Starglider 2 - Memories

Starglider 2 developer Argonaut were big Star Wars fans, and references can be found throughout the game. The Egron space station was an obvious homage to the Death Star, and the manual and novella mention that the player's ship (the Icarus) was installed with a Forslook proximity-lock field to allow the Neutron bomb to be lowered from the bomb bay. So, to launch the bomb and destroy the station you had to use the Forslook!

A few 'in-jokes' are also found within the game. For example, the name of one of the planets in the Solice system (Millway) was inspired by the location of Argonaut's HQ at Mill Hill, in North London. One of Millway's moons was named 'Broadway', after the underground station nearest Argonaut's HQ - 'Mill Hill Broadway'.

One of the unique technical features of Starglider 2 was ADLS, the Argonaut Dual Loading System. This meant that the game disk could be loaded on either an Atari ST or a Commodore Amiga. Both versions shared the same 68000-based code (with appropriate drivers, display code, etc), and Argonaut devised a disk format and filing system that could work on either machine.

Unfortunately, ADLS proved less than reliable. More information can be found here.

To make playtesting a little more interesting, the testers ran a small competition to see who could complete the game in the quickest time. One of the trickiest parts of the game was capturing Professor Taymar, who would drive around on the surface of one of the moons in his fast car. You firstly had to find him, then catch up with him and finally capture him in the tractor beam (another Star Wars reference). Refuelling near the sun was also quite tricky, as was successfully capturing a space whale without exploding in the atmosphere of Millway.

The Spectrum version was coded by Steven Dunn, who had previously been hired to write the Spectrum version of David Braben's Virus. Steven was given a copy of the finished 16-bit Starglider 2 game for reference purposes, but otherwise he had to create everything from scratch, including a new faster vector line routine (the Spectrum version used hidden-line removal wireframe 3D instead of solid 3D graphics). He also had to write the technology to create 3D objects, space (with stars and planets), planet surfaces and tunnels. Steven used graph paper to model his own interpretations of the 3D objects found in the Amiga original, and he also drew all of the in-game artwork (control panel, loading screen).

Argonaut founder Jez San kindly assisted with some of the more complicated maths, and Realtime chipped in to help with the sound effects despite them being busy on their own Spectrum conversion of Carrier Command.

Steven wrote an enhanced 128k version as well, which included a few extra touches including the control panel melting, better planet effects and an extended end-sequence which showed the successul finale.