Yeah, they’re both awesome, Starflight is just awesomer.
It’s just really unfortunate no game ever made will be as good as Sim Town
I’ll just have to take your word on that. There’s no way I can enjoy something that ugly nowadays.
It’s a shame that it was so hard to come upon gaming knowledge in those days. I had never even heard of Starflight until I heard about it on Qt3 in recent years. I’m just extremely lucky that my dorm computer lab happened to have Star Control installed on it. Otherwise, I likely wouldn’t have ever heard of that game either.
That being said, here is a trip down Star Control 2 ship to ship combat.
The best ship in the game, of course, is the Thraddash. The Thraddash ship was dirt cheap and meant to be some expendable ship. It was armed with a tiny squirt gun that did one tiny damage each. But it was also armed with the most fear some weapon in the whole game. The butt torch. Basically this weapon dumped fuel into the afterburner and sped the ship up a lot, way faster than any other ship could go. It also left a Tron cycle like trail of flame behind it. But it burnt up “energy”, which was used by both weapons to fire. In my hands, it was the most annoying and crazy ship out there. It was all about baiting your opponent and having the patience to do plinking flybys that lured your opponent into a path you could lay that flame down in. With patience you could defeat the most expensive ships without too much trouble. Chmmr satellites died with ease. Dreadnauhht fighters burned right up. Any time a ship used the planetary gravity to pick up speed they were in danger of that flame trail. Some people I played against learned and would come to a full stop in space. This just meant you had to break their patience down, plinking them and getting closer and closer on your passes until they snapped and came after you.
Another awesome ship was the Drudge. This ship was basically a huge cannon that did massive damage. When you fired it you were pushed back a lot and after a few shots in the same direction you were zooming around. The really unique thing about it though is it recharged shot energy really, really slow (or maybe not at all). In order to recharge you had to sacrifice a member of your crew to an internal furnace, complete with “Arrrrggghh!” and burning sound effect. So it was balancing this powerful weapon with your energy needs and health.
Now see, I can deal with ugly. Blocky graphics, choppy animations, weird-ass polygons, it’s all good to me. Ancient gameplay and interfaces are something I have a lot more trouble with. Running into difficulty spikes because the game assumes you’d configure with just the right loadout, hammering quicksave because ha ha, checkpoints don’t exist yet - those sort of things will just stop me cold. And keep me from revisiting classics that I once absolutely loved. And, honestly, why I’m interested to see what Stardock will do with their reimagining.
Another great ship was the Pkunk. Like it’s name it was a weird, weird ship. It was fast, maneuverable and fragile. It weapons were ok, kind of like multi directional Contra style machine guns. The Pkunk race was rather odd, as they were quirky little birds that believed in reincarnation and loved to insult people in an offhand, not very serious way. In order to recharge their weapons you had to hit the secondary button which hurled an insult and recharged. What? Who the heck thought of that? What a colorful character. But even better was when you died. There was some random chance (it seemed like 50/50) that you’d spontaneously respawn, complete with “Hallelujah!” sound effect. What a great idea.
I also loved the Mycon. They were a spore based race. In addition to the fact that their banter was hilarious(“My fibers grow turgid. Violence ensues.”) they had a ship kinda like the drudge, with one big weapon. They difference is their weapon was homing and expanded as it got further out. They could also heal themselves.
aka the best ship against the end boss. Side strafe those turrets to no end.
For those of you put off by PC Starflight, the Genesis version is much more polished and it incorporates a lot of Star Control style gameplay regarding movement and combat. It’s the best of both worlds!
I’ve been playing the Genesis port on an actual Genesis, and yes, it’s far more Star Controlly in its controls, which I rather like.
Landing on a planet the first time was an experience though. ;)
I actually own a copy of Starflight for Genesis! Just no, uh, Genesis to play it on.
It’s worth owning just for the manual, which contains a cornucopia of lore and info not found in the PC manual.
See, but for this very reason, a smart opponent would then pick a fast ship next that can get to the Thraddash ship. I’ve forgotten now what my reliable counter to the Thraddash used to be, but I had one. But yeah, I also loved using the Thraddash ship to take out some of the big boys. It was an excellent counter to some of the heavy hitters.
One of my biggest regrets in Star Control 2 was that I never got good at using the Druuge ship and the race with the plant ship, the Supox. Both involved learning a new way to fly these ships, and I just never got enough practice in to get good at these ships.
So I don’t know if you really mean this or not, but when I read those words I was immediately reminded of the trailer for Simsville. Which I watched off a game disc in 2001 or 2002 and was really excited for. That level of scale is my jam. Then the game got cancelled. Boo!
While I was super excited for that game, I meant this one:
Damn I loved that as a kid
Yeah when I said I didn’t know if it’s what you meant, what I meant was I don’t know if you were serious about living SimTown. :)
Damn that looks slick. Can this be played on PC through emulation? Asking for a friend.
What’s that schematic from? I don’t recall seeing it in the first Starflight but perhaps it’s from Starflight 2?
Dunno, just found it on google image search.
It looks like a fan-made schematic of the Starflight ship, because I’ve neveeeer seen it before.
That’s actually not correct. I’m not sure why you would think that.
Stardock has the full publishing rights which includes a worldwide, perpetual, unlimited license to the lore, setting, characters, aliens, ships from Star Control 1, 2, and 3.
The only reason we’re not using the Ur-quan aliens is because Paul and Fred asked me not to. We want to leave the door open for them to return to continue the Ur-quan story.