the only definitive proof that autism existed in the 1990's.
It trades the more robust space combat of Elite for more exploration and management systems. Highly visionary game for coming out in 1986, allowing you explore hundreds of planets across almost as many star systems. Beyond the exploration, trading and crew management, there's also a story that unravels as your journey of discover progresses. In other words it's the best Star Trek game to have come out at this point. I will say the visuals are very basic even for 1986, but it's an understandable tradeoff for the scope of the game.
This review contains spoilers
I think Starflight is an imperfect masterpiece. The Mega Drive version gets the closest to perfection as possible, since it's the only one that lets you get rid of the Uhleks by using the Black Egg on the Uhlek Brain World. But the exaggerated fuel consumption really kills the experience on the long run, you can't really do much with it until you seriously upgrade your ship.
The DOS version has the correct fuel consumption, but it doesn't have the Uhlek "glitch" (well, people say the MD "trick" is actually a glitch, but it seems pretty deliberate to me)
I still think it's a 5 star game because wow, the magnitude of everything for its time is insane. The mystery is also pretty cool to solve.
The DOS version has the correct fuel consumption, but it doesn't have the Uhlek "glitch" (well, people say the MD "trick" is actually a glitch, but it seems pretty deliberate to me)
I still think it's a 5 star game because wow, the magnitude of everything for its time is insane. The mystery is also pretty cool to solve.
The idea behind Starflight is good. If you think about it, it's amazing that such game could exist in 1986. Its mechanics are still being used by recent games such as Mass Effect and Starfield. In a way, you could get immersed into its universe and play the game for weeks, but the pay off is not as great as I wanted it to be. Being more of a sandbox game, it left me wanting more... of something else.