Sit down, take deep breaths, that’s it, in, out, in, out. What? That little icon is my ship? Where’s my cockpit, where’s the glowing nebula clouds, where’s the giant, looming planets and 32 bit textured 3D space ships? I have to use my what, imagination? I have to actually read text? You fly with cursor keys? It does not compute, it does not compute! If you are young enough to still have your own teeth and believe in the innate goodness of Man your first reaction to EVN is going to be “WTF?” or some other articulate variant thereof. Whatever, at last PC owners can get a glimpse, a shining reflection of what really was the golden dawn of computer gaming. About time, what kept you, allergic to money or something? For PC gamers in the know this was a product that evoked the same envy that other computer owners felt for the BBC Micro when it was the sole venue for Elite.Īnd now, finally, belatedly, it has been ported to the PC in the form of the third in the series, Escape Velocity Nova. With your ship as alter-ego and personal stats and skills to develop, the Space Opera RPG had a few brief shining years before being swept away in the flood of technical advances that crowned graphics king and large development teams kingmaker.įor Mac users though, isolated in their own world and largely ignored by the new commercial realities of the gaming world the Space Opera RPG continued to thrive, most spectacularly in the Escape Velocity series from Ambrosia Software. More ships, more upgrades, more depth, more adventure. The graphics were simple, a galaxy of backdrops over which roamed the colourful sprites and icons depicting ships.īut the depth! Freed from the technical limitations of 3-D graphics engines, whole universes were brought to life and gripping story-lines depicted by swathes of well-written text. This was the space opera, less of a sim more of a role-playing adventure as exemplified by such classics as Sun Dog, Space Rogue and of course, Star Flight. We were all Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, behind the stick of a thousand ships, blasting our way through swathes of bad guys and ill-intentioned alien scum.įor budding Han Solo types there was though another tradition, one that perhaps did not get as much exposure in the United Kingdom at least, stuck as we were with tapes as the storage medium, even on the mighty Commodore 64. And Elite begat Wing Commander, X-Wing, Frontier, Privateer and a host of other simulation variants. A time when game-play was king and graphics the humble hand maiden.Īnd the masses played Elite and saw it was good. Of course this putative Age is usually when your imagination was first captured by whatever your first piece of hardware was.įor me that was the eighties, a time that truly was the dawn of commercial computer gaming, when machines whose power would have a Casio digital watch beeping derision could conjure a whole universe of imagination from a few coloured sprites or wire-frame geometric shapes because that was all they could handle. The basic model is Starbridge #133.ģ Medium Blasters, 2 Light Blasters, 2 Radar Missile Launchers (20 ammo)Ģ 100mm Fixed Railguns, 3 Radar Missile Launchers (24 ammo), 4 Light Blasters, 2 Quad Light Blaster TurretsĢ 200mm Fixed Railguns, 2 Radar Missile Launchers (40 ammo), 2 Light Blasters, 2 Medium Blasters, 1 Quad Light Blaster Turretġ Civilian IR Jammer, 1 Civilian Radar JammerĬivilian Ships: Cargo Drone (v) (i) 2k as escort only, Shuttle (v) (i) 10k, Heavy Shuttle (v) (i) 17.Escape Velocity Nova: A Return to the Golden AgeĮverything has a Golden Age, a time to look back on with misty eyes, when everything was, well, just better and computer gaming is no exception. Green/red numbers compare the variant's stat to the stats of the basic model.
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