It's a reasonably ambitious attempt to make an on-rails 3D space game on the atari, and for the most part it works. There are 3 different game modes at play:
1. The main game mode involves flying in a pseudo 3D space where you try to shoot enemy ships for points and see how many you can earn in the arbitrarily-set time limit of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. The enemies scale in size depending on your distance in a choppy-yet-still-understandable way, and there are asteroids that can't be shot and you just gotta dodge em. There are no lives, so your punishment for running into an enemy is getting stunned for a second or two as the game flashbangs you with blinking lights. You can change how quickly the enemies fly into you as well as whether or not they come one at a time or in pairs. It's okay!
2. There's a variant of the main mode where instead of shooting enemies the button speeds you up, and the aim of the game is to see how far into space you can go. The only enemies are the invincible asteroids so it's just a matter of dodging. I found it reasonably cheesable to just hold diagonally in one direction and only change if something comes directly your way.
3. There's a bonus game mode called "Lunar Lander" which takes place entirely in 2D. I thought at first this would be a conversion of the arcade game of the same title, but it's actually more just a game where you play as a moon lander and chase the moon itself around a blank empty space, and if you manage to tag it you get a point. Though with the atari graphics and tag-like gameplay it really feels less like you are a moon rover trying to make contact and more like you are a blue horse trying to take a piss on a giant cookie. You can toggle these moving squares that the lander needs to avoid if you want there to be a little extra sauce, I guess.
It's a pretty decent game, I can appreciate the ambition for the kind of perspective that they were going for which atari hardware generally doesn't lend itself towards. The gameplay even feels decent enough with the stiff-ass joystick controller as well, I didn't have to do the ol' mega drive controller trick to make it more playable. There are two player modes for the main game and the moon lander game (the moon lander version seems like one person gets to control the moon which could honestly be a fun time), but I wasn't able to try those modes out. And this game is a launch title?!?!? The only real thing is that the time-based nature makes it seem more like RNG to get a good score as you just gotta hope for as many high-ranking enemies to spawn as close to you as possible to get an impressive score, and even then generally your score will be the same throughout as the time limit and spawn rates for things are generally the same. They could have made it a lot more competitive if they stuck to the ol' life system and had the time mode as a side thing or something. Regardless, I really can't fault the ambition at play here nawsay, shoutouts to atari
1. The main game mode involves flying in a pseudo 3D space where you try to shoot enemy ships for points and see how many you can earn in the arbitrarily-set time limit of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. The enemies scale in size depending on your distance in a choppy-yet-still-understandable way, and there are asteroids that can't be shot and you just gotta dodge em. There are no lives, so your punishment for running into an enemy is getting stunned for a second or two as the game flashbangs you with blinking lights. You can change how quickly the enemies fly into you as well as whether or not they come one at a time or in pairs. It's okay!
2. There's a variant of the main mode where instead of shooting enemies the button speeds you up, and the aim of the game is to see how far into space you can go. The only enemies are the invincible asteroids so it's just a matter of dodging. I found it reasonably cheesable to just hold diagonally in one direction and only change if something comes directly your way.
3. There's a bonus game mode called "Lunar Lander" which takes place entirely in 2D. I thought at first this would be a conversion of the arcade game of the same title, but it's actually more just a game where you play as a moon lander and chase the moon itself around a blank empty space, and if you manage to tag it you get a point. Though with the atari graphics and tag-like gameplay it really feels less like you are a moon rover trying to make contact and more like you are a blue horse trying to take a piss on a giant cookie. You can toggle these moving squares that the lander needs to avoid if you want there to be a little extra sauce, I guess.
It's a pretty decent game, I can appreciate the ambition for the kind of perspective that they were going for which atari hardware generally doesn't lend itself towards. The gameplay even feels decent enough with the stiff-ass joystick controller as well, I didn't have to do the ol' mega drive controller trick to make it more playable. There are two player modes for the main game and the moon lander game (the moon lander version seems like one person gets to control the moon which could honestly be a fun time), but I wasn't able to try those modes out. And this game is a launch title?!?!? The only real thing is that the time-based nature makes it seem more like RNG to get a good score as you just gotta hope for as many high-ranking enemies to spawn as close to you as possible to get an impressive score, and even then generally your score will be the same throughout as the time limit and spawn rates for things are generally the same. They could have made it a lot more competitive if they stuck to the ol' life system and had the time mode as a side thing or something. Regardless, I really can't fault the ambition at play here nawsay, shoutouts to atari
decently executed first-person space shooter, it makes me sleepy tho
Y'all are mean to this game; it has an average rating of 2.1 at the time of this review. It's not great or anything, but it's a lot of dumb fun and not much different than Asteroids or Berzerk in its level of mindlessness. I didn't play any of the multiplayer, but the three single-player modes are decent, and they're graphically very impressive for a 1977 home console game. After a while, I went from only being able to obtain scores in the teens to easily achieving under 50 points in 2/3 of the game modes—I still found it hard to rack up high scores in the lunar lander mode. Overall, Star Ship is nothing incredible, but it's visually novel and a good "turn your brain off" activity. I'll have to give the multiplayer a shot when I can find someone to play these stupid games with me.
Não consegui marcar um ponto sequer, meu Deus.
Star Ship 1977 | Atari 2600
emulador pc
1-interacción: 0.4
2-mundo/apartado artístico: 1
3-concepto: 2
4-puesta en escena: 0
5-narración: -
6-sonido/apartado sonoro: 1
7-jugabilidad: 0
8-historia: -
9-duración/ritmo: 0
10-impacto: 0
2
1
1
1
0.4
0
5.4/60pts
9 promedio
emulador pc
1-interacción: 0.4
2-mundo/apartado artístico: 1
3-concepto: 2
4-puesta en escena: 0
5-narración: -
6-sonido/apartado sonoro: 1
7-jugabilidad: 0
8-historia: -
9-duración/ritmo: 0
10-impacto: 0
2
1
1
1
0.4
0
5.4/60pts
9 promedio
A visual and auditory hate crime on your senses.
God help you if you're prone to nausea, or have epilepsy, or both!
What if I told you this was the first first person shooter? Since I’m never going to print more than ten copies of this or even attempt to market it in any real meaningful way that would make me any cash I don’t bother to do any research beyond “shit I kind of remember reading on wikis the last time I tried a project like this when I should have been doing anything else more productive” so maybe that is wrong but I’m very willing to pretend I’m right about it, and I hope you are too.
In Star Ship you are, brace yourself for this shocker, a pilot of a star ship who needs to blast some things. There are a couple star ship related game modes here but they are all just similar takes on the concept, and sadly none of them are about Grace Slick trying to dose Nixon with LSD. That reference would have fucking killed in the 70s. What didn’t kill in the 70s was Star Ship, I mean the game not Jefferson Starship the reference I, a millennial, am too young to be making and you, most likely a Fortnite Zoomer here with a Youtube algorithm full of videos from a Pewdiepie or PepeGamer1488 video, are definitely too young to get. It didn’t do well contemporarily with most people saying that it looked great and, uh, yeah I can see that, but that the game play and modes were lacking, and since the first person aspect was for whatever reason not seen to be all that groundbreaking even though now we look back at it and go ‘hey neat’ it didn’t have much of a shelf life. They were mostly right, as its an interesting oddity in the early console catalogs but if it didn’t keep anybody interested in 77 it doesn’t have much of a chance to in Hell Year 20XX.
In Star Ship you are, brace yourself for this shocker, a pilot of a star ship who needs to blast some things. There are a couple star ship related game modes here but they are all just similar takes on the concept, and sadly none of them are about Grace Slick trying to dose Nixon with LSD. That reference would have fucking killed in the 70s. What didn’t kill in the 70s was Star Ship, I mean the game not Jefferson Starship the reference I, a millennial, am too young to be making and you, most likely a Fortnite Zoomer here with a Youtube algorithm full of videos from a Pewdiepie or PepeGamer1488 video, are definitely too young to get. It didn’t do well contemporarily with most people saying that it looked great and, uh, yeah I can see that, but that the game play and modes were lacking, and since the first person aspect was for whatever reason not seen to be all that groundbreaking even though now we look back at it and go ‘hey neat’ it didn’t have much of a shelf life. They were mostly right, as its an interesting oddity in the early console catalogs but if it didn’t keep anybody interested in 77 it doesn’t have much of a chance to in Hell Year 20XX.