Starglider

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Your mission is to glide across the surface an imaginary planet called Novenia, destroying as many aliens and spacecrafts as possible. Each alien form has different value ranging from 50 points for a small drone, to 7.500 points for a Starglider. Each time you gain 10.000 points you are transferred to a new and more complicated level. You control AGAV (Airborne Ground Attack Vehicle) from a first person perspective. The panel allows monitoring critical particulars of your vehicle (such as the scanner, the energy level, the shield meter, the laser cells status, the altitude and the velocity indicator). The main difficulty encountered is refueling energy since this can be done by gliding between two energy towers, at a very low altitude. Repair Silos (represented by rotating wedge-like structures) are also available in order to restock your shields and guns. Your firepower is a set of laser guns and a limited number of missiles. Once you fire a missile your mouse controls this very missile(!), and you must therefore focus on pin-pointing the adversary. Targets vary from Stargliders to ground Walkers (taken from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi!) and Strompers.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics are good and the Amiga version shares the same quality with the Atari ST. The AGAV cockpit is greatly designed and has several animated touches one the indicators, whilst the enemies and the surrounding objects are made of 3D vectors that move fast on screen. Note that its successor Starglider 2 has the same engine but all its 3D polygons are filled in with colors. It is also impressive for the time, the effects of the enemies that are smashed into several pieces when shot. The game runs fast on the Amiga and without any frame-rate issues when too many polygons occupy the screen
The game's sound is equally good, offering a short, sampled, intro tune that sings the name of the game and the name of the publisher (Rainbird). In-game, there are some nice, sampled sound effects that cover the laser/missile firing and every explosion.