SPACE "RPG" GAMES 80-84

 🚀 1980

01🧭Starquest: Rescue at Rigel

🕹In Rescue at Rigel, you take the part of Sudden Smith, a human adventurer teleported down by transporter beam inside a six-floor, sixty-room complex inhabited by an alien race, the Tollah. 

🕹Scattered throughout the base, which has been hollowed out of an asteroid orbiting Rigel, ten humans are held captive, one in each of ten different rooms. 

🕹While you can adjust the difficulty of the task, the object in all cases is the same: to search the complex, find and release as many of the prisoners as possible (by activating the transporter beam, which will teleport them back up to the ship), and get out alive-in an hour or less.

🕹If the Tollah base can be likened to an iceberg, you begin the game at the tip: inside the top room, the only one that connects the complex with the surface of the asteroid. From this vestibule there are only two usable exits. 

🌟The larger obviously leads to a gravshaft; 

🌟the smaller looks like an ordinary doorway-but there are no other rooms on the floor. 

🌟Whichever way you choose to begin your quest, there will be no turning back once you walk through the door.

02🧭Starquest: Star Warrior

🕹It's one warrior against an empire, but you are a Fury, a paladin fighting for freedom, and you have nuclear missiles. 

🕹Your mission is the liberation of Fornax, a peaceful planet firmly under the boot of the Interstellar Union of Civilized Peoples. 

🕹The Union has tanks, skimmers, forts, and countless troops. 

🕹You have a suit of force-shielded, powered armor which jumps, flies, self-repairs, and will even tend to your wounds. Skulk in the woods and snipe, or move fast and blast away. Either way, stay alive, complete your mission, and return to the recovery point.

🕹The game screen looks down on one of sixty-three square kilometers, resolved to twenty meters, showing terrain, your position, your enemies, and frequent blaster fire. 

🕹Terrain is key to survival, as sooner or later you'll need to go to ground and heal up. However, it can hinder your reconnaissance as much as your enemies', and sometimes you'll find yourself under fire from an unseen source. 

🕹Sound matters, too: your powergun is nearly silent, but the blaster alerts enemies as effectively as it destroys them.

🕹Play is turn-based, but fast. The opportunity to press the right key flits by quickly, bringing new bursts of enemy gunfire around you. 

 

🕹Varying movement options, weapons, and enemies make tactics the determining factor in your success. 

🕹Two scenarios fit into the story: a diversionary expedition to blast everything in sight (except the civvies, so check your targets!), and a search-and-destroy mission to start the revolution. 

🕹Five difficulty levels and varying equipment (customizable in the disk version) lend additional variety.

🚀 1981

01🧭Empire I: World Builders

🕹The gateway to the New York Rocket Field is your first step of a space voyage in which you may choose one of three career paths to follow, here at the dawn of the interstellar Empire.

🌟Homesteaders must find a hospital planet on which to farm, raise a family and conquer the environment. 

🌟Miners must find a high-density planet in a search for material wealth. 

🌟Missionaries seek out populated planets to preach to the masses. 

🕹Each path into the space frontier has its dangers, and a misstep may have bloody consequences.

🚀1982

01🧭Merchant of Venus

🕹Twenty years after the extremists have unleashed their weapon of mass destruction the life on Venus is returning to normal state. The Galactic Trading Corporation is investing millions to restore its economy.

🕹Merchant of Venus is a sci-fi space trading game. The player starts with 500,000 cash on hand (awarded by GTC) to buy a freighter and start own business. 

🕹Trading involves navigating between spaceports to exploit price variations, with manual landings (Lunar Lander style). 

🕹Buy or sell ten commodities (robots, raw materials, obligatory spice, etc.) and keep the ship repaired and well-fueled.

02🧭Space 2

🕹This expansion of Edu-Ware's Space role-playing game (Space) includes two new scenarios: 

🌟Shaman, in which your character launches a career on an untamed planet as a religious practitioner trying to amass followers; 

🌟and Psychodelia, in which you can enhance your characters' attributes through mind-alerting drugs at the risk of physical danger.

03🧭Empire 2: Interestellar Sharks

🕹Set at the height of the galactic Imperial civilization, 1200 years after the setting of World Builders, the player chooses one of three classes (pilot, businessman, or diplomat) and attempts to accumulate enough wealth to outfit a private spacecraft in order to travel to Triskelion—the capital of the Empire—and confront the Empress.

 

🚀1983

01🧭Planetfall 

🕹Planetfall is sci-fi business trading game. 

🕹The players (game hasn't single player mode) command merchant Starfleet - they can travel between the different planetary systems (with changing business conditions), buy and sell various resources (6 - Uranium, Iron Ore, Machinery, Medical supplies, Computers and Gems), make money and collect them in banks. 

 

🕹A game can have a maximum of 15 star-systems.

02🧭Galactic Adventures

🕹Galactic Adventures is a sequel to Galactic Gladiators. 

🕹This game blends role-playing and strategy elements in a science fiction setting. 

🕹Players create characters from among seven races, explore a series of planets, interact with friendly and hostile aliens, shuttle personnel and cargo between worlds, take quests from guilds, pilot ships in space combat, and fight long, complex tactical battles. 

🕹Successful adventures reward the player with money, equipment, experience, and increases in a wide variety of skills. 

🕹The nominal goal of the game is to amass enough experience for "Independent Adventurer" status, but it encourages personal goal-setting, scenario-building, and open-ended gameplay.

🚀 1984

01🧭SunDog

🕹You just inherited a one-man star freighter - the SunDog - from an uncle who died under mysterious circumstances.

🕹You also inherited the contract he signed to aid in the building of a colony for a religious group. 

🕹You have three tasks to perform: find the location of the colony; find, buy, and deliver goods needed for its construction; and locate the cryogenically-frozen colonists needed to populate the colony.

02🧭Free Trader

🕹Aye, she's a beautiful ship. Sublight Ion Drives, Gamma-Ray Lasers, Rifter Pods that can rip space itself -- not to mention any hostiles -- and a Hyper Drive that'll zap you and 50,000 pounds of cargo from one corner of your starmap to the other in a blink of an eye. And now she's yours. The trouble is that you're left all but broke. 

🕹The galaxy is out there waiting -- deals to made, star systems to explore -- and you have an empty hold and 500 Megabucks. It's enough to buy a few hyper cells and some penny-ante cargo like monopoles or wine, but the return on that stuff won't pay for the ion fuel to dock, not to mention patch all the holes the Thoft raiders will put in your shield between ports-of-call. That is, unless you can figure profit margins and targeting corrections like a pro. That's the galaxy out there; it ain't for the faint-of-heart.

 

🕹Avalon Hill's Free Trader is a no-safety-net, you-against-the-galaxy space merchant game. 

🕹The profit margins are tiny, the market fluctuates mercilessly, the Thoft spider attack cruisers are deadly accurate, and everything costs Megabucks. 

🕹The Atari version has an arcade side, combat requiring a quick eye and a light touch, while on the Apple careful estimation -- laser range, angle, and impact -- wins the day. 

🌟Uniquely, you do not aim your lasers or Rifters, but correct them according to your bridge computer's report of the previous shot. 

🌟The target is invisible and your correction must be the inverse of the report, giving the rapid-fire combat on the Atari a brain-churning verisimilitude.

🕹Regardless of platform, though, combat is merely another liability for your bottom line. 

🕹Profit is the measure of survival: keep your shields intact and you'll have ample time to blast the occasional Thoft cruiser. 

🕹Days fly by, however, like minutes on the clock, meaning that the hefty margin you scouted can be negative when you finally arrive with the cargo. 

🕹The fourteen planet types -- discernible when you arrive in a star system -- each have fixed imports and exports among thirty-five different trade goods (which include the various fuel cells for your ship). 

🕹The planets and the starmap are fixed from game to game, allowing you necessarily to hone your strategy.

🕹The game screen sequence varies by platform, but principally consists of a ship status screen, cargo manifest, a map of your local star system, a hyperspace map leading to sixty-three other star systems, a planetary market screen when you're landed, and a first-person-view out your main portal whenever the Thoft come to visit. A few simple sounds like your ion drives in subspace, the tick of days turning over, and the relentless zap of Thoft lasers, serve to heighten the tension by reminding you of the Megabucks draining away.

🕹Saved games? This is the galaxy, baby; it ain't for the faint-of-heart.

03🧭Elite 

🕹Elite is a free-form space trading and combat simulation, commonly considered the progenitor of this sub-genre. 

🕹The player initially controls a character referred to as "Commander Jameson", starting at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship called Cobra Mark III. 

🕹Most of the game consists of traveling to various star systems, trading with their inhabitants, gaining money and reputation. 

🕹Money can also be gained by other means besides trading; these include undertaking military missions, bounty hunting, asteroid mining, and even piracy. 

🕹As the player character earns money, he becomes able to upgrade his ships with enhancements such as better weapons, shields, increased cargo capacity, an automated docking system, etc.

🕹The game utilizes pseudo-3D wire-frame graphics; its world is viewed from a first-person perspective. It has no overarching story, though a race known as Thargoids play the role of antagonists: their ships will often attack the player-controlled ship, forcing the player to engage in space combat. 

🕹Combat is action-oriented, taking place in the same environment as the exploration. The player must use various weapons the ship is equipped with, as well as manoeuvre the ship, trying to dodge enemy attacks. 

🕹The player can also choose to attack neutral ships; doing so will decrease the protagonist's reputation, eventually attracting the attention of the galactic police.

🕹Elite is notable for its expansive game world, consisting of eight galaxies and 256 planets. The player is free to travel to any of these planets, provided his ship has enough fuel for the trip (the ship's fuel capacity is limited for a journey to the distance of seven light-years).

04🧭Star Trader

🕹In a distant galaxy is a star system containing eight planets in which profits could be made trading between each planet until space pirates came along and robbed the traders on their trade routes. 

🕹The traders could fight and die or get taxed by the pirates for a 1/4 of the value of the cargo and now all the traders have given up or left the star system. 

🕹You are the only trader left and you now have the opportunity to trade between all eight planets being careful to avoid any pirates on the way.

🕹You start in a starport on Planet 0 and you can see a small graphic representation of where you are and many options for how you want to spend your day like go to various traders who include wine merchants, jewellers and a sawmill.

🌟Here you can buy goods to sell on other planets or you can go to other shops to buy weapons (and power packs for the weapons) for your ship, buy food or go to a bar for quick pint. 

🌟All the shops and traders are open at specific times so if you are waiting you can stay at a hotel to rest and minimise the risk of being mugged. 

🌟You must eat and drink at regular intervals and also buy enough food for any journeys in your ship in space.

🕹Once you have brought, traded and looked after yourself you can now fly to another planet.  

🕹The view changes inside your ship with a 1st person perspective looking outside the cockpit. You can move the ship in various directions but the ship will keep it's course for the chosen planet.   

 

 

🕹Occasionally on a flight to a planet you will encounter space pirates who will demand a large amount of credits and you can decide to pay them or fight. 

🌟If you have no weapons for the ship or power packs then you have to pay. 

🌟If you can fight then you see the pirates outside your cockpit and you attempt to blast them all. 

🌟You have various shields on the ship and each can be hit three times before your ship is destroyed and game over.

🕹If you make it safely to the planet you have to deal with customs.

🌟You can declare your goods and pay a fee, lie and hope not to get caught or bribe the customs official. 

🌟You can now explore the starport trading and buying goods, looking after yourself and repairing your ship if needed. 

🌟If your ship does have damage you need to repair it or you can't take-off.

🕹The Commodore 64 version allows 8 players to play and each player has a couple of turns before the next player has a go.