until you find the parts of the Key scattered across seven planets. On each world a different sub-game must be completed to capture the key part. On your travels between the planets, you will also come under attack from pirates. Despite looking a little dated at times, this is a huge game and not one to be taken lightly. Dark Star (Design Design - 1984) Having changed their name from Crystal, Design Design's first title was this impossibly slick space shoot 'em up. It may not possess the strategy elements of many other games of the same genre, but it does have gloriously smooth graphics, an vast playing area and a huge array of options (such as the most redefinable keys ever and a choice of cockpit styles). As commander of the Liar, you must travel space, visiting enemy planets and destroying their defence systems. This involves approaching each planet's central complex and wiping out their control towers while keeping your ship inside the floating rectangles of the protective shield, otherwise your ship's energy plummets. Many people considered the game a little empty because it does not concern itself with a ludicrous storyline, and the graphics, while blisteringly fast, perhaps lack a little detail. I say nonsense. This is a back-to-basics shoot 'em up in glorious wire frame 3D. Furthermore, there is a hidden game inside it. Try typing 'everyone's a nervous wreck' into the high score table. If you enjoy Dark Star you might like to tackle the sequel, Forbidden Planet. Galaxy Attack (Sunshine Books - 1983) Blimey, you know it must be old when a company with a name like that produces it. It's a bit creaky and reminds you what bounds were made on the Spectrum in just a few years, but it was one of the earliest space games and is quite varied and imaginative nonetheless (I say imaginative - the programmer obviously loved the Star Wars trilogy, but it was a bold effort for the humble Speccy nonetheless). You start the game in space, battle through waves of enemy fighters until you crash land on a remote planet. On the surface, enemy walkers surround you and you must repair your ship and escape before you're annihilated. Finally, you are back in space in a fight against the enemy mothership. Phew! Starstrike II (Realtime - 1986) An astounding sequel to the original Starstrike. You must battle your way through twenty two different planets in your quest to destroy the evil Outsiders. This involves several waves of combat including entering an enemy space station to wreak havoc, duelling with fighters in a furious space battle and racing through a ventilation duct, cannons blazing. The graphics are an improvement over the original and the Spectrum seems to cope better with the strain being put on it by all those 3D images. Nowadays we have graphics cards to do all that system-intensive work, so it's a testament to the ingenuity and skill of the programmers that such stunning visuals were handled by a 3.5 MHz processor and a few kilobytes of RAM. It impressed people at the time and is rightly remembered as an astouding game.
Earth has been invaded by an evil alien race by the name of the Squarm. Using a number of timegates, you must guide your ship through history and destroy the Squarm's HQ. You are provided with a 3D view from your cockpit and a long range scanner with which to locate the enemy. Progress through the various sectors is slow going as you must engage the enemy craft in furious space battles. Alien planets can be landed on to repair battle damange and to refuel. A good quality space adventure from Quicksilva's co-founder John Hollis and the first Spectrum game to use the 3D space field effect. Home |
