Back in the late 80's, Electronic Arts put out a game by Binary Systems called Starflight. Starflight was a space exploration game that could be considered one of the first true "sandbox" games. The game started you at your starport with a ship and 12000 credits and basically told you to create a crew and "go forth, explore, and conquer young captain". But that wasn't the genius of this game.
This game was set in a galaxy of well over a hundred star systems, some in nebulas where your sensors were impaired.This game sported hundreds (literally) of planets, each with its own atmosphere, weather, mineral content and, many times, its own biosphere and life forms. The galaxy was populated with both friendly and hostile alien races and you had your choice on how to deal with them; either use diplomacy, or try to blast them out of the sky. But with all the genius of this game, that still isn't what I consider the true genius of Starflight.
What I consider the true genius of this game is that Binary Systems was not only able to fit this galaxy full of stars and nebulae, hundreds of planets and their contents, hostile and friendly alien races, and a plot which spanned the galaxy and time itself into one game, but were able to fit all of this on two double density 5 1/4 floppy disks. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this award winning game, and it won lots of awards,fit and played in less than one megabyte of storage space!
I would love to see Binary Systems' Starflight on the android with updated graphics and a new user interface. I think that would be awesome!!
Thhanks fro reading my rant!!
Avid
