Starblade

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game's story takes place in the year 3001 AD, somewhere in the vast Orion Galaxy. You are the Captain of Starblade, a very powerful spaceship and your main goal is to fight off an alien breed called Cephalhydras. After the extinction of the human race, the Cephalhydras started to conduct a variety of experiments in order to create an army of super-warriors. You, as the Captain of Starblade, must travel through space covering distances of millions of light-years and visiting different planets to find the "Mother" creature called "Queen Genolun" and destroy it. Some of the planets are quite friendly, with merchant spots to visit and chat while some other planets are protected by hostile -and heavily armed- guards or feature a very toxic atmosphere for a human to survive. Occasionally you'll have to check on Starblade's main functions (energy status, weapon functions, electronic readings etc) so as to keep her in good condition and accomplish all of your missions with success. Along the way you will exchange various metal parts, gadgets and weapons through markets you'll discover across the stars, but first of all your behavior must be friendly. Your enemies vary from other spacecrafts or giants carrying big weapons to dangerous atmospheric conditions. The gameplay is quite solid and the difficulty level is increasing in a gradual manner. Starblade has some differences in terms of gameplay compared to the other games developed by the French Silmarils since it actually feels more like an adventure game with action elements than a pure action game (like Targhan or Colorado for instance). For my taste, Starblade is among the most solid games ever appeared on the 16bit home computers.

GRAPHICS / SOUND:
The PC version supports VGA and CGA graphics adapters, using the classic 320x200 analysis, but with up to 16 colors on screen for the VGA version, and up to 4 colors for the CGA version. The VGA version is identical in terms of colors with the ST version (up to 16). Note that, the CGA uses the high density hardware palette 0 (light green/red/brown + black) for the gameplay screens and hardware palette 1 (light cyan/magenta/white + black) for the loading screens. As on the Amiga and ST versions, each planet has its own environment and details (ice, volcanoes etc) and is inhabited by different alien life forms. Sprites are nicely animated, though the overall action is a bit slow, as with all similar games from Silmarils.
The sound supports AdLib and Sounblaster compatible sound hardware, featuring some nice sampled effects that add an eerie touch to the atmosphere, though the nicely-done introductory tune found on the Amiga and ST is missed here.