Game Review: Star Farce (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Once Star Farce has loaded, you are presented with credits on a blue and black background.  It lists the name of who wrote, inspired, gave criticism and play tested the game.  There are also shoutouts to people in a Maths and Physics Departments and everyone at Hyde 6^th form.

From just reading the list of names, places, it appears that a lot of support, care and effort and attention went into the production of the game.  So, is it any good or a total farce?  Read on to find out.

Initial Set-Up Options

After the credits screen, the next four pages give you options of how you’d like to play Star Farce.  These can only be selected the once, so select carefully or you’ll need to re-load it to get it right.

The first is the Scrolling Speed:

1. Slow – For the aesthetically concerned
2. Fast – More fun more difficult

The second page is the Alien Bullet Speed:

1. Fast – For experts and the foolhardy
2. Slow – Beneficial for beginners

The third page is to select The Colour of your Craft:

1. White as usual
2. Cyan for a change

The fourth page is Noises:

1. On – Crudge, Joodle, Fip, Neeeee
2. Off – Insomniacs Option

Once through there, you then move onto the usual menu screen with choices of keyboard (keys can be re-definable), Kempston, Cursor or Sinclair.  After each game, you do come back to here, so don’t have to re-load each time from here.

Graphics

The graphics in Star Farce are rather bright, colourful and detailed.  The terrain that you are flying over is very good, so it not just the aliens that are well drawn.

Shooting certain places can create a whole chain range of reactions and explosions across the screen or leave massive craters.

been taken to avoid a lot of colour clash where it could be.  I found that choosing the cyan ship was a slightly better option that choosing white.

The vertical scrolling is the best that could really expect.  With all the action happening, sound effects and explosions all happening, it’s damn good in all fairness.

Sound

There are a quite a range of sound effects during the gameplay, making this quite adequate.  A few short notes when starting.  Plenty of shooting sounds, explosion noises, collecting object pings all on the humble 48K beeper!

Just like the options say, its Crudge

Key presses on the re-define keyboard also have a punchy sound too.

The only thing missing here is a tune, perhaps on the main menu screen.  Although the cover does say it is compatible with 128K, you automatically think you, perhaps, may be treated to a good AY3 tune.  See further down regarding the compatibility issues where this isn’t the case.

Playability

You start the game with 3 lives and more can be found along the way.  The instructions talk about how they have been placed in useful places for you.

As you will have seen, there are quite a few options that you can make at the start and naturally these make deliberate and noticeable differences.  This is especially when it came to the speed of the alien bullets fired your way.  Although the slower ones are meant you could have a longer reaction time to dodge them, it also meant that the few that had been fired, stayed on the screen for that little bit longer.

The screen is very busy (in a good way) with various alien waveforms whizzing across the screen and yet still being very playable and not crashing.  One thing I liked was one waveform near the beginning flies down diagonally and very quickly and if you stay on the bottom row, you can avoid them.  You can really tell that Star Farce has been well thought out.

The collision detection is also on the players side here.  If you crash into something, then it is genuinely down to the player and not down to some dubious programming.  No complaints in this department either.  You will need some quick reactions in places as some of the aliens move horizontally and in sine waves too.

Whilst playing, you will come across refuelling craft, pods and teleport squares (with the word In) which you can fly into and then face training ships with some flown by Earth’s best pilots (apparently!)

When you lose a life, rather than the game putting you back to the start of a level, it continues scrolling up, moving you up a bit further, so you don’t have to replay over old parts.  Great!

Different Cover Variations

Star Farce was released with two different covers.  One just having Star Farce with a black background and the Mastertronic plus logo down the side.  The other with an angry looking alien with the Earth in the background.  So, if you are a collector, get both copies.

Humour

Just reading the instructions (or scenario), you can tell there is a bit of humour in here.  It talks along the lines of nearby benevolent aliens that have approached Earth always getting blown up (which has obviously made them angry!) and want to invade wipe out anything to do with us.  Amusingly apart from all the destruction going on, they add in “and above all have a jolly good time”

The description in the initial set-up options is funny too.  With the insomniac’s option meaning you play in silence.  Perhaps, you wouldn’t want to wake your family or neighbours up (or would you!)

Should you break into the first part of the loading sequence you are presented in green text with the message below.  I always like seeing messages which you wouldn’t normally see without looking for them.  Here it is:

Sure, hack it.  No protection.  Dead easy, eh?  But could you write it?  Can you play it?

48K/128K Compatibility

When loading, it starts with * Farce and then By Log.  After a short while, you then see please wait appear on the screen for around 10 seconds.  The loading screen then appears and once displayed, continues loading with a black border.

Now when loading the game in 48K mode, it worked with a colourful screen.  In 128K mode, it appeared to just be the same but all in green (and crashed later during loading.)  I tried both copies that I had, and this happened at the same place.

The solution was that after reading the instructions again, they do say put the machine in 48K mode before loading.  So not a bug after all, just something you need to know (unless you had a standard 48K Spectrum anyway where it wouldn’t have been an issue!)

If there’d been a 128K tune, then this would have been great as its pretty much all that was really missing.  Damn the compatibility as that really would have polished this off.

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