Space, endless expanses. But also endless fun? “Of course!” finds MIT computer scientist Steve Russell and
develops 1962 Spacewar!, one of the first computer games. While two enemy spaceships shoot at each other in Russell’s space combat game, Lunar Lander (1979) is much more peaceful. In it, players must land a lunar module on the moon without incident. After these rather arcade-heavy beginnings, 1984 saw a breakthrough in the spaceflight simulation genre: Elite not only pioneered its genre, but also transcended it – in terms of open-world games, for example.We also recommend Indibet online to come in and try something new for yourself!
An exciting storyline! And new opportunities
The heyday of space flight simulations on high-performance PCs came in the 1990s under the influence of the Origins and LucasArts series. The situation is different in the sports game genre: after a pioneering period of arcade games such as Tennis for Two (1958) and Pong (1972), virtual sports dominated first on home computers and then on consoles. Many successful PC sports series started later (NBA 2K from 2008) or ended earlier (NHL before 2008). The arithmetic servant remains something of a non-sports outsider. But of course there are some really good computer games in this genre. On the following pages you can read about the most influential sports games and space flight simulators.
Elite (1987/Acornsoft)
Elite is ahead of its time. When the game, designed by Britons David Braben and Ian Bell, was released in 1984, the mixture of spaceflight simulation and trading simulation with impressive 3D vector graphics had players turning heads. Admittedly, initially only for owners of the popular BBC Micro home computer in the UK. PC gamers had to wait for “their” port until 1987.
What’s Elite about? As the owner of a miserable spaceship, we still have a meagre start-up capital. It’s our job to change that by raking in the cash and upgrading the ranks for a reward. The ultimate goal? To reach the rank of Elite. But that’s a long way off. In our spaceship, we cross the galaxy and trade space stations. The twist: we move our spaceship freely in a three-dimensional environment. Elite is one of the first games with an open game world. We can fly to hundreds of planets and their space stations. The latter proves to be quite a challenge, with quite a few amateur pilots crashing their spaceship into the outer wall of a space station spinning around its axis. It’s particularly nasty:
However, if you act wisely with 17 items, you can soon expect to have a significant amount of credits in your account. We can invest them not only in goods, but also in equipment and armaments. A particularly lucrative acquisition is the docking computer, which allows you to perform automatic landing manoeuvres – very stylishly with matching Danube Waltz background music. Such sci-fi allusions, such as to Kubrick’s iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, make Elite so appealing.
However, it’s not just the hand-to-hand landing that’s a death trap in Elite, pirates are also a danger. If it comes to fighting, fast manoeuvring and good reactions are required. Alternatively, we can also go hunting ourselves and if we succeed, we can count on fat booty instead of earning credits by honest work. Aside from trading and pirate raids, a third way to make money is through special orders.
With its high technical standard, open world and motivating gameplay, Elite will be a total success. Elite also influences many developers outside of the genre. Countless games have been directly inspired by Elite, from Wing Commander: Privateer (1993) to Darkstar One (2006) and the MMO EVE Online (since 2003). The iconic game itself received a number of successors: in 1991, Elite Plus, a visually enhanced VGA version for the PC, appeared. Unfortunately, Frontier: Elite 2 (1993) and Frontier: First Encounters (1995) contain not only some content improvements, but also countless bugs in the vastness of space. In addition, the genre competition in terms of story and staging now offers considerably more. Despite good reviews, the elite successors are selling rather poorly.
Link Commander (1990/Origin Systems)
Young US game designer Chris Roberts loves films with epic sci-fi plots. He’s particularly fascinated by Star Wars with its spectacular space battles. So why not create a game where you get to sit in the cockpit? When Roberts sees the impressive graphics in Lawrence Holland’s Battlehawks 1942 (1988) flight simulator, he thinks the time is right.
Two years later comes Wing Commander (1990), which technically gets almost everything from the PC of the time. With its simulated 3D universe and cinematic staging, the spaceflight simulator was a real breakthrough for the genre. In Wing Commander, we sit at the helm of a space fighter and drop Kilratis – a feline alien – from space. After each mission, we are struck by a rich cutscene with a final review of our achievements. It’s details like this that make Wing Commander an incredibly immersive game. We receive rewards and medals based on our achievements. We negotiate with the crew members of our TCS Tiger’s Claw carrier ship. Yes, we even determine the course of the war and the structure of the mission with our services.
Combined with a dynamic soundtrack and numerous clips, Wing Commander is a cinematic experience. A sci-fi epic in which we play the lead role. The gameplay is just right too: the four spaceships to choose from vary in armament and flight behaviour, the mission design is varied and motivating. Wing Commander shows what PC games can do nowadays – and what is technically possible on a powerful PC. Chris Roberts’ game played a big part in turning the calculator into a massively popular gaming machine.
Wing Commander helps popularise the spaceflight simulation genre. Many other titles and offshoots followed in the 1990s. In terms of production, developer Origins Systems went even further: Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger (1994), Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom (1996) and Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997) tell their story in detail. FMV – Series with famous actors – including some with staggering budgets for the time. It comes full circle for Chris Roberts because Mark Hamill, the actor behind Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars films, is on board. Outside the world of computer games, Wing Commander also attracts attention, with an animated series, a series of novels and, sadly, a rather mediocre film,
Star Wars: X Wing (1993/Lucas Arts)
Space battles a la Star Wars? Why not Star Wars space battles? No other development studio is better suited to this than LucasArts, a subsidiary of licence holder Lucasfilm Ltd. Plus, with Lawrence Holland in your ranks, you’ve got a capable developer who’s already developed great flight simulators like Battlehawks 1942, Their Star Trek and Luftwaffe Secret Weapons.
It’s said and done! At the end of the development process comes Star Wars: X-Wing (1993). Great: the action doesn’t take place 4,000 years before the original trilogy and not in some snoring location on the side of the war. Instead, we’re right in the middle of it. More specifically, shortly before the action of Star Wars: Episode 4 right up until the attack on the Death Star. As a Rebel Alliance pilot, we’re really warming up to the Empire’s minions. Not only do we have a seat in the eponymous X-Wing, but the Y- and A-Wing are part of our “fleet”. In a later expansion (there will be two in total) we will finally be allowed to climb into the cockpit of a B-Wing.
Compared to Wing Commander, X-Wing features smoother flight movements. Both games are similar in terms of gameplay, but air combat in X-Wing is less dynamic and gameplay requires more tactical skills. In addition, missions are often challenging – including because of the scripted events. Unlike Wing Commander, there is no branching mission structure. If we crash into a Star Destroyer in our X-Wing, we lose all of our pilot’s points and rewards and have to start the mission all over again. Resourceful hobbyist rebels avoid losing progress by manually backing up the pilot file under DOS.
The X-Wing matches the atmosphere perfectly – a dream come true for many Star Wars fans. Finally control the X-Wing and even attack the Death Star! Successful cutscenes and the typical Star Wars soundscape complete the famous production. The game has been well received by players and the press alike. Consequently, just one year later, a sequel appears: in Star Wars: Tie Fighter (1994), we go to the other side and throw the Rebel pack out of space. Star Wars: X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter (1997), on the other hand, focuses on multiplayer combat. Finally, Star Wars: X-Wing-Alliance (1999) returns to the origins of the series, but also has multiplayer in its baggage.
X: Beyond Borders (1999/Egosoft)
It’s gone hard in the trousers! Pilot Kyle Brennan is tasked with testing the performance of an experimental engine. But the attempt fails: due to a malfunction, Kyle finds himself not at the given coordinates, but in a far-flung part of the galaxy. To make matters worse, the experiment is also over. In the end: This part of the galaxy is inhabited.
We are great at trading with the locals, buying and selling goods at the stations. Later, we even acquire factories and spaceships to increase our bank account. But that’s a crane in the sky for now. Getting into X: Beyond the Frontier on our slow-moving, almost defenceless spaceship will require patience and skill. By the way, we can pirate, too. But then we’re all mixed up with different alien races. And we need their support to fight the extraterrestrial threat that is targeting humanity.
Whether we follow the plot or pursue our own goals in the vastness of space is up to us to decide. The sense of freedom in X: Beyond the Frontier is great, exploring new sectors of space and discovering new alien races is an exciting feature. Of course, the work of German studio Egosoft isn’t reinventing the joystick – it’s based on the game mechanics of Elite. But the X series begins its journey as the genre reaches the end of its heyday, providing fans with motivating spaceflight sims in the genre’s bleak noughties. X2: The Threat (2004) and X3: Reunion (2005) continue the story, playing fundamentally the same, but also having some gameplay and technical innovations up their sleeve. After the trilogy
and X Egosoft announces a relaunch of the series. X: Rebirth (2013), however, turns out to be a stillborn. Now fans of the series are hoping for 2018. Then, with X4: Foundation, there should be a hopefully better installment of the series. Star Citizen: Squadron 42 (2018?/Cloud Imperium Games) Finally a game like Wing Commander again! When Chris Roberts was looking for backers for his crowdfunding campaign for his new Star Citizen game in 2012, many players gave him an open door. As a result, the legendary designer is being entrusted with over six million US dollars by ravenous PC pilots. Star Citizen is to be a Privateer Roberts-style online spaceflight simulator, but will also include a single-player campaign in the spirit of Wing Commander with Squadron 42. The details revealed during development reinforce the anticipation for Squadron 42. Also because there are many parallels with Wing Commander. The content focuses on an elite military unit. As in the full-scale prototype, the focus is on interaction with the crew. We have to have conversations with members Of course, the cinematic staging is very important in Chris Roberts’ game. The designer brings in a host of well-known actors for his project, including (once again) Mark Hamill and Gary Oldman. However, they are not seen in the FMV episodes as in the Wing Commander series, but are integrated into the game via motion capture. The footage shown so far looks impressive, and the promised gameplay elements such as first-person shooters and a co-op mode also sound exciting
Bottom line: the release of Squadron 42 is – pun intended – in the stars. The release was originally scheduled for November 2014, but that date has been pushed back to mid-2015. When that release date can’t be saved either, Chris Roberts announces the separation of Squadron 42 from Star Citizen and the splitting into three parts to cover space: To be able to publish a flight simulation faster. But the process repeats itself. Cloud Imperium Games can’t meet the 2016 and 2017 deadlines. When and whether the game will appear remains to be seen. Expectations are huge. Encouraging PC pilots, Cloud Imperium Games development studio Chris Roberts, have provided a total of around $174 million. One thing is already certain:
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