THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE



STARQUAKE



PUBLISHER

Bubble Bus



AUTHOR

Stephen Crow



YEAR

1985



CATEGORY

Platform



DESCRIPTION

Explore a large colourful maze, finding the correct objects to

save the Earth.



CONTROLS

Redefinable keys, plus Kempston, Sinclair and Cursor joysticks.



INSTRUCTIONS

In order to save the Earth from a rogue planet, you must take

control of BLOB (Bio-Logically Operated Being) and repair the

planet's core. At the start of the game you have just crash

landed on the planet and must explore the flick-screen play-area

to find the core. Once at the core you will notice it looks like

a number of objects. Collecting these objects and bringing them

to the core will repair it, once piece at a time, until the whole

thing is complete.



Nasty flying beasts are out to get you, and you are equipped with

a laser (with limited energy) to kill them. Most nasties will

drain your energy apart from the ones that look like spinning

tops, which will destroy you immediately! You are also given a

supply of bridges, which you can build beneath you to form

platforms up to unreachable sections.  However, these bridges

don't last long and soon crumble away to nothing!  Further

supplies of energy, laser and bridges can be picked up along the

way. 



To make things easier for BLOB, he can use the various pieces of

equipment scattered around the place. The most useful are the

flying platforms. Step on one of these and push UP and you'll

take off! Flying around the place is much easier than walking,

but you can't manipulate objects whilst using a platform, you

must find somewhere to land first!  Teleports are also a useful

way of moving around, providing a handy short cut back to the

core! In order to open some doors you will need to find a key

(which is in a different place every game), but by far the most

useful item in the whole game is the access card. Once found,

this will allow you to use the security doors which sometimes

block your way, and will also allow you to use the trading

pyramids. The pyramids will allow you to trade one of your

objects for a more useful one - more often than not one of the 

objects needed to repair the core!



Along the way, BLOB will encounter many different things,

including vacuum tubes (which suck him up to higher levels), weak

floors (which he can smash by falling on them from a height), and

secret passages (which are just big enough for BLOB to walk

through and lead to new and exciting places!).



INLAY CARD TEXT





CHEATS

Use the Multiface to enter POKE 50274,0 for infinite lives and/or



POKE 54505,201 for infinite energy.



Here is a complete list of the teleport codes, which may prove

useful -



EXIAL, VEROX, RAMIX, TULSA, ASOIC, DELTA, QUAKE (takes you

straight to the core), ALGOL, EXIAL, KYZIA, ULTRA, IRAGE, OKTUP,

SONIQ, AMIGA, AMAHA.



SEQUELS/PREQUELS

None.



SCORES RECEIVED

Did pretty well as far as I can remember, but I don't have any

magazines on hand.



URL

Starquake is widely available at most sites. Here's one that

definitely works:



ftp://ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/s/starquak.zip





GENERAL FACTS

Steve Crow previously wrote Wizard's Lair (an Atic Atac clone)

for Bubble Bus. He went on to work for Hewson and wrote/co-wrote

several other games such as Firelord and Zynaps.



This is one of the few games that includes an "exit the game"

option on the main menu! Pressing it displays a fun picture and

then resets your Speccy!



Starquake was successfully converted to many other formats

included the "new and exciting at the time" Atari ST and Amiga.

In my opinion, though, none of the other versions matched the

playability of the Speccy original!  The teleport codes were

different in every version.



The original tape version had a very interesting loader. The

loading lines in the border were black and blue until about three

quarters of the way through loading, whereupon they burst into

multicoloured life.



NOTES

Starquake isn't very difficult to finish (I can do it every time

now), but the important thing is that it always remains fun to

play. The objects are randomly placed every game, so there's no

chance of getting bored. It's fast, it's varied, it's fun, it's

colourful, it's very playable. What more could you ask for?

Starquake was inspired by a hundred other games and spawned a

hundred clones, but I still find this the best of a (rather

large) bunch.















































