Starflight
Though most of the Sega Genesis titles my Uncle owned I was able to play pretty thoroughly, a few of them were somewhat over my head. One of those games, Starflight, really grabbed my attention, but also required more of it than I could give back.
The copy of Starflight I played was apparently an updated version of an older 1986 DOS title remade for 1991. Considering it's age, this game was way ahead of it's time. Starflight was the influence for many modern space exploration games and was specifically the main inspiration for the Mass Effect series from Bioware. In fact, the similarities between the two are incredible, and it wasn't until I was looking it up that it struck me how similar they were.
Starflight is a game where you build your crew from a variety of different galactic races. Races which range from sentient plants, to androids to lizard people. Your crew's composition is important since not all species get along together well and they each have different racial advantages and disadvantages. As you travel the stars in a ship which you outfit and upgrade yourself, you encounter a wide variety of worlds which you are free to explore. Using a fractal based procedural generator, this game from 1986 was capable of including 270 different star systems with a total of 800 planets. Eight-hundred! The game cartridge was only 8 megabytes.
As you roam these 270 star systems you can scan each planet, looking for habitable locations as well as valuable artifacts and minerals. The entire process feels very much like Mass Effect. You even have the option on some planets to land and deploy a ground vehicle to search for minerals and other goods which you can later sell to help outfit your ship and upgrade your skills. If I remember correctly, there's even some giant worm beasts on the planet surfaces, similar to what you would encounter in Mass Effect 1 during your ground missions aboard the Mako all-terrain vehicle..
I really loved the wide-open playability of Starflight back when I first played it. Right from being able to build your crew and assigning their roles. The game was somewhat technical and I never even scratched the surface on the whole story. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to get a hold of a copy of this soon to play it out and see just how much of Mass Effect is based on this game. I'm constantly remembering more and more elements from Starflight that are so familiar I can't begin to imagine what is buried within the actual story.
The only trouble with finding an old copy is that the original PC versions are very easy to find but the remade title for the Sega is much harder. Especially since 'Starflight remake' brings up something different altogether, a fan made update it seems. But the graphics are less than appealing.
Though most of the Sega Genesis titles my Uncle owned I was able to play pretty thoroughly, a few of them were somewhat over my head. One of those games, Starflight, really grabbed my attention, but also required more of it than I could give back. The copy of Starflight I played was apparently an updated version of an older 1986 DOS title remade for 1991. Considering it's age, this game was way ahead of it's time. Starflight was the influence for many modern space exploration games and was specifically the main inspiration for the Mass Effect series from Bioware. In fact, the similarities between the two are incredible, and it wasn't until I was looking it up that it struck me how similar they were.
Starflight is a game where you build your crew from a variety of different galactic races. Races which range from sentient plants, to androids to lizard people. Your crew's composition is important since not all species get along together well and they each have different racial advantages and disadvantages. As you travel the stars in a ship which you outfit and upgrade yourself, you encounter a wide variety of worlds which you are free to explore. Using a fractal based procedural generator, this game from 1986 was capable of including 270 different star systems with a total of 800 planets. Eight-hundred! The game cartridge was only 8 megabytes.
As you roam these 270 star systems you can scan each planet, looking for habitable locations as well as valuable artifacts and minerals. The entire process feels very much like Mass Effect. You even have the option on some planets to land and deploy a ground vehicle to search for minerals and other goods which you can later sell to help outfit your ship and upgrade your skills. If I remember correctly, there's even some giant worm beasts on the planet surfaces, similar to what you would encounter in Mass Effect 1 during your ground missions aboard the Mako all-terrain vehicle.. I really loved the wide-open playability of Starflight back when I first played it. Right from being able to build your crew and assigning their roles. The game was somewhat technical and I never even scratched the surface on the whole story. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to get a hold of a copy of this soon to play it out and see just how much of Mass Effect is based on this game. I'm constantly remembering more and more elements from Starflight that are so familiar I can't begin to imagine what is buried within the actual story.
The only trouble with finding an old copy is that the original PC versions are very easy to find but the remade title for the Sega is much harder. Especially since 'Starflight remake' brings up something different altogether, a fan made update it seems. But the graphics are less than appealing.
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