After being firmly grounded in the Hyperaction’s mazes, we now take to the stars once again with Design Design’s Dark Star which arrives at No. 81 in the Your Sinclair Top 100. According to the World of Spectrum the game was supposedly inspired by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s film of the same name, though anybody who has seen said film may struggle to find a similarity.
Dark Star is a rather impressive space combat game in which you are an ace pilot of a ship called the LIAR. However, it’s not all about dogfights in space – for which there are many – you also need to take on this evil empire at ground level and with some careful manoeuvring the LIAR can be flown towards a planet. Here bringing up the map you can hone in on an enemy’s stronghold, you need to destroy all of the towers surrounding the base before you can once again break orbit. Bringing up the sector map you can now find another location which needs your skills in the inky black.
Dark Star has done well against the test of time; there are enough objects in this Solar System to break up the Windows 95 screensaver feel that Codename: MAT suffered from, plus there is a nice vein of dark humour subtly flowing through the game to place a smile upon you face, as you try to adjust yourself to the highly sensitive crosshairs. Along with this, it gives you numerous options to amend the variables in the game too.
Originally published June 8, 2016. Updated October 29, 2022.
