Previous Next

The "Death Star" is a big spaceship, with an evil tiger-like face and it is constructed by workers, who glide around in deep space, mining asteroids for crystals. Each time a worker collects a crystal, one of the twenty pieces of the Death Star is constructed. And when the Death Star is completed, it plots a target course with your smaller, weaker, spacecraft, and homes in on you with some precision targeting.

That scenario makes for a very exciting game and Death Star doesn't disappoint. It's based on the arcade game Sinistar, which had exactly the same premise. The Electron conversion is beautifully done, with a very minimal set of controls and an almost-perfect "short range radar" at the top centre, meaning you can quickly flick your gaze between your immediate surroundings and the more localised area. If you see the Death Star heading your way, it's best to angle your craft in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.

So, how do you fight back against this menace of deep space? The answer is that you use superior firepower, in the form of starbombs. To create these, you do some of the same asteroid-mining as the red workers, namely by shooting a stream of bullets into a floating blue asteroid. When it spits out its crystals, you angle your craft to pick them up. Hopefully you'll be able to collect a full quota of crystals before the workers construct the Death Star. Then you'll be able to fight it.

The game has a certain unique pulse to it that is rare in the world of video games. From the second it starts - and there's no opening screen or attract mode, it just throws you straight into the battleground - it feels foreboding. The race is immediately on. The Death Star is immediately being built.

The red workers around you are infinite; it doesn't matter if you shoot them really, others are just transported in to replace them. However, every shot you fire risks missing its target and hitting an asteroid, and that asteroid may then fling a crystal into the void that a worker will quickly grab.

Nor is deep space a particularly peaceful place anyway. As well as the workers, there are characters known as warriors floating around. Workers are harmless but warriors are certainly not. Their bullets can take you out in a heartbeat unless you're constantly alert to them and whether they are pointing in your direction and firing. In fact, there are only two ways to die: being shot by a warrior, or being seized by the Death Star. When the Death Star is completed and the chase is on, you need to put everything into shooting all warriors on sight and loosing off a steady stream of starbombs to destroy the Death Star before it attacks you.

In the midst of all this action however, don't forget that the playing area wraps around on itself - do too much damage too quickly to the Death Star and you may knock him 'inadvertently' off the bottom of the radar screen and onto the top, where you'll then be on a collision course with him!

Game control is fairly simple. There's no accelerate or brake. Your craft is just propelled permanently in the direction it faces. You therefore angle your craft like the pointers on a clock, and it realistically bends to your will. If you hit an asteroid, this simply slows it down rather than destroys it. At certain angles (Tip: learn them!), you'll pass through the asteroid; at others it will repel you.

It's such a simple idea that it's not a difficult game to play at all, and it induces real panic whenever the screen flashes "Death Star Completed" and whenever the Death Star gets so close that it winds up sharing the screen with you. As the starbombs strike it, bits of it disappear too, meaning there's no need for an energy bar because it physically changes. When you've nearly destroyed it, only the tiger's head remains (4 hits to go) and when one more shot is needed, its buzzing open mouth is your only concern. When it manages to get you with its buzzing mouth, it's really irritating. When you see the message "Death Star Destroyed", it's really satisfying.

I suppose you could argue that there's not really a lot of variation to the game. The only real difference in the battles you fight is that the number of asteroids slowly decreases and the number of workers slowly increase. It's a struggle to see a harder zone than the fourth one, although I have managed it on a couple of occasions.

Overall though, Death Star is a genuinely exciting gaming experience. The graphics are colourful, there's a plentiful use of spot effect sound and the playability is excellent. A&B called it an immediate cult classic, and I suspect anyone reading this review who played the game back in the day may well now be remembering just how good it is. Tracking down a physical version isn't difficult as it was released on standalone cassette first by Superior and then by Blue Ribbon, and it also appeared on no less than three compilations. It's so good that it tends to command a reasonable price despite this ubiquity, and generally can be picked up for around £4 secondhand.