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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jul 06, 2017 9:01 pm

Wow - just wow!

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jul 09, 2017 7:21 pm

I finally sat down today and read the entire Starflight manual cover to cover. I have to say - and this is not a unique thought by any means - but HOLY CRAP manuals used to be finely crafted works of art. I don't mean the thing is pretty, but it's 1/2 novella, 1/2 sci-fi D&D-like manual. It's just amazing.

It's easy to understand when you place this manual next to the game, which the developers developed innovative fractal tech to build the star system and its planets, how this game took years to create. It's just jaw dropping how finely balanced it all is. And if someone played this without the manual backdrop, well what a god damned shame that would have been.

I realize now that I kind of screwed up my original crew and will go fix that tonight. Crew creation (and character development) is essentially non-existent in this game. It's more about the back story and making sure you've got the right race(s) on board to deal with this and that, I think. Frankly I could probably go all-human and train them up and be just fine, but that would feel a bit boring. I'll pepper 1-2 alien races in there and leave the rest as backups.

I do sort of dread my near future: it looks like I'll need to do days of mindless mining missions to earn gobs of money to shore up my spaceship. It's pretty evident after reading through all of this that if I get impatient and just go for it, I'm going to die and will have wasted my time.

I'm so used to just jumping into games and winging it. But SSI and EA of old have brought me "back down to Earth" over the past year and trained me to take my time and read through these amazing documents. Starflight's UI is extremely intuitive on the Amiga and easy to use (albeit it feels a touch slow on my currently stripped down 7Mhz, but it's not a bad thing). And I've gotten around and done quite a bit as it is. But I sensed I was only scratching the surface of this game and, now, realize I was right. This game is massive and deep. I can't believe it fit all on one disk!

Really impressed so far. This might be one of the most impressive games I've played in some time, especially when I take its age, sophistication and organic vastness into consideration.

It's probably going to take me most of the summer to finish this thing - if I even do finish this thing. We'll see how it goes.
manual-1.jpg
Front cover of the Starflight manual by Electronic Arts.

manual-2.jpg
The narrative passages in the Starflight manual are extremely enjoyable to read and really provide a lot of backstory and depth to the overall experience.

manual-3.jpg
This is not a paper insert. This manual is must-read, and worth the time spent.


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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:24 pm

Umm... Have you seen the Sim Ant manual?! - Take a look at those page numbers... This is why the "Big Box" games became a thing. That manual literally just fits into the box. It was the simulations that started throwing in those huge manuals, and I think everyone else just started to throw them into big boxes as well just to make it look like they were offering something special.

my god... Was not expecting to find that high score page from lil Shot... Please excuse the many spelling errors...

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:48 pm

Ha! Yeah, I know. There were several games that had insanely thick manuals. Civilization comes to mind. But those were thick because the mechanics were so danged deep. They were practically dictionaries. What I like about this littler one is the time spent on the story. Hell, there's even a really strange passage in it that sounds like they were trying to be a bit of a space bible, but took it almost to a Monty Python level of satire.
Chapter 1: The Years of Darkness (and Chaos) Verses 1-6

In the beginning there was darkness...or was there light...no, there was darkness. Anyway then man came on the scene and verily did he create a great spacefaring empire and unto him, ... you know, I'm almost positive there was darkness in the beginning.


It's amazing.

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:15 pm

Still working on this beast... Another teaser... Some good and bad cut scenes.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:49 pm

Sweeeeeeet!

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Aug 08, 2017 11:57 am

After putting Starflight to bed for a while (it's the kind of game you can pick up at any time and go exploring, so it'll never "be done" entirely), I'm in search of some new games to play and review.

Right now on my immediate radar:
  • Silent Service
  • Star Control
  • The Perfect General
  • Castles (total sleeper, made by some of the folks who went on to make Blizzard, I think)
  • Empire: Wargame of the Century
There's definitely a heavy emphasis on war there I am now realizing.

So, while I try to land on one or two of those, I may jump into something a bit less heavy duty first. Maybe Rainbow Islands. It might surprise some to know that, at least where I grew up in North America, neither Bubble Bobble nor Rainbow Islands were well known at all. I look forward into peeking into that world a bit.

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:46 pm

intric8 wrote:So, while I try to land on one or two of those, I may jump into something a bit less heavy duty first. Maybe Rainbow Islands. It might surprise some to know that, at least where I grew up in North America, neither Bubble Bobble nor Rainbow Islands were well known at all. I look forward into peeking into that world a bit.
Yes!! Bubble Bobble is one of my absolute favorite games ever! I played the ever loving crap out of the game on both NES and DOS as a kid!
I'd love to get physical copies of both the DOS and Amiga versions into my collection; I no longer own my old DOS disks, and Bubble Bobble is one of those games I simply have to have on my Amiga! :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:50 pm

...and Bubble Bobble is one of those games I simply have to have on my Amiga! :)
It can be extremely expensive to source an original Bubble Bobble for Amiga thanks to its worldwide popularity.

It looks gorgeous on Amiga and plays very well.

If you got a boxed copy - dude, you'd probably want to frame the box in a shadow box. I would!

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:55 am

I've been playing a lot of Paradroid 90 lately. It took me ages to figure out what the heck is even going on in this game. If you don't have the manual (which I didn't) it is not an intuitive pick-up-and-play game by any stretch.

But once you do figure it out, it's pretty compelling. It took me some shout outs to my BBS friends to get the detailed low-down on some of the intricacies the manual doesn't even touch on, nor have I found anywhere online.

More to come on this soon.





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