Starflight

The Good
This game had everything going for it. It had character development, ship building, exploring, resource gathering, and space combat. It had hundreds of hours of gameplay, which is so hard to find in a game today. It had the endearing quality of "just one more hour before I quit" addictiveness. And all of this gameplay fit on two 360K disks. Game companies of today should take a lesson from this. I still consider this game my all time favorite, and it is 14 years old now. Hard to believe it has been that long, (and don't include the sequel, because it wasn't even half as good) and EA has never produced an update of any kind. I remember reading some time ago back in '94 that they were going to be producing Starflight 3, but nothing ever came of it. Everytime I buy an EA game, I put on my warranty card's additional comments field to "make a quality Starflight update".

The Bad
That I just wanted more. I know this sounds greedy, but I couldn't believe the game was over when I blew up the grey planet. I kept looking for the next challenge, but that was it. You could keep playing, but by that point in time, your ship was fairly invincible, and you had more than enough money to keep you going. I felt that a part of my life was gone, and wished that there was more. I guess that this isn't a bad thing, but just thought the people should know.

The Bottom Line
Think of this game as the game that spawned Privateer, Privateer 2, the Star Control Series, Homeworld, Independence War, and many others. It encompasses resource gathering, space travel, space combat, crew development, and exploration. Everything you would find in a classic Star Trek episode. I even named my crew after the Enterprise crew members.