Gamespot: Return of the Space Sim - Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous

Spacewar!

My first space-game was a coin-op called Spacewar! with vector graphics and fairly simple gameplay. I think I first saw it in the arcade around '79.

It was two player, so there were two ships on each side of the screen with a star (or black hole, or no star... you had options before you started the designate gravity, etc.), and you flew around and shot up the other ship. It was neat because it took a few hits to destroy the ship, and when a shot landed, bits of the simple vector graphic ship would break off and disintegrate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!
 
My younger brother got a Vic20. I had to buy my C64, but after he saw how much fun it was, my parents bought him the Vic20.

I remember playing Sword of Fargoal.

But my favorite C64 RPG/adventure game was Temple of Apshai.

Great game. I found the "action" version "Gateway to Apshai" first, so got it completely backwards, even though it was made as a prequel to the Temple... So it was "sort of" in the right order after all. Phew... !

I wonder if room descriptions you had to read from a manual, would appeal to the kids today. The best graphics will always be in your head though. More creative control! :D
 
Great game. I found the "action" version "Gateway to Apshai" first, so got it completely backwards, even though it was made as a prequel to the Temple... So it was "sort of" in the right order after all. Phew... !

I wonder if room descriptions you had to read from a manual, would appeal to the kids today. The best graphics will always be in your head though. More creative control! :D

My son dislikes reading and his imagination only goes so far as pretending everything's a gun. My daughter, he, and I were at dinner one night and he picked up a chicken nugget and asked us what he thought it looked like. I thought for sure she was going to reach across the table and slap him!

On the other hand, my daughter has a great imagination. She's not much into reading, but she loves to write stories.

I enjoyed Gateway to Apshai too, but not as much as Temple. I even programmed my own D&D game where you could create a party of 6 from fighter, thief, wizard and priest (old 1st edition rules) and wander "Cire's Dungeon". (Cire = Eric spelled backwards!) I used an array of 10x10x10 to keep info on the dungeon. It was 10 rooms wide, 10 long, and 10 levels deep. I playtested it some, but the real test was to see if people liked it. I only let my Dad play it though, and he really got into it. Graphed out the dungeon levels, found all the secrets, etc. All programmed in BASIC! LOL
 
Oh, instant heart ache when I seen X-Wing. I really wish someone would do to those games what they've done with FFE3D-AJ. I've been playing that the last week now, with breaks of ED in between :D

Why no real love for X-Wing, guys? Did you not play it when it came out? I played the crap out of it + all the expansions, and then had a field day when TIE Fighter came out.

played all of them from X-Wing, Tie Fighter, XvT to X-Wing Alliance. All great games, found the mission design better than Wing Commander series. I bet EA is already making a sequel jumping on the space sim bandwagon
 
For all those who want to relive playing X-Wing, Tie-Fighter and XvT, on windows 7/8 without dosbox and in glorious HD, then this is the place for you

http://www.darksaber.xwaupgrade.com/ for the game dependency updates

http://www.maxgames.it/xwc/ for the mods themselves

You will need a copy of X-Wing Alliance. And you will need to follow a moderately complex set of instructions to get it all set up.

Read all information carefully.

I've got it all working, it was a pain to get right, and there are some 'buggy' bits in the missions, but generally speaking, it's fine.
 
Last edited:
I see they found those Atari cartridges buried in the desert, they buried those things for a reason. Some things should be left to rest in peace.

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3413459.shtml

On a related note, we moved house recently and spent a lot of time dumping stuff at the local recycling centre. One time we went past the 'small electrical items' skip and somebody had chucked out an Atari 2600 games console in all it's 1970s woodgrain retro-gorgeousness, complete with joysticks. I was seriously considering climbing down into the skip to retrieve it, but was talked out of it my clearly more sensible other half.

That would have been perfect for playing E.T.

B
 
Great to see Elite and SC coming back, did enjoy both the original games (if you count Wing Commander as the original for SC). Only joined beta for Elite though, no interest in what looks like a p2w model for SC, and whilst the PAX demo looked pretty, the gameplay does not appeal to me in the way Elite's does.....

Probably a Roll vs Yaw thing !!!

G
 
The SC devs. have plenty of time to tweak their flight model. Right now it doesn't appeal to me at all. The PAX East livestream illustrated to me that they seem to be appealing to a more casual crowd. There is nothing wrong with that but it's just not what I am looking for in a space sim.
 
The SC devs. have plenty of time to tweak their flight model. Right now it doesn't appeal to me at all. The PAX East livestream illustrated to me that they seem to be appealing to a more casual crowd. There is nothing wrong with that but it's just not what I am looking for in a space sim.

If you look at all the Chris Roberts' space games over the years, you can see some common threads running through the gameplay.
All weapons tend to be projectile based (lasers/photon cannon/particle cannon/tachyon cannon are shot as projectiles). SC also has the equivalent of multi-cannons.
Ships tend to be bristling with gimbaled armaments - so lots and lots of pew pew!
Action is usually very fast and furious, and flight models are somewhat simplified to make this more accessible to more gamers - not just us sim nuts :D.

Also, SC is attempting to be 'controller agnostic', as is E : D. This is very ambitious in my humble opinion, as there are huge differences in response and capabilities of various control methods - SC (I think) has a more simplified flight model to help make this achievable. I am awaiting the release of "Arena Commander" before I can know for sure. Once I've actually played it, I will be able to see for myself.

Despite my opinion on 'controller agnostic', I must say that the guys at FD have done an excellent job making the mouse control useable in Elite: Dangerous - certainly not my preferred controller (I use X52), but for me, it is perfectly acceptable, and I am sure with practice I could get good enough to be effective in combat using it.
 
Back
Top Bottom