Ebonstar is pretty much summed up in one word; addictive and fun. OK that's two words but you get the idea...
With its multiplayer mode and impressive depth of play, and considering this is a game that was released in 1988, this game should have been a classic. I suppose the only reason it hasn't achieved classic status is the fact that well, face it, the Amiga wasn't that much of a mainstream computer/console. In fact, other than myself and a close group of another friend (a total of two people) I knew of no one else who actually owned it.
Ebonstar is pretty much summed up in one word; addictive and fun. OK that's two words but you get the idea...
With its multiplayer mode and impressive depth of play, and considering this is a game that was released in 1988, this game should have been a classic. I suppose the only reason it hasn't achieved classic status is the fact that well, face it, the Amiga wasn't that much of a mainstream computer/console. In fact, other than myself and a close group of another friend (a total of two people) I knew of no one else who actually owned it.
I imagine that if Ebonstar had been released for say, the NES or SNES, it would have been included in some of the late releases of
Classic collections.
The 1980’s were times of great games that had nice game play about them, after all we didn’t have 3D GPUs and a Gigabyte of ram was the stuff of IBM’s Deep Blue. Game developers had to actually design a game from the ground up, not just make a 3D rendition of an arbitrary activity like say: Curling!
Some superb games were designed in those times, Nibbler, Burger Time, games that actually depended on the imagination of the designers.
Ebonstar is in a certain way, the precursor to Zoop!, which is a similar game that was released in the early 1990s on the Game Boy, Game Gear, Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh.
Ebonstar is simple; force your opponents to fall into a vortex or black hole. The key though is that you can’t just shoot them, which would be too simple, what you must do with your weapon is bounce them into this vortex and be the last to survive, but wait, it doesn’t end there…
The vortex has a rotating satellite that once lined up correctly and shot, blows up the vortex taking you to the next level of play.
The graphics are very interesting considering its age, there are four triangular ships and a grid with an inwards cone similar to the Simpsons 3D episode.
Another nice touch is the fact that if you take too long before successfully blowing up the vortex, an invincible foe will appear and although it can be coaxed into the vortex, it cannot be killed by shooting it.
With its depth and great addictiveness it’s very surprising what Ebonstar hasn’t been ported to –pardon the pun- portable consoles like the GameBoy Advance or Nintendo DS. It sure has all the prerequisites to be a Nintendo licensed game!
In fact, with its four player mode, I wonder what Nintendo’s developers are waiting for to release it on the DS and make it an online playable game like Mario Kart DS.
