Starflight

Likely owing to the familiar Motorola 68000 as its CPU, the Genesis/Mega Drive got a lot of big brother computer experiences that the SNES didn’t – there are 186 ports from the Amiga catalogue alone. Starflight is one of these. Released originally for DOS PCs in 1986 and credited as the inspiration for many space games to follow, it would see an updated port in 89/90 for the other major home computers, then a separate one for the Genesis in 1991. This is the rare instance where the Genesis adaptation is the advanced version, with improved art, revised mechanics, and a good bit of general polish. But like Countdown to Doomsday, enough changed and “console-ized” in the conversion to make an argument for playing both.

Starflight sets you as the latest captain at Interstel; the nascent exploration force of the planet Arth. Scientists have discovered lightspeed technology and a star chart from the Old Empire. With the chart as your guide, you’re off to rediscover planets, make contact with alien civilizations, and find out more about the Empire and the Ancients they were researching. Procedural generation brings 270 solar systems with over 800 planets; all of which you can visit, scan, and land upon. No Man’s Sky is probably the most direct modern descendant; both games have (almost) countless solar systems with varied planets you can scour for minerals, lifeforms, and ancient ruins.

The Genesis version ports all this over, mostly untouched. Every planet and system look to be present – so online guides will still work – but distances are compressed. You seem to use the same amount of fuel, but both galaxy and planets feel smaller. Given how long it could take to get somewhere on PC, this is probably a bonus. All computer versions of Starflight also ran pretty terribly. Landing on planets lurched to the next wireframe view. Traveling through space didn’t scroll, so much as jerk to the next screen. On console, the engine has been rewritten and the art redrawn, allowing you to smoothly jet between the stars or motor along the planets. It handles looser and more like an action game, but it’s unquestionably the best and fastest Starflight has ever looked or run.

Before you can fulfill the shamelessly Star Trek-ian mandates, you’ll need a crew. Your ship has five roles: Science Officer, Navigator, Engineer, Communications, and Doctor. Each role needs a created character. This was originally going to be another thrilling episode for the Retro Knights™ (futuristic name pending), but characters’ RPG-lite stats barely matter. They’re never treated as individuals and only function as extensions of the ship. You assign them to bridge stations, then train them in the applicable stat – e.g., train the Engineer in Engineering.  If their stats are low, they’ll be terrible at their jobs. Navigators keep stumbling into unseen wormholes. The science officer can’t identify information about planets. Comms returns useless, jumbled dialogue.

Per the manual, the magic number is 150,  and stats under that have penalties. You’re able to create alien characters with stats maxing at 250 in certain specialties, but it was never clear if this gave you more fuel efficiency, faster healing, better outcomes when dealing with aliens, etc. As long as you meet or exceed 150, you seem set to finish the game (I did it with 200s). Disappointingly, the Genesis version only has as many character slots as there are bridge stations. You can’t build a reserve of alien crew and swap them in when it’s beneficial. You can’t use the untrainable Android race as filler while you max out his replacement, making Androids kind of useless in this version.

Training costs money, as do better components for your ship. Both are mandatory to make it very far in the wider galaxy. Unfortunately, Interstel is broke – or like Dad when you turn 18, they’re kicking you out to make it on your own. Unlike its contemporary Elite, Starflight is not a trading game. Even though Arth’s station sells all possible ores, there are no other stations in the entire galaxy to land on, sell to, or buy fuel from. There are no side quests to find. You can only travel to nearby planets and vacuum up valuable ore or hapless critters to sell back home.

Leaving the station, we see how the game world is broken up. A warp view lets you manually steer your ship among the various star systems. The game case includes a poster-sized star map that you can mark to check off where you’ve been, while there’s an interactive one in-game that lets you confirm X,Y coordinates and see the fuel cost to get there. Head to a shimmering blue star and press A to drop into the system view. Here, planets orbit around their sun and you putter your ship between them. Planets don’t move while you’re in this view, but in a neat touch, they’ll have shifted along their orbits if you come back.

All movement is handled with Left and Right to rotate your craft and Up to accelerate. It’s tank controls, but they work. C brings up a command menu where you scroll through your five bridge officers and select tasks based on their department. The computer versions also included the Captain as a crew member, but the Genesis does away with that role entirely. Those tasks (like taking off and cargo management) are reassigned to other crew in ways that you honestly don’t notice if you’re not familiar with the other versions.

The Genesis adds basic Newtonian gravity. As your ship flies through a system, planets pull you in with greater force depending on their mass. Once in orbit, your Science Officer can initiate a scan. You’ll get an info window revealing basic climate, relative quantities of life and minerals (values from 0-100), and three types of possible ores. The manual also lists a range of Earth-like values that make a planet ripe for colonization. If your planet falls within those ranges (pretty rare), you can Log it for future colonization and get a 5-figure bonus from Interstel when you return – or an increasing cash penalty if you’re wrong.

If something is too hot (a sun) or too dense (a gas giant), you get a warning that you shouldn’t try to land there. Do it anyway, and, well, they warned you. Capturing lifeforms has a sort-of side game to it, in that you’ll need to sell the first example of a species to catalog its name and its value. I never found a species that was worth the effort or cargo space. Your real interest is those sweet, sweet minerals. The manual has a chart of all possible minerals and their sell value back at Interstel – cross reference what’s lighting up the sensors with that list and decide if landing there is worth your time. Oooh, is that Rodnium? Take us in, Mr. Sulu – we’re about to get paid.

On the PC, landing was a wireframe animation so choppy and slow that it would take about two minutes if you didn’t skip it. Here, it’s manual touchdown with gravity fighting you all the way. Retro boosters on the A button keep you aloft. Higher gravity sucks you down faster and requires more taps of A (and more spent fuel) to avoid belly-flopping into the surface. Also unique to this version is the ability to fly within the atmosphere, with two different viewing heights. The higher level lets you cover distance faster, but you can’t see any icons on the ground. The lower is much harder to keep from kissing dirt, but still lets you travel quickly and spot items. You can land anywhere, including water, but touch down too fast and the ship takes damage.

Once on the surface, your entire crew disembarks in a little terrain vehicle that calls to mind the worst parts of Mass Effect. In the computer versions, mining was just scooping up mineral icons scattered on the surface. You could switch to a wider view and drive directly to minerals in the distance. Elevation was indicated, but didn’t matter. Roam around, pass over the icons, unload the cargo back on your ship. It was basic, but it was quick. Trips were short, lucrative, and got you on to exploring the galaxy faster.

Here, mining has been made much more time-consuming. Mineral deposits are hidden under the surface and found with the rover’s scanner. Hit A to bring up a blue-tinted view with any deposits shown as heat blooms. Drive over them and drill with B to fill your cargo. Different terrain slows your rover down and costs more battery to cross. Mountains can empty an entire charge in about 20 seconds, with water even faster. You unload cargo and fully recharge by docking with your ship. This is free and infinite, but means you can’t venture too far away. You can’t drive across the whole planet like you could on PC – you’ve got to frequently pick up and move the ship itself as a base.

Again, mining is your only reasonable option for making money, so this part can’t be ignored. Considering this, I’m not sure making it more complicated is an improvement. You cannot move while viewing the mineral scanner, so you have to try and remember where the deposits are. Wasn’t this where that heat bloom was? No? Burn battery on the scanner again and reposition. The scanner never removes a deposit once empty, so you’ve got to remember what you’ve already mined. Planet scans give you a list of three possible minerals, but once on the planet, you have no way to identify one type over the others. What you find seems random, and it’s usually the cheap one.

This version also adds weather and more aggressive creatures. Wind pushes your little rover around. Lightning can temporarily scramble your navigation equipment, no longer showing your coordinates or a guiding arrow back to the ship. Earthquakes drain your armor if you don’t smash B to “dig in” and ride them out. Kamikaze creatures zap your armor if they touch you, shredding it in seconds if they get stuck. If either your ship or rover is ever without armor, the crew start taking damage and give the Doctor something to do. You might want to consider climate before you land, because some of these planets can be a real pain in the ass.

It’s also where cracks in the procedural generation start to show. I spent, maybe 10-15 hours searching for a perfect mining planet, figuring I’d ultimately save time by maximizing my returns. When I finally found one – with the top three most valuable minerals on the manual’s price list(!) – what did I pull up the most? Molybendium, near the middle of the list, and not even mentioned on the planet scans. My science officer was fully trained, so I think the procedural generation just quietly lied.

It seems to do that a fair amount. I’d find planets with no hydrosphere on the scan, that then had vast oceans when you tried to land. Or, I’d orbit barren moons that then had lush, tropical climates when you touched down. There’s only art for four planet types (moon, ice, gas, Earth-like) and only four terrain options (red, icy, teal, Earth-like). Considering these limited sets have to be scrambled to make over 800 planets, it’s understandable that some combinations aren’t going to make sense. But it does sap your interest to visit them.

It also means you’ve seen everything very quickly. When I started, I was fully on board with stopping by every single planet and checking systems off on the poster map, as dumb and impractical as that likely is. But it’s quickly apparent that’s not the intent. These planets don’t have much individual significance or substance to them, so the point just seems to be the smoke of having a lot of them. They’re the hay that hides the plot’s needles.

You’re hit with that plot on the station’s message board on the second day. Stars are flaring out across the galaxy, in a wave traveling from right to left on the star map. When they do, they scorch all life and planets in that system. You literally can no longer land on those planets and blow up if you stay in orbit. Worst of all, your precious Arth will be toast in about one in-game year. It’s up to you to grill the galaxy’s many alien races for clues, then investigate the planetary coordinates they suggest. Find and follow enough breadcrumb trails and you can piece together how to stop the flares.

This is what all the mining, training, and ship upgrades are for, with actual exploration all but ending as soon as you gear up your ship and start your investigation in earnest. These clues ultimately lead to artifacts. Artifacts are found on planet surfaces and have game-bending effects better than any equipment you can buy. There are three specific artifacts you must have to beat the game, and absolutely can farf around too long and find your next artifact was destroyed in a system that has flared. Friendly aliens (or messages in ruins on a scattered handful of planets) will eventually tell you where to find artifacts and what to do with them.

Over 800 planets means you will never find artifacts or ruins on your own. Even if you know the correct planet, surfaces are just large enough that they’re impractical to fly search patterns over. You need directions. Starflight frequently references a system of X,Y coordinates that line up with the star map; e.g. Arth is the second planet in the system at 125,100. Coordinates with cardinal directions are used for planet surfaces, such as 17Nx162E. With a complete set of coordinates, you can pinpoint a location on any planet in any system in the entire galaxy.

There are nine alien races, and they all know more about galactic goings-on than you do. As you tool around hyperspace, you may get a message that unidentified ships are approaching. This stops your travel and forces you to an empty section of space with your ship and a number of generic sensor contacts. You still move around freely and can scan the contacts, with success depending on your science officer’s skill. Once revealed, you’ll start to recognize the shape of what ships belong to which race and decide if you want to stick around. If you haven’t been hailed already by now, you can order your comms officer to ring them up.

Best I can tell, this part functions exactly as it does on PC. You pick from three possible stances – Obsequious (hello, thesaurus!), Friendly, and Aggressive. You then have five unchanging topics to ask about. Picking the same topic multiple times sometimes gives new information. The manual says there’s strategy here in matching the right tone to the right species, but this didn’t feel very complete. Maybe it’s because my comms officer was maxed out on training before I ever encountered an alien, but Obsequious never seemed to get me more information than Friendly did, even on the haughty race you’re clearly supposed to use it on. Aggressive never got me anywhere, I think because I’d already found an artifact that made that race grovel hilariously at our presence.

The best information is going to be direct coordinates somewhere in the galaxy, but sometimes you’ll have to combine information from two different races to get the final location. Or, you’ll be told about, say, a “cross shaped constellation” and have to find it on the physical map. Sometimes you’ll be given clues about how to answer another race’s questions or riddles – if you answer incorrectly, they get aggressive, so having these clues is pretty critical. There’s much more of a puzzle element to finding the artifacts than just blindly going where you’re told, which I really liked.

The remaining possible dialogue fleshes out the galaxy in interesting ways. There’s a lot of backstory and detail for a game that fits on an 8 Meg cartridge. For example, the manual explicitly points out that two of the races are at war with each other (the Thrynn can’t stop eating Elowans’ heads, so, you know, fair), and if their enemy is among your crew, they’ll open fire. There’s lost probes that give more backstory into the politics of the Old Empire. You’ll need to pay attention to the lore, because some races you speak to are obviously lying. It’s great stuff, and the interactions with various races are definitely a highlight.

Unfortunately, there are also races that only fight, no matter how your sharp your diplomacy is. The Gazurtoid think all air-breathers are blights on the galaxy and will try to “cleanse” you. The Uhlek are the big bads – they don’t talk at all, just kill.  I was very reluctant to fight anyone, despite the obvious signposting that these guys won’t negotiate. Races remember if you attack them, and even peaceful ones will start to open fire on sight. You can probably lock yourself out from beating the game if you piss off everyone, so call me Neville Chamberlain –  I wasted too much time trying to appease groups that were always going to attack.

I also wanted to avoid combat, because it mostly sucks. Like mining, the Genesis port takes the opportunity to make a tedious part of the original even more so. Instead of two weapons, you now have eight options with different strengths and fire patterns. The most powerful choices are also ridiculously expensive, while firing them (and using your shields) uses lots of your limited fuel. Actual mechanics play a whole lot like Star Trek TNG: Echoes of the Past, with an overhead view of your ship and your enemies. The same tank controls apply while you awkwardly circle each other, trying to line up and shoot little balls of pew pew at your foes.

It’s not fun, and you never feel great at it. Even Class 5 armor and shields drain surprisingly fast, while smart maneuvering feels basically impossible. Running around with shields up and weapons armed makes enemies of races you want to befriend, so you have to keep track of whose territory you’re heading into. Worst fights of all, hands down, are courtesy of the Uhlek. As soon as you get the encounter notice, you’re dropped into a battle where you start surrounded and under fire. My Class 5 shields lasted two seconds – boys, I can’t make ’em any better.

Smaller, weaker races can be pretty effectively dodged while flying away diagonally. Their weapons can’t hit you and they give up the chase. The Uhlek put so much fire on the screen so quickly that this tactic doesn’t really work on them. Instead, you have to kill them as quickly as possible, and you will take damage when you try. Uhlek are only found in what would be considered the “end game” areas, but you’ll have to have Class 5 ship components to even barely survive an encounter. My understanding is you could be a little stealthier on the PC, but those ways don’t seem to work here. You can save two games to the cart at any time, so most of my end game was just reloading saves until I survived.

Other Genesis changes are minor, but noteworthy (a more comprehensive list is here). You can’t find fuel in ruins anymore, so your only options are buying it from Interstel or looting it from defeated ships. Some artifacts are changed, such as removing a cloaking device and changing a shield boost to a weapon boost. These all seem designed to push more action and more fights. If you’re in deep space and very low on fuel, fighting alien ships is the only way to get more.

There are no more junk artifacts. The PC required you to pay Interstel to identify all artifacts, and some were only novelties that could then be sold, but that’s all removed here. The science officer now just tells you directly what’s on board and what it does. On the computers, you could name habitable planets when you logged them, as well as save text in a Captain’s Log, but this is cut as well. One very spoilery way to get a race off your back for good doesn’t work here, allegedly due to a programming bug.

It also seems that Sega and/or EA were worried about another Dragon Warrior situation. Like Final Fantasy on the NES, they overprepare console players to a slightly hilarious degree. The original DOS version gave loose information about whether a star was close to flaring. Here, you get a window giving the exact date of disaster every time you enter any system. The manual includes a direct walkthrough of the entire game, written as the logs of a ship that had time-travelled before stopping the flares. The exact solution is there, with steps, coordinates and all. I don’t think it’s fair to say companies thought console players were idiots, but it’s clear that complex games inspired… less trust.

I’ve played very little of the DOS and Macintosh versions, but from beating the Genesis one, I suspect I’d prefer the computer versions. Getting around the galaxy is sublime on the console, but I didn’t care for mining taking even longer. Removing the ability to find free fuel just means you’ve got to mine even more, or pushes you into the lame ship combat. I was still impressed that they fit everything onto one cart – given that the original fit on two 5.25″ floppy disks, I shouldn’t be – but it’s neat to see a game this “big” appear on a 16-bit console.

I think they did great work with the art, procedural generation mistakes aside. I wish there was more visual variety, but again, I don’t think you’re really expected to look too closely at any of these planets. Sounds are… well, they’re better than the PC buzzer. Effects cover things like engines running, weapons firing, and traveling through wormholes. A lot are that “quivery” way that the Genesis tries to mimic organic noises. Some scratchy digitized speech announces things like entering orbit or scanning a planet, but this is fluff. The only particularly useful sounds are noises that differentiate between when you’re mining through dirt and when you’ve hit bedrock. The only music comes in the main menu and a low beat that plays on the space station.

I think one of my biggest issues with Starflight was actually figuring out what it was about. Realizing there was no point to meticulously exploring every star system was disappointing. Realizing that finding a perfect mining planet was a fool’s errand, and you should just grab whatever’s around and get going (it’s all pure profit), was disappointing. When everything finally “clicked,” I still had the lingering taste of these initial disappointments. I enjoyed puzzling out artifact locations from my chats with aliens, and I’ll even admit that ended up a better game than just exploring this galaxy would have been. But that appreciation came late, after plenty of sessions where I just wasn’t looking forward to booting up the game.

I also panicked once the deadline was presented. The game does end once Arth is destroyed – no dramatic Game Over screen, but you can no longer buy fuel and no one responds to distress calls if you run out. You can only reload a save and try again. However, you’ve got a ridiculous buffer before this happens. Galactic days pass in about 2 real-time minutes. The game starts on January 1st, and Arth pops on November 1st. Some napkin math tells us you’ve got around 20 hours, and there’s simply not enough game here to take that long. Even as a clueless dope on a first playthrough, I had a ship loaded with Class 5 gear by February.

So that’s Starflight. It’s way more plot-focused that you might expect, while its massive galaxy is more 800 cardboard cutouts than any planets Spock might call “fascinating.” But damned if you can’t visit all of them, land on all of them, and build ongoing relationships with multiple alien races, exactly as advertised. It’s got a twist ending that’s pretty legendary, and the advances in technology and game mechanics made here would be felt in countless space games to follow. While the Genesis version drops some content and makes parts more tedious, it’s still a great and worthy upgrade.

 

The Good

Overclocking DOSBox aside, Starflight finally runs at a pace and smoothness it deserves. All key aspects of the original make it over in the port, including the entire massive galaxy. Planet art looks great and terrain actually matters. Ability to save two games to the cart at any time is welcome and crucial.

 

The Bad

In general, the fantasy of having an enormous galaxy to explore ends up not matching the reality. Procedural generation makes lame, contradictory planets. Changes here mean you’re always mining, while also making it take longer. Combat really isn’t improved, but also made more of a focus. Not the clearly better choice over the computer versions that it could have been.

 

“YOU REQUIRE INFORMATION? HERE IS SOME INFORMATION. YOU WILL DIE VERY SOON. PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU NEED MORE INFORMATION.” -Spemin captain