Star Voyager (NES) review "Shooters created during the 8-bit era had one thing in common – they were all primitive. Hell, even overhead shooters today can be considered primitive. Although they are generally challenging and might sometimes feature innovative and/or creative ideas, they all have a very simple concept – shoot everything that moves and don’t get shot while attempting to rack up the highest score possible. Some might contain power ups and other neat additions, but you can’t get a more basic premise then th..."

Shooters created during the 8-bit era had one thing in common – they were all primitive. Hell, even overhead shooters today can be considered primitive. Although they are generally challenging and might sometimes feature innovative and/or creative ideas, they all have a very simple concept – shoot everything that moves and don’t get shot while attempting to rack up the highest score possible. Some might contain power ups and other neat additions, but you can’t get a more basic premise then that of an overhead shooter.

Star Voyager takes a shooter’s simple concept and adds strategic elements, turning it into a complex game. Instead of moving on a linear path, you have a map that you must follow. This map highlights all of the enemies, fuel stations, planets (where you can stop to power up your ship), and obstacles such as asteroid belts. You must use this map to destroy all of the enemy ships; and the game does a great job at sending you on a journey through the galaxy.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

WRONG. Star Voyager is unique but horrible; the game’s repetitiveness makes it unplayable. Despite taking place in a huge, detailed galaxy, there isn’t much to do. Every once in a while you will stumble across an enemy to attack. You might destroy it, but it might get away. If the latter happens (the situation 98% of the time) you are sent on a wild goose chase across the galaxy to catch it. When the enemy is finally defeated another enemy will appear somewhere, and that will keep on happening for what seems to be eternity. The only noticeable difference is that the enemies get faster and are more hits to take down. You are now faced with two choices.

1. Defeat the next enemy.
2. Fly through the boring galaxy and do nothing, except for re-fuelling your ship when necessary.

And that’s it.

Even with the fancy map I can’t recommend Star Voyager to anyone. There is nothing enjoyable about flying through a dull galaxy from planet to planet while fighting the occasional boring enemy along the way. Even the most diehard Star Wars or Star Trek nerds won’t find anything enjoyable from Star Voyager. Any game, regardless of the console can give you a more thrilling experience than Star Voyager will.

Community review by Halon (January 04, 2008) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.