Starion is set in the far-distant future. The
story takes place in the year 2010 and you play the
role of Starion, a brilliant rookie fresh from the space
academy. Because you're so good (?) you've been trusted
with the one and only timeship -- your mission: to rectify
the devastation wrought in the space-time continuum
by evil aliens. What these revolting specimens have
done is to remove items of historical significance from
important events, causing trouble throughout history.
To
rectify this you have to go and retrieve the stolen
items by patrolling the outer regions of space, intercepting
and destroying the alien ships. As you destroy each
enemy ship, it reassembles and forms a letter which
must be collected and stowed aboard your ship. Later,
when you have collected the required number of letters,
you are asked to unscramble the resulting anagram to
make a well known word that fits a given period in time.
Having
destroyed an alien time bandit, there's a
letter N to be collected -- or is it a Z?
When
you have unscrambled the word you must locate the entrance
to a time warp and fly into it, whereupon a time grid
is displayed. Each grid has nine time zones and you
must decide which of the time zones contains the historical
event that your cargo fits. For example, were it V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
you might think of Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar
-- then again, you might not!
Having
solved the problem, you are rewarded with fresh oxygen
and fuel enabling you to fly off and solve the next
time zone. However, should your cargo not fit the current
problem, then you are forced to attack other enemy ships
found within that zone to allow you to gain enough energy
to escape and find the correct zone.
To
give you some idea of the task ahead, here's the nature
of the space-time continuum. In all there are 3 time
blocks, within each block there are 9 time grids, each
time grid has 9 time zones and space has 3 dimensions.
If you're good at maths then you'll be able to work
out that Starion has 243 time zones in all.
After
correcting history in the 9 zones of a grid you gain
access to the next one by solving the anagram made from
the first letter of each of the zone words. Access to
the next block requires the first letter of each of
the grid words to be solved. To reach 'event zero' and
the ultimate rank of 'creator' the player must form
the password from the first and last letters of each
of the three grid words.
If
this begins to sound like an educational program, don't
panic. The screen display shows instantly that this
is a 3D space arcade game. The cockpit view uses vector
3D to describe the enemy ships and letters. Below, the
instrument panel indicates details on speed, hull temperature,
enemy location, pitch, role, yaw, fuel and oxygen levels.
The bi-planar scanners show the location of other objects,
horizontally and vertically, be they ships, mines, missiles
or fuel debris.
Above
the scanners the year of the current time zone is shown,
vital when trying to solve the time zone problems. The
hull temperature is also vital because the outside temperature
increases with speed and excessive laser fire. The hull
can also be destroyed by direct hits from enemy weapons
or collision with space rubbish. The general debris
cannot be destroyed so you must steer around it.
Points
are awarded in accordance with the speed with which
the player completes each stage of the game, as well
as for the destruction of enemy targets. The player
is promoted depending on the number of zones, grids
and blocks that have been solved.
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