Ludography
Starglider 2 cover

1988 · Argonaut Games · Flight simulation · Science

Starglider 2

Starglider II is a sci-fi flight simulator and space combat game.

Released
1988
Platforms
AmigaAtari STAtari ST/STEMS-DOSZX SpectrummacOS
Genres
Flight simulationScienceShooterSimulation
Developers
Argonaut Games
Publishers
—
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
United Kingdom

About

Starglider 2 is a 3D space combat simulator published in 1988 by Rainbird as the sequel to 1986's Starglider. It was released for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and ZX Spectrum. Instead of the wireframe graphics of the original, Starglider 2 uses flat shaded polygons.

Keywords

  • flight simulator
  • flight

Media

Starglider 2 screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

The game features open, continuous gameplay without levels or loading screens after the game had started, despite taking place across an entire planetary system. The player can fly through space, enter a planet's atmosphere, explore the surface, and penetrate tunnels in one seamless movement.

The goal of Starglider 2 is to destroy an enemy space station with a neutron bomb, and the majority of the gameplay consists of collecting parts for the bomb, or fulfilling other prerequisites (e.g. finding the nuclear professor capable of constructing the bomb, or trade goods for the bombs necessary to destroy the shield generators protecting the space station), while fighting off enemy spacecraft, and delivering collected items to depots inside planetary tunnel systems. The various objects needed to complete the game are distributed across the many planets of the solar system, as well as in the intervening space (e.g. asteroids and space pirates), or even in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet.

Reception

A review in Computer Gaming World praised the game for being a vast improvement over the original, saying the game had "no real weak points". Minor criticisms were levelled at the game's joystick controls (preferring to control the game with a mouse) and at the game's philosophy of leaving players no clue as to how to succeed. Compute! cited the game's dual-booting feature as "just one of the achievements" of the developers, praising the addition of solid graphics without losing its predecessor's speed.

Zzap!64 called the game a perfect demonstration of Amiga and the best Amiga game, and gave an overall score of 98%.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Amiga1 October 1988Europe
MS-DOS31 December 1989North America
Atari ST/STE31 December 1989Europe
ZX Spectrum31 December 1989Europe
macOS31 December 1989Europe

Games like this

Collections3 collections

Platform libraries

Genres

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