THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE

DARKSTAR

PUBLISHER
Design Design

AUTHOR
programmed by Simon (Psi) Brattell, Neil (Mott) Mottershead and
Gwaham, all from Design Design.

YEAR
1985

DESCRIPTION

CONTROLS

INSTRUCTIONS
Please see the inlay card text.

CHEATS
One high score table consisted of the lyrics to a song.  This
song gave away the password to an encrypted program also supplied
with Dark Star.  The song was "Everyone's A Nervous Wreck", from
the Supertramp album "Breakfast In America".  The password
"Everyone's A Nervous Wreck" had to be typed exactly - even the
apostrophe.  It was released to the general world through CRASH
magazine, who DesDes quite liked, unlike Computer & Video Games,
who DesDes despised. As you will see from reading Spectacle!


SEQUELS/PREQUELS
The sequel to Dark Star was called Forbidden Planet.

INLAY CARD TEXT
If it moves, shoot it.
If it doesn't move - shoot it anyway.
If it's sqaure - fly through it.


SCORES RECEIVED

URL
ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/d/darkstar.zip

GENERAL FACTS

NOTES
Design Design are/were one of the weirdest Software houses.  If
their games had one fault, it was that they were just too damn
slick.  Dark Star is a prime example.  The programming involved
was so slick and fast, the graphics would slide past you before
you;d even realsed what was going on.  It did have the wildest
front end however, keys could be pressed that weren't supposed
to be pressed, to get hidden options, and woe betide anybody who
tried to print the high scores without a printer attached...

The High scores were always a good read - there were generally
three/four different high scores randomly chosen when the game
loaded.  Should you get on a Dark Starhigh score table, try
typing any of the following:

Design Design software
Invasion of the body snatchas
Rommels Revenge
Computer and Video Games
(and many more!)