Star Avenger 4
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1996
Levels: ?
Author: Adam Tyner, Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Star Avenger, Star Avenger II, Star Avenger III
After the first two games, Star Avenger turns into a series of sketches. The third game gets caught up in an epic ambition, and then rests after establishing the basic idea that it will be all about variety. Star Avenger 4 sticks to one idea, and uses only a single level to explore it, but it makes more of that idea than any previous Star Avenger game and indeed sets up a model for future space shooters to follow.
Mechanics and narrative flow -- Choplifter crossed with Space Invaders. Rescue stranded people and bring them home. More than just a shooter.
Mechanically it's just a lock-and-key situation, but thematically, experientially it feels fresh and nuanced. Lends weight, purpose, consequence to the player's action. Shooting for a reason. Playing for a reason. It's functional, in order to protect the player long enough to ferry precious cargo.
This seems to follow up on the third level in Star Avenger III.
Presentation -- character shadows. Moonscape with layered perspective, demonstrating the bleak loneliness of the player's journey. Besides the player's character there's nothing out there, no one to turn to. Makes the player's mission, to rescue a small group of people and cart them across that landscape to safety, feel significant. Contextualizing the firepower with the character sprite and its animation.
It's unclear whether this came before or after Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, but we have the same shadow concept in play here.
Story
N/A
Instructions
Destroy or avoid the alien invaders!
Scout the lunar surface; try to rescue the research scientists, and return them to the lunar base.
- Right/Left arrows: drive in those directions
- Enter: Fire missile upward
Credits
By Alan Caudel and Adam Tyner.
Availability
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including the following:
- Alan!
- Alan B-Day
- Alan '95
- Alan '96
- Bear Fun Show
- Benny
- Bone!
- CGA Hell
- Doom
- Off The Page
- DD4: Canadian Boxing Day
- Godzilla
- Jon '95
- Kozmo Kat
- The Legend of Budd
- Mr. Berkel Derkel!
- Mister Spiff IV
- Ninja
- Palladia: The Game
- Power Budd!
- Power Flux
- Robo-Wars
- Ski
- Star Avenger
- Star Avenger III
- Star Avenger 4
- Star Wars
- Stickman!!! Die
- Trees
- Twister, argh!
- What the...?!?
Links
Downloads
- Star Avenger 4 (87 kB)
