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.