The Commodore 64 version of Starglider was ported by Solid Image and published by Rainbird in 1986. Unfortunately, the developers didn’t manage to convert Starglider‘s unique control method over to the C64 – instead they chose to use a fixed aiming reticule in the centre of the screen, and this results in a rather degraded gameplay experience.

Even the Spectrum version of Starglider has the moving reticule, and the ability to control the ship with the reticule’s movement, so the developers choosing to ignore that and do their own thing is disappointing, and it pretty much ruins the game.

I did look to see if there were maybe alternate control methods that could be used, and even read the manual, but to no avail. There’s one control method, and you have to use that. The developers could have at least tried to implement the original Starglider control system, and maybe even have provided mouse support (the C64 did have mice available for it), but they instead went the lazy route.

The C64 version of Starglider is also the slowest. You get maybe two frames a second – slightly more if there’s nothing on-screen, and slightly less if there’s more – and playing the game is a somewhat turgid experience. The extremely limited draw distance, and the confusing radar, makes finding bases and energy towers difficult. And for my first hour of play I didn’t even see a bird-like Starglider at all (they’re usually in your face and shooting at you, from the very beginning of the game).

Some of the polygonal objects have had their shapes changed; the energy bar depletes far too quickly, and the music on the title screen is one of the worst tunes I’ve ever heard on the C64. The game does at least have name entry and a high score table.

While I can put up with the slow frame rates, I did not like the fixed control system, because it takes the most unique aspect of Starglider and makes it like every other cockpit shooter on the market. I also didn’t like the confusing radar (it’s not like that in other versions of the game), or any of the other changes, which make playing the game more difficult. In my opinion, developer Solid Image definitely dropped the ball on this conversion.

If you want to play Starglider how it was meant to be played, I recommend the original Atari ST version, or the Amstrad and ZX Spectrum versions, all of which are far superior to this.

More: Starglider on Wikipedia
More: Starglider on CSDb