bingle

I have no idea how popular this game was, but it was one of my favorites when I was just getting into PC gaming, and it still shapes my opinion of games.

It was a graphical space adventure game, that I used to play in DOS on a 286. You were a generic human spaceman, and you started on a space station with a sort of Y-Wing looking spaceship. You could pick a crew from a bunch of different races, including robots and insect guys. Your mission started out just being about getting money for ship upgrades; you'd travel out to other planets in the system and mine them for minerals which you'd sell. Once you upgraded a bit, you could start to go out into the wider universe, and you'd discover a bunch of other races to trade with and fight. You'd also eventually realize that the whole universe was going super-nova, one system at a time, and that you had to find some ancient artifacts to stop that happening.

It was a really deep game for its time, it had a lot of gameplay, diplomatic and combat encounters, and a little buggy thing for exploring planets and finding artifacts and mining. It was also unique in that you had to sort of discover your ultimate purpose over time, through finding clues left by ancient civilizations as you plundered their ruins. It was really a fantastic game (at least in my memory) and I'd very much like to see if I can find a copy somewhere to try and play again.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Bingle

aurigus

Was it called Starflight?

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=StarFlight
http://necrobones.com/starflt/

bingle

Woo hoo. You rock. It was indeed Starflight.

That was incredibly quick, too, I'm very impressed.

Thanks very much!

Bingle

FngKestrel

Starflight, man that game takes me back.

bparker805

Was there a similar game like this for the Sega Genisis?

bingle

Yes! I did some research since finding out the name, and apparently StarFlight was quite popular - it sold over a million copies and spawned two sequels, and is still inspiring budding game creators to this day! One of the systems it was released on was the Sega Genesis.

You can play StarFlight still, for free, by following the first link in Aurigus's post. I tried it out today and it still rocks, although for some reason the keyboard input is a bit messed up for me and I have to hit each button twice to get it to register. If I figure that problem out, I'll post and let you know.

Bingle

TheFu

Wow, never heard of that one. Was going to guess Privateer. That would make a good MMORPG I think.

bingle

Do you mean Privateer would make a good MMORPG, or StarFlight? I would probably agree with you on both counts. I have wanted to make a StarFlight MMO for a long time...

Anyway, here's some more advice on playing StarFlight, if anyone's interested.

Download DOSBox, a DOS emulator made for playing old games on,

Download D-Fend, a GUI frontend for DOSBox,

Make a backup of your game saves every now and then, because if something happens and SF crashes (or if you lose the game), you'll lose the ability to play,

Check out http://p198.ezboard.com/finterstelcommcenterfrm2, a forum for StarFlight 1 and 2.

That's what my research has uncovered!

Bingle

Kadath

This sounds EXACTLY like Star Control II, and apparently was a precursor of it. You should try that game if you like Starflight.

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