Trivia
I wish to correct some misconceptions and misstatements that were made concerning Star Fleet II in the previous trivia and reviews. As the author of the game and the President of Interstel at the time it was released, I can be considered as the ultimate authority.
1. Quality Assurance was important during the development of SF2. We had about two dozen playtesters who tested it for 1-2 years during its final development and I have volumes of bug reports with fixes. However, SF2 was a very, very complex game and despite our best efforts, the testing was inadequate due to the almost limitless situations and diversity of PC machines/configurations that it could be run on. We were under pressure from EA to release it in time for Christmas 1989 and when it was released, I thought it was ready. However, with tens of thousands of users instead of two dozen, many more bugs were found.
2. The planetary invasion module did work in the initial Version 1.0 - we would not have released it if it hadn't. However, we later found out that some machines or DOS versions had problems with it, which was corrected in the later versions.
3. SF2 was NOT the cause of Interstel's demise, which was instead the result of a hostile takeover bid that caused me to leave the company in 1990 and a change of ownership by 1991. Bad management and marketing decisions caused Interstel to disappear in 1992 with the IRS hunting for its current owner.
4. There was never a dispute between Interstel and EA, at least through 1990 when I was with the company. I don't know what happened after that.
5. Version 1.5 of SF2 was released as an update in 1990 and corrected nearly all the bugs that have been reported (it is available from several sources online). Not only did it fix bugs, but it also added many enhancements to the game that were based on experience playing it and that I did not have time to put into the original version. Many, many people (including myself) have completed Version 1.5 all the through to the rank of Imperial Tribune (i.e., all 35 missions) so it is possible. However, the game becomes very challenging and cannot be won without the proper tactics.
Ports of the game were also planned for Amiga/ST and C64. The latter was cancelled due to the game's bad reputation, while the late Brett Keeton was unable to squeeze the game into the C64.
Basic outlines for no fewer than 5 sequels were drawn up by Trevor Sorensen before his legal battles with Electronic Arts.
Star Fleet I was Interstel's PC adapation of a popular Star Trek simulation for mainframe computers. For copyright reasons the Klingons were called Krellans in this game.
Interstel's port of another mainframe game, Empire, was supposed to be a detailed game of the simple planetary conquests presented in this game. The ground unit graphics are definatly similar to Empire.
This game was infamous for being released with so many bugs that it was unplayable. The patched version allowed you to get past the first rank but still had many lock up problems which prevented players from accessing entire portions of the game. Interstel would go bankrupt trying to fix this game.
In Computer Gaming World's 150th issue, this game is ranked as the 7th worst game of all time.
Contributed by
woods01 (156) on Mar 02, 2001.
