Ludography
Hard Nova cover

1990 · Adventure · Role-playing

Hard Nova

Hard Nova is a sci-fi role-playing game with space exploration, spaceship customization and combat, and trading elements, somewhat similar in concept to Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. There is no character creation in the game: in the beginning the player selects between the female mercenary Nova and the male mercenary Stark. They have slightly different attributes and may gain access to different dialogue lines as the game advances. Most other crew members have to be recruited from within the game world.

Released
1990
Platforms
AmigaAtari ST/STEMS-DOS
Genres
AdventureRole-playingScienceStrategy
Developers
—
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
United States

About

Hard Nova is a role-playing video game developed by Malibu Interactive and published by Electronic Arts in 1990 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. It is a follow-up to Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic from 1988.

›Story

A spaceship carrying a mercenary with the crew was hit by a meteor. Its hull was breached, and only the mercenary and the navigator A’kri Janr managed to escape. Gerard Kendall, the head of Starkiller Mercenary Group, gave the survivors a new ship. Now they have to find a new crew in order to complete their jobs.

It's high time for mercenary work, as various groups are fighting for supremacy in the Four Systems. Meanwhile, the sun of a remote planet is dying, and only a miracle can save an entire race from extinction...

Keywords

  • cyberpunk

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Hard Nova has a character creation element that allows players to choose their gender, and, unlike Sentinel Worlds I, lead a group of mercenaries.

Reception

The game received 5 out of 5 stars in Dragon. Scorpia of Computer Gaming World opined in 1991 that Hard Nova greatly improved on Sentinel Worlds, and concluded that it "is a pretty decent game, with some interesting touches and a good storyline. While not a long-term epic, it should keep you occupied for awhile". Ken St.

Andre wrote in the same issue of CGW that "it is a very good real-time shoot-'em-up game", but that the combat became boring and amoral and the game offered little exploration. In 1993, Scorpia said that Hard Nova was "definitely worth your attention if you like space games".

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
MS-DOS31 December 1990Europe · North America 31 December 1990
Amiga31 December 1991Europe · North America 31 December 1991
Atari ST/STE31 December 1991Europe · North America 31 December 1991

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.