Let the adventures commence!

Recently, for no readily apparent reason (other than random chance and a good healthy dose of nostalgia), I set Starflight up to run on my laptop. The result has been a modern relapse into the old addictive space exploration game I loved as a teenager. Starflight is just as apt at taking over my life now as it ever was.

I've been playing slightly less than a week at this point and, with the help of Starflt.com's helpful tips, a memory for previous plays, and a couple of late nights, I'm close to the end of the story. But I won't spoil it for you. I'll be posting about the game in general until I (hopefully) beat it and start again. Then will come the specific details.

I was surprised to see I'm not the only person playing Starflight (and actually telling the Internet about it)! A fellow called Anthony Salter has been posting video blogs of his Starflight experience on his blog, GameDevDad. They're entertaining and fun, and while I keep calling backseat driver comments at my computer while I'm watching them ("Dude, there's nothing else on Earth! You got all the important stuff! It's okay!"), I can't wait for the next one.

Starflight was released in 1986 by Electronic Arts. It came in a pressboard folder that contained the two 5.25" floppy disks, a manual, and a code wheel that was necessary to play the game for any length of time. Old-school copy protection. It was better than having to look up a word in the manual, as some other games of the time required, every time you wanted to leave Stardock. Starflight, I feel, was ahead of its time in science fiction games of its type. Everything from the music and sound to the thought and detail put into the alien races in the game made it irresistable. I never beat the game in part because I always spent so much time exploring the galaxy and discovering creatures and places and talking to the alien races! "I think I've visited almost all the systems in the game by now! Well, except for the Uhlek systems. They're scary. "What do you mean Arth has been consumed by the flares? I don't have time for that: I have to save all these poor innocent creatures that are going to be consumed by the -- oh, oops. Heheh, sorry about that."

So look for more posts about my Starflight Adventures coming soon!