There used to be a PC game called “Starflight”. In it you piloted a spaceship around the universe, searching for new resources, collecting specimens of animals on distant planets, contacting new races, and, oh, yeah, trying to save the universe from some threat that I can’t recall just now. Does anyone else remember this game?
Is there anything out there now that is similar (and just as entertaining)?
–SSgtBaloo
It sounds like Star Control 2 to me. You sure it was named Starflight?
Assuming you are, in fact, talking about a game called Starflight, then there is good news: Star Control 2 has been ported to be playable in Windows. Check out the port here: The Ur-Quan Masters
It should be just what you’re looking for. Hell, even if it’s the same game you remember, you should give it a try again. Too fun for words.
Saving the universe from sentient crystals that are causing all the stars to flare.
And those sentient crystals… yeah, you are using them for fuel for your engines interestingly enough.
Ahh what a great game. The Veloxi, the Elowen…
And the second one was good too. I enjoyed those games for many many hours.
I don’t know if there are any games even remotely like those games.
First off, most games have plots that force either missions or plot segments.
Starflight was absolutely open in plot, you figured it out completely on your own
from the get go. Not many games like that.
Secondly, most games have a very limited universe to explore. In Starflight, there
were like 300 stars with 1 to 8 planets each. You could explore the entire surface
(in all of its EGA splendor). Plus the minerals to gather, the animals to gather and
killer weather.
I think the absolute openness of the game, with only a nearly 100 hour timer till
mission failure (and even then you could continue the game) is nearly impossible
to find in contemporary games.
Without levels, boards, missions and plot segments, it was a real open ended game.
The only game I have heard that might come close to that is Morrowind
I think. That is a medieval RPG though.
(Note: most of the above information about the game was to refresh SSgtBaloo’s
memory and give information to others about a great game.)
There was a Starflight 3 freeware project somewheres out there. I think they
tanked after several years of trying.
No, no… Starflight. Ancient game… 1987? and SF 2 in 1989.
Here are websites, that I can’t code to look pretty:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Maze/4979/starflight.html
Starflight 3 is still slowly working:
http://www.starflight3.net/index.htm
Seriously, check it out.
I also remember Starflight with fond memories. Best game I ever played, and the standard by which I judge all others. I didn’t play the sequal when it came out, and I don’t have a system slow enough to play it now. I’m putting together an old system that I can use to run it on, just haven’t gotten around to finishing it. Loved the little snippets of newspapers and such you’d find lying around. Although I never decoded the stupid binary message that sphere thing sent out, or get the Enterprise to talk to me 
Endurium, wasn’t it?
Starflight 2 was so very, very enjoyable those many years ago. I remember the frustration of dealing with the G’nunk—I’d meet them, get attacked, fight them off, meet them again, get attacked, fight them off, meet them a third time, they’d greet me, I’d respond in a friendly manner and get attacked.
It took a while to realize that in order to deal with them, I had to adopt an aggressive conversational posture. It was worth it, though, to get the G’nunk officer on board, except then I had to have a majority of my conversations be aggressive or she’d leave the ship.
And the first time I went through the temporal flux, and the comm officer said “We can’t raise Starfleet Command on any channel, there’s just static” and the nav officer said “None of these stars appear on any of our maps” … that may qualify for one of the scariest moments in gaming for me. Of course, I was all of 13 at the time.
Starflight and Starflight 2 are both usually at the top of my list when I go off on one of my “they just don’t make 'em like they used to” rants. There was an incredible amount of entertainment value in both games, in full EGA glory that came on a single 5 1/2 inch floppy. I have a 486 that I have kept alive just to play them and a handful of other games. (Anyone remember Sentinel Worlds? Another ancient classic.)
Besides, how can you dislike a game where the bad guys are called the “Spemin”? (They’re bad, they’re blobs and they’re back!)
Yup. What a great game! I believe it was the developers of that game who had a guideline that every dollar you pay for a game should buy you 1 hour of gameplay - Starflight ($50 in 1987 money!) paid for itself over and over again.
You can, er, find the game today if you know how, and you might be able to run it on a modern-ish PC with a utility called moslo, or something else to slow your processor way down. I had it up and running about 4 years ago on a now-dead machine.
I didn’t like the sequel much (or it wouldn’t run on my machine and I took it back to the store all those years ago.)
The makers of Star Control 2 have said they were heavily influenced by Starflight. It’s not the same game but they are both in my Top 10 games ever.
Me too. I remember Starflight very fondly. Great game. It’s hard to believe there isn’t anything like this currently available. I’ll have to check out the port to Windows for Star Control. Every summer I get a Starflight jones that just can’t be satisfied. I do wish I had been smart enough to keep my 486.
I thought that was the game I was remembering! The Spemin were my favorite… “We are the undisputed masters of all the galaxy! Bow down and worship us!”
…(one shot from the lightest possible shipboard weapon, jsut barely grazing the Spemin ship, later)…
“No! Please don’t kill me, I have a wife at home and little bloblets to support!”
It was actually possible to conquer a good deal of the Galaxy, in that game, by various means (you get a handful of Black Egg planetkiller bombs over the course of the game, which you could use strategically, and you could convince the race of robots that you’re their makers and masters returned, and convince the insect people to join up with you, and so on).
And did anyone else remeber finding Earth?
Star control … you can get Urquan masters open source for Linux… I think its the same game more or less. Its a pretty good port.
Oh Earth, the lost homeworld. It was fun finding the newspapers with stories such as the one about the last remaining animal which died at the zoo. I think it was a chipmunk but can’t remember its name. I remember reading about the development of the universe in the game. After the first version was running, they visited Earth and it had a methane atmosphere. “Doh!”, they had to run through the planets and tweak them.
The planet in the lower right quadrant was chock full of goodies. After I had played the game awhile that became my first destination to get loads of cash.
www.the-underdogs.org has the game for free. When I am mising my old games, Starflight is always at the top of the list.
Give me Crusade in Europe, Starflight and Battlehawks 1942 and I’d end up on a milk carton because I would not leave the room for months.
Star Control 2, circa 1992, sounds exactly like it:
Same with Star Control 2.
Same with Star Control 2, except it has 400+ stars with 1-9 planets each. And it was 1992, so its splendor is VGA. (oooooo, aaaaahh) But yeah, mine minerals, capture life forms, look out for weather; same deal.
Agreed. Thankfully, that era produced (apparently) 2 of these great games. Instead of 100 hours, you get a year of in-game time.
Now you have heard of two. Star Control fits every description of Starflight. Go to the link in the second post of this thread and download it. You’ll love it to death.
Couple final points about Star Control 2:
And one hint: Lots of good minerals can be found in the Vulpeculae system. Coordinates (roughly) 370:250.
Okay, so I’m totally jazzed to find Starflight following The Long Road’s link. It appears to have both games. I’m going to download and try em out. One question: Should I play Starflight and then Starflight 2? Or should I just play Starflight 2?
If it were Star Control, I would say just play the second one. (Because that’s the only one you can, and because it was so much better than the first that it seemed like a different game series. Except for the melee, of course.)
We played Starflight on the Genesis. GREAT game.
I really liked the instruction booklet, it came wtih a ‘captain’s log’ which helps you find out what to do in the game.
[spoiler]Your ship is caught in a time loop. In a previous time, the Ultek attacked your ship and as they were about to board, the Captain jumps in an escape pod with the last black egg and makes the ship self-destruct. The ship somehow gets blasted into the past, which triggers the events that lead up to that moment. However, the whole point is to FIND the Ultek brain world to keep the smarmy bastards from ruining your plans
[/spoiler]
That game was really fun, the Black Eggs were cool. You could threaten the Spemin into giving up the location of their homeworld and use a black egg to blow it up. Oh, and you could also beg for help from the Elowan if you were marooned, and so long as you didnt have any of those lizard people on board, they’d give you some endurium.
In some of the ruins of Old Earth they attribute part of the downfall of their society to this thing called ‘Television’ 
The Genesis version of the game was identical to the PC version gameplay-wise but the graphics were MUCH better. Exploring planets and stuff was lots of fun, even if you don’t play the game to advance the plot and merely just to explore, mine, and meet other races the game is a lot of fun
I heard the sequel had something like 20-odd different races. Talk about a handful!
I would play them in order. There isn’t that much of a difference in gameplay and while 2 has “better” graphics they are both pretty primitive by today’s standard.
There isn’t any real reason to play them in order except that one race, the Spemin, go from being very aggressive wimps in the first game (as someone pointed out above) to actually being dangerous in the second and part of your mission is to find out why, so continuity is a bit better that way. Also, your fuel source is different in the second game and you need to play the first game to find out why.
I’ll have to check out Star Control to see if it is really that similar.
There’s also Protostar, which was supposed to be Starflight 3 but the publisher couldn’t get the rights to the name.
I never played the original, because I never found a copy, but I did play and enjoy StarFlight 2 – even putting it back on a few years later to replay. It’s been a long time, but I vaguely recall that what I liked about it was the trading aspect – collecting different things, getting them to the right buyers (for the resources? I can’t remember) – in addition to the building up the ship and finding clues to advance the game. I don’t think any other game was quite like that.
(editing mine)
I appreciate your introducing me to Star Control 2. However, it is a tad late.
I was mainly saying that games today do not have the same loving quality
that we both enjoy in our respective games. I think we both can agree that it
would be wonderful to find and enjoy a similar game today with all the graphics
and wonderful add-ons that could be achieved today.
As much as I like certain genres of games…
Do we really need 500 of the same racing games, or jumping games, or fighting
games, or sports games, etc., etc…
sigh
You know what I mean.
Stupid cardboard disk with the launch codes. Stupid interstellar police confiscating my ship. Old School players of the game will remember what I’m talking about.
Enjoy,
Steven