~3 minute readMARKETALK: Reviews
Starcross
Starcross. By Dave Lebling and Marc Blank. If it takes a minimum of two instances to form a proposition, then Starcross, adventurous Infocom's first foray into science fiction and second departure from the dungeons of Zork, enables the proposition that this young company is one of remarkable versatility and apparently unerring ability to implement fresh and fitting approaches to multifarious subjects. Deadline, the you-solve-it mystery, was, of course, instance one.
Starcross resembles Deadline and the Zorks only in the benevolent intelligence that is a hallmark of Infocom's work. In every other regard, it serves its own identity â that of a sci-fi situation and story. The scope, the structure, the language, the events, the requirements on the player are all dictated by the genre and its time and setting.
Where the Zorks are set in the fantasy world of Dark Ages magic and myth, where Deadline is set in the very mundane world of the British-like parlor murder mystery, Starcross is set in the no less fantastic and no more obvious world of the possible future.
As the game begins, you find yourself on a one-person spaceship, searching for black holes. With you are only your smart-aleck computer and your mass detector. Amazingly, when the mass detector proffers you a pictorial map of nearby space, you the real person can reach in your Starcross package and pull out the exact map in four glossy colors. You'll need it to direct the computer as to the course to take to your destination (why on earth didn't you pop for the gadget that interfaces the mass detector directly to that cantankerous computer?).
But instead of a black hole, you find an asteroid-size spaceship, the kind that might be devised to transport entire civilizations to new horizons when their own corner of the universe is becoming uninhabitable.
What you find there and what you do with it all are the meat of this outstanding adventure. As with so many excellent adventures, determining your purpose is an integral part of the plot.
Starcross is painted in briUiant colors with ultra-high-resolution detail; as usual, Infocom has created these splendid graphics entirely with words. This is a text, or, as the authors prefer, and appropriately so, a prose adventure.
No puzzle in Starcross is illogical, although many require good imagination and truly innovative thinking. Picture facing an apparent dead end. Nothing you'd expect to work solves this puzzle. You mull the problems and all the pieces a long time, and finally an idea comes. It's complex, it's far out, it's got to be out of the question â no one else would have thought of that â but it's thoroughly logical. Just for kicks, you try it, expecting another dead end. Instead, the program understands, responds â you weren't crazy; those guys actually think like you. But wait â they've taken it even farther; you'll have to stretch your mind even more. Like most good stretches, it feels delicious.
Infocom's adventure vocabulary continues to expand. The famous Zork parser allows you to speak to the Apple as though it were a person. When it doesn't understand, it makes perfectly clear what it doesn't understand. No guess-the-right-synonym games here.
In the realm of science-fiction adventure for the micro, only Cyborg holds a candle to Starcross. Both deserve places in the computer sci-fi hall of fame. A year younger and benefiting from Infocom's extraordinary technical tools, Starcross is the smoother, the more playable; Cyborg still wears the crown for plot.
No adventurer should pass up Starcross. And, if you've never ventured into this kind of game, Starcross is a good place to start.
Starcross. by Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, Infocom (55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-492-1031). $39.95.
This article appeared in
Softalk
Nov 1982
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
