Let's Play Starflight 01: To boldly go... 

I know I'm late to the game. I turned 59 this year and I've been taking a stroll down retro memory lane. Starflight is the game I always remember the most and started my lifelong fascination with space games. Glad i found this play through. Your explanations, backstory, little tidbits here and there couldn't have been more perfect! Thank you!

One of my favorite gaming experiences of my life. I had a little box with index cards in it, where I had logged information about every system I visited. Aaaahhh. :)

This game... I remember opening it one christmas and not being overly enthused about it...it sat unopened for months. When I finally did open it, it blew my mind and was such an awesome experience that I remember it a million years later. Never could finish it until years later when the help guide was printed out. The wonder and awesomeness of this game and universe is one that I wish I could experience again. Fun stuff.

I'm 46 years old, and to this frickin day, Starflight is the very best game I've ever played. It was just so immersive and how they fit the universe on a few floppies is beyond me. Anyone who said their heart didn't skip a beat when in Uhlek territory is full of sh1t. I used to play with the lights off and sound up to max. The *TONE* *TONE* *TONE* would make you sit at the edge of your seat.

I played this game in 1986 on my dad's IBM, a massive old thing with two 5 1/4" floppy drives (and no hard drive) This was on CGA graphics. It is still one of my favorite games of all time. I remember when dad upgraded to a computer with EGA graphics and a hard drive. It was the most amazing thing ever. For this game you had to make a copy of the master disk and play on the copy, because if you died the game overwrote the disk and you have to reformat the disk and make a new copy from the original. The game warned you to not use the master disk ever as you would have to buy a new copy of the game if you croaked. (and could never start over) Dad and I had separate game disks so we could play individually. Also a tip for anyone starting out, train one crew member to max science and spend the rest of the money on cargo pods or maybe a tiny bit of fuel. Assign an android as navigator and another as engineer, they will suffice for the very beginning and they are free, although you cannot train them higher. Visit the adjacent star system and check out the planets from orbit with science officer. (hint) This should get you some decent starting money. Such a great game and massive to explore.

Another thing about saving this thing back in the day: You could spend five to ten hours exploring and there would be a bug that crashed the game, and you would lose all your progress. This happened often enough that my brother and I, who played together, listening to Duran Duran on the boombox, got super-paranoid about saving regularly. But no masterpiece is without its flaws.

I still have the original disks, box, and code wheel. My friends and I used to love this game!! I remember trying to figure out how to pick up the "Red Herring". Great and classic game. I watched someone play a bit of "StarSector" from 2021, and immediately was reminded of this old game.

I spent so much time on this game and its sequel, my parents sold my computer because they were concerned about the amount of time i spent playing it. 30 years later, I'm playing No Man's Sky for the same reasons lol

Not sure if you people know this, I did it. You could go and edit the executable file and change the hard coded parameters, such as the prices, starting money, etc. and just save it. I gave myself lots of initial money, reduced the parameters for training, etc. The only thing you had to watch out for was not changing the length of the hard coded string, else all the addressing locations change. So you wouldn't go change a 99 to a 999.

the first game i ever played, i had to be like 6 years old xD the landing and take off always used to amaze me.

I bought this game as soon as it came out at Electronics Boutique and played it all the way through on my Tandy 1000 at the time, I bought a 10mb hard drive and ran it off of there, saving multiple copies of the game in case I answered a question wrong like had I ever partaken of head fruit. What a blast and what a somber story at the end. It made me think. Those were good times, Infocom adventures, King's Quest and Starflight were my favorites from that time.

Just recently I bought the exact same computer I had as a 9-year-old on eBay (a 386SX with 2 megs of RAM, 20 MHz and a 44 MB hard drive). So tonight, I sat down to play Starflight on it. It was amazing! I've watched this Let's Play while playing and it was a blast! Thanks for doing this! :)

Better than No Man's Sky

Thank you so much for this LP. Just look at the amount of comments saying some variation of 'muh childhood', and I'm certainly here to pile on that. When I played it on the family's ancient Tandy growing up in the late 90s and early 00s, this game, and that computer system, was already a relic on the way out, sure. But it still feels like I was a part of that, as I played games like the old Chuck Yeager, F-19 Flight Simulator, of course this game Starflight, just. So many amazing older titles, that I barely grasped and certainly was no good at, but man. Seeing dad have an actual notebook of notes for Starflight blew my young mind. I never knew games could get that involved. Nowadays, I'm still carried away when playing games that take from Starflight's accomplishments and tradition, like Star Control, or the original Mass Effect, and it resonates me to this day. I wanted to get all of that upfront because I know this LP is, itself, like what, nearly seven goddamn years old by now, this LP would be old enough to hold a conversation with if it was a person. But as a viewer and a fellow dabbling LPer, like. I have some friendly feedback. Mainly "Get on with it!" This LP is fantastic for people who are already invested in the game and want to get every drop out of it. However, especially since you said you wanted this to be a running start to the game, there was a noticeable lack of doing. I had trouble getting a friend who didn't know anything about Starflight into the game, and this first episode would do nothing for them. Which is a shame, as this game deserves all the attention possible. I remember things getting better once we get underway, I might skip the first two episodes when showing them or something, who knows.

I was ten too!!! Love this game ! Classic

Thank you for these. I never got to finish the game years ago. And none of the versions of it I can get online actually work on my computer. This is the next best thing. Cheers!

I wasted a lot of time on this game back in 1987 or so. I never did finish it. It's just a MONSTER of a game as you mention. Modern games pale in comparison when it comes to size and scope, and Starflight was made almost 30 years ago and ran on a floppy. LOL! Thanks for the LP!

also I forgot to mention if you have a fully trained science officer he will warn you if you attempt to land on a planet with gravity that will crush the ship. You can still do it if you want to suicide, but it will stop you from accidentally croaking. Another reason to max train science officer before leaving stardock. (other being logging planets)

I first saw this game on a monochrome amber monitor. Awesome.

This was my favorite game back in the day, ran it off my AT&T 6300 :) Starflight 2 was even better!

I forgot how sad (in a dry or empty way, not a teary or emotional way) this game is - earth, long gone... all these stars, post-flare... time to flare, 3 days... another one gone. (Well clearly the ones responsible for that - understandably - had feelings about it!)

I love Starflight I & II, and was able to defeat both games.

First Computer game I ever bought.... paid $50 for it. Didn't even own a computer, I took over one of the computers in my wife's College computer lab and would play while I waited for her to finish her classes. Best game I ever played (ok, second best --- I always loved "CAPTIVE" for the Atari ST, played that one for nearly a year and never beat it) and now you're making me wonder how to get it simulated so I can play on my Window's 8.1 Laptop.

I am so close to buying this game on GOG. I got some kind of a soft spot for old, obscure games :D It's nice that you made this LP, maybe I'll finally understand what is going on in the game ;d

It seems we are in the same age bracket :) Although I came across it a bit older. Yes I agree it was tough! I think some of the long time you had to spend in mining added to the realism of the game.

It's great that this game is still loved, and sad that, as shown in this video, the pacing in different sequences is messed up. For example, seeing hostile life forms on planets super-sprinting at the terrain vehicle, and "it is raining" messages quickly erasing other messages, whereas in the original played on older machines, that pacing was a lot easier to deal with.

I still own my copy, including all the documents, map, and code wheel. It was my first PC game for my first PC, a Tandy 16 color, in 1986. It started the whole open world genre. I played it for months and had to keep a notebook of notes, which I have lovingly preserved.

I use to lay on the back of the couch and watch my dad play this game and Starflight 2...great memories. Makes me miss his when I think about the game and as I watch this. Thank you for the live play. :)

im 19 but i played this bk when i was 8 n my gawd was i so confused but i had a blast :) love you man for playing this :)

thanks for the memories, I played this game for hours as a kid and then drug it back outin my early 20's and still enjoyed it. nice to see the EGA as my Pc back then was CGA and an 8088. Just a point of info, the farther away you are from your starting system the more valuable lifeforms are (if i remember correctly)

man, those were the days. Magic Candle, Bard's Tales, King's Quest, Dragonflight... But this, this take the cake. I'm willing to bet No Man Sky was created based on this

YES. i remember thinking this was the coolest game as a kid, but it definitely being a little over my head at the time.

The menu system that you see in this video was done by some guys from the old Starflight 3 forum in the very early 2000's. It is basically a slightly modified dos batch file that was taken from Starflight II. The modifications were done to get the batch file menu system to work with Starflight I. The general idea was to solve the game save corruption problems in Starflight I using the same idea that was used in Starflight II.

this my fifth time watching this series lol love these old games

The Challenger incident killed public support for the space program, though nobody knew at the time how disasterous the long-term impact would be. But I imagine Starflight didn't eulogize the crew because the game was finished production before it happened. Bobo is uploading PG for me, and I believe he's been uploading them once a week pretty regularly for while now. I've recorded Washington, so you should see new ones once a week until it's over.

This is the original one, the one I grew up with. Playing the Genesis version, to me, would be like LPing the NES version of Maniac Mansion instead of the DOS version. Which, come to think of it, a lot of people might have preferred. Ok, think of this as the original theatrical version where Han shot first, and the Genesis version was the rerelease. Though I can't imagine anything in the Genesis port ruined the game in a "Jabba slithering around chatting with Han" fashion.

thanks for posting. Havent seen this game nearly in 30 years its a shame that this was never rebooted with modern graphics.

Unless this LP goes really poorly (I have less fun than expected and no one is still watching come video 3 or so,) Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula is a shoe-in. I don't want to spoil anything but I try to be pretty peaceful during this game. I do remember playing years ago, stumbling across the Gazurtoid homeworld, and getting an entire Gazurtoid fleet to follow me (I literally encountered them every time I left Starport.)

I was 1 year old when this game was released, it looks really cool.

I grew up loving the Genesis port of this game. In time, I absolutely loved the original even more, and I wish I could put out a hybrid version, based on the original but with elements from the port (UI, how mining is handled, etc). While the port has stepped-up graphics, I feel quite strongly that it suffers from not being able to get good descriptions of life forms and so forth, and their interpretation of the Arth spaceport is deeply disappointing. You don't even get to pick a captain! There are interesting innovations, again the UI is improved, but I would much rather adapt these elements for the original than try to save the port.

Yes yes! I played this my freshman year in college (1985-86).. A bunch of us passed around copies. I still have some pages of notes around somewhere where I wrote a bunch of clues down as I came across them in the game.

I remember all the times years ago my father would play this game a lot.

I remember we had to keep a set of 5.25 disks that were the source.. and you didn't play these. We would make a "play copy" and play the game from those. If you died (or lost the game?) you had to recopy and create a new set to play from again. Things are coming back to me as I watch this video. Thanks for it!

This game was on genesis!

I loved, loved this game. I played it on my Tandy 1000EX! lol I remember I had to use the distance formula to find some mysterious star system. I thought that was SO cool..lol. I also remember coming across a ship that looked just like the Enterprise...I remember I hailed them and they didn't respond so I fired..to no effect. I never came across them again. Awesome game.

Played this on a Tandy 2000 It was a gas. That's why I enjoy Elite Dangerous so much...Its modelled on the milky way on a 1to1 scale.

I'm surprised you don't have this running in a virtual machine with a slower clock. Then you can read things and key presses won't go too fast.

The graphics were fine. 80's kids remembering using their imagination as a supplement.

Great game keep up the good work on your videos :)

I owned the C-64 version of this. And, I do remember being utterly blown away at how that version had to 'remove' features from the game, due to memory limitations. After all, C-64 stuff usually was the superior choice, back then. But, it didn't matter. I always went too far, ran out of fuel and died. No wonder, I went for PSI-5, where you went to Point B, dog fighting the whole way with engines blazing away.

They're both on sale (in one package) at GOG for only $2.39 this weekend! Thanks for this video...I can't believe I'd never heard of Starflight before now (I started out with TRaSh-80s in school and a TI-99 4/A at home and it apparently wasn't available for those computers), but the reviews on GOG are mixed. Your video sold me. And, we seem to be the same age, so you're coming at it from the same place I am. Cheers!

Finally, another Starflight LP, the LPer I watched bailed on it likely due to life issues which is fine but yeah nice to see this game get some love. I never played this version, I did play a lot of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version which sported an arguably better interface, more amusing controls for flight and combat, better visuals but no random planet generation, well, I say that but the galaxy seems to be just as populated so it may have been generated then made to be set.

Given how messed up and eargerly rushed the E.T was, Starflight is really the much much better ambitious game of its time we needed and the game is everything E.T isn't. E.T. The Game was a perfect example how the corporate publisher scumbag like Atari fuck over and override the developer to rushed and crunched the development progress and it turn to be garbage when released. So anyone who say, "E.T wasn't the worst game ever" are still living in denial

Love this game still

Nomad (or "Project Nomad, 1993 title developed by Intense! Interactive and Papyrus Design Group was the very first space exploration game I'd ever played on my PC. It has pretty decent 3D ship and space graphics for its time, the alien races all have their own theme musics and animations and you get to chose between more exploratory or war-pathish endeavors. It's definitely in this vein of games, worth checking out.

I love this game

I always played this on the hard drive. CD/STARFLT/INSTALL

Just one question did anyone ever figure out what the red herring was for lmao......

at 27:00 you got the map out... the staff constellation is the first place with life forms to get his with the crystal planets nulifier weapon. so beating the game before Staff constellation goes supernova is the best ending.

Shouldn't that be played on an amber monochrome monitor? That's the way I remember it. And gee was that cool looking!

I'm still stoked to watch. It'll be interesting to see the differences. I'll have to check out Maniac Mansion while I'm at it too (I also grew up with the NES version).

I have a Dell Dimension 3000 Pent 4 Windows XP would I be able play this game on it? This was 1 of my Fav. game when I was 13-15 yrs. I had a Tandy 1000 TX....LOL

What version are you using that gave you the animated galaxy on the title screen? I haven't seen that since my Tandy 1000?

The "ship" you speak of losing while traveling on a planet is a terrain vehicle.

Played this bad boy on a monochrome monitor. Good times.

I have not played this game in a very long time, and it was the updated version for the Sega Genesis rather than this one, complete with its old timey graphics. How very interesting. Offhand, over the months, you've gotten quite proficient at referring to "that one LP'er" without mentioning his name. I commend your skill, JG. 23:48- Looks like I wrote that last bit too soon. God damn it. 24:52- Sounds like Daggerfall to me. Those fuckers.

Too Baldly Cow, Were Now Fan As Prawn Bee Four!

I also had a lot of fun with a later space explore game called Tachyon. Significantly better graphics, a bit more linear and slightly less exploratory but still a lot of fun. Main character voiced by Bruce Campbell! :3

I loved this game

It said frightening apparatus, but he picked flying apparatus and it worked anyway.

Hey JG I have a weird delima. I downloaded dosbox to play StarFlight on my Dell Dimension 3000 that runs off of Windows XP. Well when I "Save Game" it only works when I can come back and play the game if I Did Not Die..... When I die I try to reboot the game and I get that "Game In Progress and Not Saved"..... It seems I can only save the game and come back to it if I am not killed in the game. I don't know what is the problem? So when I die I have to remove the game from my PC and go back to my account on GOG and down load the game again and then I have to start alllll overrr again....ugh. Can you help me? Thanks Johnny

I see Panzer General in that list!

The Graphics in this, or at least the goofy portraits remind me of a game I played for my channel awhile back called "Gazillionaire" by Lavamind. It's very, very weird, but interesting I think. (Also its a light hearted space trading sim, as opposed to this.) I think you might have fun playing it at least once. : >

I named my dad's 2014 Dodge Charger R/T Blacktop After this because he played this when he was young. One time he told me a really funny story of when he was playing the game. Also A character from the book series that i'm in love with is named this Check it out⬇ wingsoffire.fandom.com/wiki/Starflight

If GOG has Starflight 2, I'd get that. I found them both free, not sure if they're still available as Abandonware now that GOG is selling them. But anyway, Starflight 2's way of making money (trade) is a lot more interesting than Starflight 1's (mining) and I cut out a lot of mining to make the LP more watchable. Though the version I downloaded includes an option to start with millions of credits.

i played this game on the comodore 64. I now just try playing it on windows 10 and the only problem is every time i try to land it crashes. on the comodore it doesn't why is that

GOG is selling the 1st and the 2nd installment in one pack for a couple of bucks, so I think I'll check it out :) Thanks for the tips :)

I had this game when I was a teenager. I loved it. Unfortunately I lost it. Is there anyway one can get this game nowadays? Please let me know!!!

had to stop Mass Effect Andromeda watching to watch a game that doesn't treat you like a baby so 6th or 7th time

This game looks great! I actually like the bad graphics. It reminds me of Sentinel Worlds, which only has three planets in one system, but it has an amazing storyline with multiple mysteries to be solved. I have been stuck on Sentinel Worlds for years, but I don't want to cheat. I am planning to try this one now. I also plan to play the Star Control series as well. Thanks for the tutorial. Now, I have an idea of how to get started.

Moh-lib-denum basically.. as if there was an i in there. I think. :)

Was Elite before this? I just picked up the MEGADRIVE version, it's an awesome version.

I would have been better off at 10 years old trying to play this rather than trying now.

I have the original floppy some were in my house!

Ah, floppy discs...I miss the good old times! :-)

Is this the IBM and/or tandy version of the game? I have the amiga version, and this is most certainly not the amiga version. I do like how this one looks though.

Reminds me of Project Nomad....if the one you were referring to that this other person is doing was that I would love to watch that as well! ^^

I played a later game similar to this called Solar Winds.

That's fine, you can prefer the Genesis version. You can prefer the Star Wars rereleases, with CGI Jabba the Hutt wandering around in the first film too, it's your call.

I loved this when i was a kid... do you know a game that similar?

great game, wanna see more of it :P

So, yea. I am very interested in how this game is supposed to be played.

Heh, 1986 - long before bidet-seats were in-vogue. Besides, this being a space-themed game, why didn't Starflight give a memorial eulogy to the crew of the Challenger? Also, how soon until we see your first LP of the Washington Scenario on Panzer General? When I was about the age you were when you played Starflight, I was fascinated at the scenario in Washington but never won it. It had to be the hardest one ever.

Epic game in 86. Epic game in 18.

I was extremely stoked to watch this and then I heard the beeping music... Sad. I grew up on Starflight for Genisis and the music is epic(ish). I'll still probably watch though.

"IBM, Tandy ,and amiga"?? Did you not forgot the Brand that actually STARTED video gaming?! THE ATARI!!! This game played Very well on the Atari ST! Actually, now watching more of your video, the Atari ST version has noticeably better graphics.

thank you your great

Think they'll ever make this available on iPad?

I have this Game for the Commodore 64.

Back when EA really distribute good games!