User:Anerisys/Documents/Star Heritage
| Star Heritage | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Step Creative Group |
| Programmer(s) | Sergey Shishlyannikov |
| Artist(s) | Dmitriy Usmanov |
| Writer(s) | Yuriy Matveev |
| Composer(s) | Yuriy Matveev |
| Platform(s) | ZX Spectrum (TR-DOS) |
| Release | ZX Spectrum
|
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Star Heritage: Black Corbra (Russian: Звёздное Наследие: Чёрная Кобра, romanized: Zvezdnoe Nasledie: Chernaya Kobra), also known as Star Inheritance: Black Cobra is a graphical text adventure developed by Step Creative Group of Russia. It was released on a 5+1⁄4 floppy disk for ZX Spectrum clones with the TR-DOS operating system and immediately gained a success unusual for that time—more than 3000 legal copies were sold.[1].
Plot
editThe game is set in the Elite universe, and the player assumes the role of a secret agent of The Central Union of Human Colonies who crash-lands on an unknown planet after his spaceship is attacked by an Artang patrol.
Gameplay
editThe game world is divided into multiple locations, which are presented to the player with an image and a description. The player enters commands via a system of menus and receives back textual and graphical responses. Commands involving up to two objects are supported, e.g. "USE KEY with DOOR" will open the door with the key.
The locations are "square" and may have exits to adjacent locations in the North, East, South, and West. Travelling between two locations takes one quarter of an astronomical day, so that the hero can arrive at them at Morning, Noon, Evening, or Night. The time of day is vital as it affects the behaviour of the various non-player characters, e.g. predators tend to be active at night, when people usually sleep.
«Star Heritage» employs RPG elements by giving the player characteristics like Power, Stamina, Health, and Experience, which change in the process of the game and determine his ability to fight and survive. Extended walking without a rest causes a loss of Health, as does starving. In order to succeed the player must plan ahead to synchronize with the day-night cycle of the game world to get to the right place at the right time, save his resources, like food and medicine, and take care of his health by resting where and when it is safe.
Medium
edit«Star Heritage» was released on a 5" TR-DOS disk and occupied the most of it, making it one of the largest games for the ZX Spectrum. Unlike the majority of Western games, which were distributed on audio cassettes and had to be small enough to fit into 48kb or 128kb of RAM, «Star Heritage» loaded new portions of the game world as the player moved on and provided four slots to save the progress for resuming later.
Electronic press
editA demo version and an introductory novel were published on the 3rd of February, 1995 in the 10th issue of the Spectrofon electronic magazine[2] which was distributed on TR-DOS disks. The demo contained the complete first chapter of the game except for a rudimentary implementation of combat mode. In letters to Spectrofon[3] the readers praised it as an excellent game, and all the more so because it was one of the very first Russian adventures and many players didn't know English well enough to play Western games of the genre.
English translations
edit- A team of enthusiasts named R-LAB created an English language version for Game Boy Color, completely replacing the music and the GFX. After an unsuccessful attempt to find a publisher they made the game freely distributable.[4]
- Another group of Spectrum fans made an English version of the original demo[5] and will consider translating the full version if there is enough demand from the Spectrum community, where it had only limited, but very positive, feedback[6][7]
References
edit- ^ [1] An article on the PC-remake discussing also its ancestor and including an interview with the founders of Step CG (in Russian)
- ^ [2] An article in issue 10 of Spectrofon about the newly released demo version of «Star Heritage» (in Russian)
- ^ [3] An article in issue 12 of Spectrofon reviewing readers' feedback on the «Star Heritage» demo (in Russian)
- ^ [4] Star Heritage for GameBoy Color (Visual_Boy_Advance)
- ^ [5] Spectrum section of IFArchive, see shdemo.zip (Fuse, or any other emulator supporting TR-DOS images (.trd))
- ^ [6] A thread at the World of Spectrum forum dedicated to translation project
- ^ [7] A thread at the World of Spectrum forum announcing release of the translated demo