Starblazer is a Star Trek style game, written in a combination of BASIC and machine language. You pilot the USS Wasp (a ship that has been trapped in a "negative dimension time warp" for a long time) and upon your escape your return to your home galaxy (Spectrum Galaxy) only to find that it has been overrun by Xyclons. Your mission, as the only ship left capable of taking on the invaders, is to rid the galaxy of the Xyclons. The game features multiple skill levels, and both an "Original" map or a randomly generated New map (warning: this can take up to 8 minutes, without the speedup POKE's).
The game runs in the low res graphics/text mode, and crams a lot of information onto it's main screen. Like many such games of this type, it has a central map showing your local area, but it also has smaller viewports showing forward, back, left and right views from your ship. It has a power levels reading on the right hand side that shows the amount of power for various systems on the ship (as well as the number of mines, nuclear torpedoes, etc.) that your ship is carrying and how many Xyclons you have destroyed. It also has some "emergency" keys that you can hit - X for Warp Escape and Q for the experimental Q-Ray (a last resort as may zap the enemies, or it may damage/kill you).
Somewhat unique to this game is that you need to assign the amount of power to all of these systems and balance them for your situation as best you can; most Star Trek type game only have you worry about the power for shields and phasers (the manual mentions that your ship is old and not in the best of shape; you will need to adjust these quite a bit). The main viewscreen also shows your relative coordinates and a very broad hint as to the location of the only starbase left (which is randomly placed each game and you have to find in order to restock your ship and energy). At this point it should be mentioned that the Z axis is represented by the color of objects that appear in your viewport - there are 16 points on this axis, and it uses all 8 of the Coco's colors twice to represent which one you are currently in.
The lower left of the screen is your little command window - hitting C will give you a list of each command (one at a time) in that window. This is the one place in the game that is NOT in real time; gameplay But since the game is played in real time, you may want to have the manual (or notes) handy instead. Special messages will also appear here as status reports, etc from the ship while you play. Above left of that is a Power (PWR) indicator; it will have a "+" or "-" to the left of it when you are repowering functions (a plus means that you increase your power by 1, a minus means it will drop by a random amount between 1 and 4). Since the main part of the game is BASIC, it can be paused with the normal There is much more to the game than described above, so a player should go through the manual to learn the many nuances as well as things that go far beyond most games of this type from this era. The game does offer Saving a game in progress and restoring it later (to either disk or cassette). It also uses sound and low resolution graphics effects for various things (like warping). Status readouts (like when you request Intelligence) can flash by quickly; hold the key down that brings it up to keep the information on the screen longer. And lastly, the manual has some advice for the budding pilot:
"The strategy is simple, though not so simple to carry out. Find your starbase right away. Then, working from there, clear one sector at a time free from Xyclons."
Title: Starblazer Author: Phil Keller Publisher: Ark Royal Games Released: September 1983 Requires: Color Computer 1 or 2, Extended BASIC, 32K RAM