Game Review: Star Force Fighter (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

By 1987, space shoot-em-ups on the Commodore 64 were plentiful, and to stand out from the crowd, you had to not just have countless blasting, but have some superlative graphics and sound with playability to match. At full price you had the likes of Uridium and Delta, and on budget Warhawk from Firebird and the superlative P.O.D. Proof of Destruction from Mastertronic set the standards, so anything released really needed to meet that standard if they were not just another game repeating the same themes from the same genre. Star Force Fighter (or Starforce Fighter as the title screen refers to it) has a bold claim on the cassette inlay, claiming state of the art 3D graphics and that it was destined to become the new classic shoot-em-up. It just needed an absolutely brilliant type Codemasters quote to complete the set, I think.

Starring Role

The plot of the game is thankfully minimal – no attempts to dress this one up too much. You are one of the last few star force fighters battling against the robot ships of the Deisarn Empire, in a desperate battle for the defence of the Earth. In effect, you have been chosen as one of “The Few” and piloting against immense odds. What this means is that you are in space, shooting waves of enemies and ensuring you collect some capsules which appear along the way, which includes the likes of shields, invisibility, more powerful weapons and also extra lives. Pretty standard space shoot-em-up fare, so you think anyway.

The game loads with Invade-a-Load, and there unusually is no Expert cartridge type decompression, it literally goes from Invade-a-Load straight to the title screen, which indicates that the main game does not take up that much memory. A pleasing four-minute title theme by Wally Beben plays, with the title screen showing the logo and name of Starforce Fighter, with an attempt at bas relief graphics for part of the screen. This cycles with the high score table, showing an impressive 10,000 points for the high score. Bear in mind, you get 10 points for each ship destroyed and 500 for a capsule, along with 20 points per pod in the bonus stage, and you will soon see racking up a suitably large score may not appear to be so easy.

Waves of Woe

When you start the game, your ship is to the left with a scrolling star field as your backdrop – in later levels you do have planets in the background and moons, including some planets to avoid as obstacles. You also see the high score at the top along with a number at the top right indicating how much shield you have left, along with your score and the number of ships left at the bottom. The enemy waves come in batches of four ships at a time, and they can be in certain patterns, but some of those patterns can be randomised. This does mean that you may learn the first few but then if a random one comes in, inevitably you will either collide with an enemy ship or bullet, and lose one of your four lives.

After a number of attack waves, a capsule scrolls along the centre of the screen. Collect that and you can have one of a number of power ups, which again seem randomised. There is invisibility, which means enemy craft cannot see you, and you only know where you are when you fire a bullet. There are also extra lives, different weaponry which attaches to the front of your ship, different firepower including a larger semi-circular beam type weapon, as well as extra shields – which you will definitely need for this game.

Shielding the Space (Bar)

There are shields to be activated in this game. These can be activated by pressing and holding down the space bar for as long as you need the shield on, or you can do the classic method of utilising a second joystick on the floor in port 1 and using your foot to activate fire (which is the same as space) for the same effect of utilising the shield. The difficulty is that inevitably when reaching either way you fail to see the bullet about to hit you, and bang – that is one of the four lives lost. Maybe holding down the fire button for shield (and firing at the same time) may have worked well with just short jabs of fire being the normal bullets, but either way you have an awkward reach to make.

If you do lose a life, be warned: you go right back to the start of the level and have to do all the attack waves again. There are no continuation points whatsoever, just all the way back to the start. I can guarantee not many players may have even seen the second level because of this – which seems hugely unfair when the levels are large. It is start again, and try and get as far as you did last time before unceremoniously dying at the same point as last time. This to me is a bit of a nail in the coffin as far as the game is concerned: no issues with making a game difficult, but no spawn or restart points are completely unacceptable.

Meteor Mayhem

Once you do manage to get so far in the level, potentially with either using your shield cleverly or even cheating with infinite shields, then the meteor storm appears. Simply dodge them all for a fixed period of time to survive. Unfortunately, if you hit one single meteor, you lose a life and guess what happens? Yes. You go all the way back – not to the start of the meteor storm which would at least have been sort of acceptable, but to the start of the actual level. I can see several joysticks being thrown at walls here as the game has now officially entered wall denter territory. Did someone not feed back and maybe suggest that this design would be massively unfair? Clearly not.

If you do survive the meteor storm it is the bonus section, where you can collect as many bonus pods as you can within a time span and 20 points for each pod. In later bonus stages you can collide with objects too but thankfully you do not lose a life here – it just takes you to the end of the bonus stage, or it will end after a time period if you have scrolled the screen so far. Then it is on to the next level which has small planets and moons to avoid as part of the background, making the game even tougher than it already is. Sadly, most of you will have lost interest by this point, and rightfully so.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics on Star Force Fighter are okay but nothing special – there are some frames of animation for each type of enemy attack wave, and they do whizz across the screen at a good pace. Your ship shows the different armaments well when collected, and the starfield background also appears nice. The title screen is not that good though, and looks a little basic even if an attempt at bas relief style has been made. The stand out is the Wally Beben music, with the title tune quite a bouncy affair and the option to have some nice in-game music or sound effects are also welcomed. The sound effects are pretty standard shoot-em-up fare overall with an exploding white noise effect when you die (which you will quite often it has to be said.)

Final Thoughts

Star Force Fighter does on first glance appear to be a little budget shoot-em-up that might bring some enjoyment. Unfortunately, it can be spoiled by the random waves of attack which means you can die without a good enough reason. The reaching the space bar (or crunching a spare joystick port 1 fire button with the foot) does mean that activating the shield and keeping it activated means that by the time you have done so, inevitably an alien ship or bullet has collided with you, resulting in the loss of life. Add to that the scenario that if you die, you get sent right back to the start of the level, even if you got as far as the meteor storm, is unforgivable, especially when the levels are large in the first place. It becomes too dull and too frustrating too quickly and is far from the shoot-em-up it claims to be, and clearly was not play tested properly enough to ensure that the game’s flaws were ironed out. It promises so much for the hype and what is delivers is inversely proportional to the hype. My advice? Play Warhawk or P.O.D. and see how a budget shoot-em-up should be done.

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