Toys For Bob’s recent success. The full thread is here.
Essentially, it’s a top-down co-op shooter/platforming/adventure/RPG-ish hybrid. The game comes with a plug-in platform upon which you place one of the characters. The original game has a few figures that come with it, and the game can be completed with them alone. However, you can expand the game buy picking up new packs and figures (think DLC but in a physical format). All experience is held within the figures, so you can swap them out and train them up however you’d like and can take them to your friends’ houses to join in there, etc…
If applied to a Star Control setting, you could have the ships as the “DLC” to unlock new fleets, special regions, etc… Heck, I’m sitting here with a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise and a Klingon Bird of Prey sitting by my monitor and they don’t even have a function aside from looking cool and reminding me of happy memories. I’d love you just drop them into a space combat and exploration game.
My vote is for Starflight. Rimbo has a great write up and while I’m not quite as fond of it as he is, it was a pretty damn good game.
Which isn’t to suggest that this is an easy choice. Both games need to be members of any PC gaming hall of fame.
I should add that I can still remember the time I first played Starflight. Where I was, where the computer was in my parent’s house, what the box looked like. It was glorious. There was no game like it at the time and there really hasn’t been one since. Which is crazy.
I love Star Control II, consider it as one of my all-time favourites and think it has aged amazingly for a twenty year old game. I didn’t discover it for myself until 2004 or so and was amazed how well it held up and shocked that no one had told me about it before and that it wasn’t much better known among gamers. After finishing it for the first time, I wanted more and tried to get into Starflight and even though that was only slightly older I remember struggling with the interface or graphics and never getting much into it.
It’s been a while, I’ve since replayed SC2 twice more and maybe I should also give Starflight another try again sometimes, if it’s as easy as you say. Should one start with Starflight 1 or does 2 have any notable changes that might make it more accessible? And which version of the games is preferable? Amiga, DOS, Genesis or else? Any important differences between different platforms? And can you import something from part 1 into 2?
Also, I seem to remember 1993’s Protostar being referred to as an unofficial Starflight 3. Rightfully? How accessible and worth playing would that be?
Hmmmmmm…I’ve not played the Amiga version but I’ve been told it’s the best graphically and from an accessibility standpoint. The Genesis version is a bit too arcadey for my tastes.
I first played Starflight on the Mega Drive / Genesis version. The space combat and ground landings in that version are like clunkier versions of the equivalents in Star Control 2, so to judge from others’ comments I guess the PC version has more going on there.
I couldn’t remember the big story point that Rimbo was gushing over, so I refreshed my memory via Wikipedia. I think he might be overselling it.
Starflight is a good game, and SC2 obviously owes a debt to it. But SC2 is a real classic, in my top 5 of all time.
I really wish that I had a chance to play Starflight back in the day, or at least the Genesis version. I recently tried playing Starflight from GoG, and the UI was just painful having not grown up with it.
Still if someone made a modern day version of StarFlight with updated UI and control, it would be an instant buy.
Starcontrol 2 though remains as one of my all time favorite games. I loved the combination of exploration, storytelling and going through the Universe making your ship more powerful one planet at a time.
Two very interesting data points to add to our opinions would be:
Which of the games did you play first?
How old were you when you played each game?
How much do you think that the preferred game would be the first game you played or that most of the time it would be the one that you played in your tween/teen years?
Rimbo, your post was just excellent and I think articulates what there is to love in both games.
And, really, that’s why this is a question that both elicits great passion and that will never be resolved: It’s a matter of love. These are two very lovable games: carefully crafted, mesmerizing, consuming, and deeply generous games. Loves cannot be compared, they can only be proclaimed.
Star Control 2 is the greatest game ever made. However, tonight, I am inspired to go give Starflight another try. Where did I put that manual? (Oh yeah, its on .pdf!)
I don’t think base mechanics of either game is good enough to be a great game. Thats why Star Control 2 wins. Because when you add the humor, personality and music of Star Control 2, then it does become a great game. Starflight is more leaning on its base mechanics.
I’ve never played Starflight (or any of the SC games) but damn, your post is making me feel like I must play this game RIGHT NOW and so I’m downloading it and hoping to check it out this weekend.
Yes you’re tempting me to play Starflight after I had written it off. But I played SCII recently for the first time and wasn’t that thrilled with it. I guess it was nice to take a tour but it isn’t as profound playing it now. I wonder if Starflight will be the same way. Some games simply don’t have as much impact outside of their eras.
Yeah, this is sadly true. When the Ur-Quan Masters remake was released, I excitedly tried to get my friends into Star Control II, but they looked at me like I was crazy, trying to get them to play such an old game, with keyboard controls to boot. I kept thinking if they’d only give it a chance. I had such epic battles with my elder brother back in the day in Super Melee mode in Star Control 2. I really wanted to recreate that with my game playing friends in Seattle.
I don’t think base mechanics of either game is good enough to be a great game.
Wow, I disagree so vehemently with this. The base mechanics of the original Star Control were great to start with, but were vastly improved in Star Control 2. It was the same basic gameplay, but with several improvements to the physics and the AI. Like I said, I logged hundreds of hours of Super-Melee mode, which is separate from the adventure/story mode, first with friends in college, then with my brother. With friends in college, it was kind of a bust, since I was just much much better at the game than everyone else, since I’d logged so much time with the original Star Control in my dorm’s computer lab by the time Star Control 2 came out. But when I played against my brother, that was when the game was sublime. The AI was excellent, but there’s just a new level of strategy and sophistication to the game once you play against a really good human opponent. The physics and control mastery is just as important as strategy in picking the right ships to counter other ships.
You start with the base gameplay of fighting around a gravity well, and that’s already awesome (especially with ships like the Yehat’s, which was just the right mass that it would automatically go into orbit around the gravity well), but when you add in excellent asymmetrical warfare, where not all ships are created equal, and you’ve got a recipe for a truly excellent game.
Just a quick follow up note: The fact that the excellent base gameplay in Star Control is based on keyboard control (Numpad arrows plus Enter and Space are the default controls) is sadly also what makes it one of those games that Tim James was talking about: not ideal for enjoyment outside of its era. Back in those days lots of action games used the cursor keys for controls, but if I ever notice a game using keyboard only control nowadays, the first thing I do is uninstall it.
This seems strange to me. Is the keyboard a problem during the gameplay itself or are you talking about navigating the menus with the keyboard? The only issue I ever had with the keyboard controls of SC2 is that when you’re playing melee multiplayer certain keys tended to conflict with each other. Not sure if this is even a problem with modern keyboards or not.
Obviously, I think SC2 remains masterful and has aged very, very well, all things considered. There are archaic things in SC2 here and there. But very few games are as “timeless” as it is in terms of both gameplay and technology.
I would think the biggest objection from modern players trying it for the first time is that you need to take notes because there’s no in-game journal.
Paul Reiche III contributed a bunch of ideas to the first Starflight, which is probably the only reason it’s even tolerable. Star Control II is a far better game and I don’t even consider you human if you disagree.
