Star Voyager
System: NES
Release Date: September 1987
Developer: ASCII Entertainment
Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment
Genre: Flight Sim
You’ve got to be kidding me with Star Voyager. You know, I bet it’s games like these that made Nintendo set the publishing rules of five a year, or whatever it was. Have you ever played Star Voyager before? Probably not. And that’s a good thing. Your goal is to save the galaxy from bad guys!
You start off in space. You can accelerate your ship by holding the B Button. You navigat by setting your gyro compass to a number and letter combination. You have a goal of killing all the bad guys in the galaxy. You do that with your lasers that shoot with the A Button. Just don’t accidentally destroy a star base! You can find bad guys from the star map on the information screen, which you access with the Select Button.
This is by far the most difficult to get into game I’ve played on the NES. It took me ten minutes or so to stumble into some enemies. They killed me in less than 30 seconds. I tried again with a better idea of how to get to them. I had my shields up this time. They killed me in 45 seconds. I tried one more time and died one more time. Then I was done.
Do yourself a favor, stay far, far away from this. It has no redeeming value on the surface. There might be something way down in there, but I doubt it.
Graphics: 0.5
Graphics are incredibly plain. I like the starship in the opening vignette.
Sound: 1.0
The opening music is a quite pleasant melody, but very scratchy. The sound effects are super annoying, especially the warp sounds.
Gameplay: 0.0
There’s no explanation on what to do and the manual isn’t much help.
Difficulty: 0.0
I met some bad guys, killed some, but was quickly overrun. I see that this game can be beaten, but I sure won’t be the one to do it.
Fun Factor: 0.0
I didn’t have fun at all. I kept playing to find something, but it wasn’t there.
Overall Grade: 0.3
Star Voyager earns an E and ties for the lowest game we’ve seen so far. Someone tell me why this game exists.