InterActive Vision is a very small programming company based in the country of Denmark. InterActive Vision specializes in action games and flight simulations, and has produced many offerings for both the Commodore C64 and the ZX Spectrum. Wingstar is a science fiction themed futuristic shooter that became one of InterActive Vision’s first offerings ported to the PC format.
The premise of Wingstar is very simplistic and straightforward. The protagonist of the game…not exactly a hero…is found guilty of crimes against the government of the vast space empire.
The sentence for these crimes will send the user to the front line of the great battles the empire is waging against the new planets that are constantly being discovered and usurped on the outskirts of the empire’s realm.
InterActive Vision’s Wingstar is a very straightforward science fiction shooter that was released for purchase in the middle nineties. The overall game play works similar, if not identically to all of the other top-down scrolling vertical shooters on the market. The user must fly through level after level of space-themed enemies. The levels are mostly made of the same types of enemies coming in different patterns on top of different colourful backgrounds as opposed to radically different enemy space craft for each stage.
The
user has a choice of two types of space ship with which to tackle the missions assigned to him or her by the empire. There is virtually no difference in the ships with the exception of their looks. Both have primarily the same firepower and attack ratings, making the selection of ships purely a matter of personal preference. Both ships fly through the levels, blasting enemies that come at them and picking up numerous power-up items. The items will increase the ships’ firepower, add shields, increase speed and so forth…standard space shooter power ups. There are over fifty weapons variations and upgrades, giving it nice replayability and variation. If the user is lucky enough to make it to the end of each stage, he will face a nicely done and more powerful boss ship.
Wingstar also features nice sound and graphics, especially for its time. It is not a Class A shooter, but it is still very well worth playing and features a lot of action and a stimulating fast pace. It also features five different difficulty settings, which will help tailor it to gamers of varying experience with science fiction shooters. As a whole, InterActive Vision’s Wingstar comes highly recommended for download.
