SunDog: Dogged

The ending of Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold reminded me that I still haven't played a proper space game. Galactic Empire doesn't count, Inca's weird and Space Vikings was unplayable. From the imminent future of the games I have on my list I see Elite and SunDog: Frozen Legacy. Both good choices, from the perspective of having not played them. Since I plan on doing Dungeon Master soon, I figure SunDog is the better option, since it comes from beloved British RPG company FTL. Its published by Accolade, best known for publishing Elvira and Bubsy. A sentence, I cannot believe I am the first to mention.

I had chosen the Atari ST version, because I wanted to enjoy it. There's also an Apple II version...yeah, not touching that one. This lead to a problem, as I seem to have a reoccurring problem with the platform. Every game I want to play crashes in some way whenever I start it up. European Space Simulator landed like a lead balloon, probably some mixture of chaos I don't remember. I seem to remember some other game not working either. Probably wasn't important. Every rip I found seems to crash upon starting in both Steem and Hatari. The two remake projects looked promising, but one was in closed beta with a NDA (!) and the other didn't work with any of the rips. Not going to lie, it didn't look good. Eventually, I found a rip that did work with the other remake. Here's hoping it was worth it.

The story, in the manual, is that the player is a slave for a group of rather disgusting aliens. The player is freed, thanks to his uncle dying. The player receives all his possessions and obligations, including that of constructing a colony for a group of space cultists. The only problem is we don't know where the colony is or where the space cultists are. With me so far? To accomplish this, I have to trade across the stars. Give credit, Elite wasn't released when the Apple II version came out, this is probably the first time we're supposed to accomplish a non-violent goal. This whole space racism thing is interesting, even if I suspect it won't appear again, but interesting. Even games today don't go into detail about the hatred one species can have for one another.

Very Star Trek Battles, possibly intentional, possibly not

The game itself starts me off with character creation, which is a simple stat selection and choosing my name. Then I can start up the game proper. I'm put in the titular ship. You can move around inside the ship, with certain sections doing what would be a menu command in later games. Those don't matter right now, what's important is finding something to sell. Unlike in more advanced games, planets aren't one monolithic entity you can buy and sell from at your leisure, no, planets have multiple cities and multiple buildings where you can buy stuff. I journey around this place in a sort of trawler, its not very fun to drive, and at first, pointless. It doesn't help that a lot of places are completely useless or difficult to enter.

Its only a modest charge, but who knows where town hall is

Depending on how you where you leave the thing, you can get a ticket. That's something that would happen in a lot of games if they were realistic, and yet...this is the first game I can think of that has such a thing happen. Its bizarre. I'm not sure if I care for it or not, it didn't help with my appreciation of the vehicle. The vehicle is quite necessary if you plan on getting cargo or fuel for your ship, because you can't carry a load of meat on your back. Or even enter the building. On the other hand, the vehicle can't enter other important buildings, like weapons, shields and bars. I don't know if its the only way to solve these issues, but food and rest are a concern and bars are the only real places I can see that solve it. 

There's nothing in the manual that tells me anything, this is just something you have to figure out

Returning to the ship, things become more confusing. The main components of the ship, being the engine, shield, weapons, probably something else I'm forgetting, can all be configured by the player. But when I'm screwing around with the engine, I notice one of the components is broken. If my suspicions are right...they can break in combat. Space combat is going to be fun. This has got to be the most realistic sci-fi game I've ever played, even if it isn't hard sci-fi.

This is a screenshot from my trek across the planet.

So I do what should be a quick, simple journey, a trip across the solar system. Actually, I was going to go to a different city, but you can only land at star ports. Whatever, whatever. Its a bit confusing, but eventually I grasp it...and when I do it starts the slowest trip across space I have seen. Apparently realism isn't a joke, I have to wait an in-game hour to get there, out of game minute. Jesus, I love Ironseed, a game with similar speed problems, but in that case, you're waiting to get stuff, you can leave at any point. I can't exactly ignore this, because I'm sure if I do I'll end up fighting some enemy ship that knocks the crap out of me.

I don't need much to bring my warp engine up to stuff, note the broken component there

Its even better than that, my ship disintegrates on my way there. That's right, this game, which starts you off simply enough, starts you off without the necessary components for interplanetary flight. Who expects a game to function that way? My first thought, after reloading, is that I just need some proper parts for the shield. While I'm out in the city again, I try to buy a burger, but I don't have any money out. I don't know where a bank is. I reload again and look around the ship, I need to figure out what items I need.

Look at that, shields are perfect...crap, this is going to be a long game

What's interesting about the ship system, is that each system has four parts. If its completely good, its green, if its got a quick replacement part in it, its yellow, if its missing anything, its dead. Each part of the system has four components, and you can move the components around in order to better facilitate your current needs. I suspect this will only be useful right now. So I fix up the shields to three parts. This doesn't activate it, the manual is most unhelpful, but at least I'm one away from success. Also, I try the interplanetary trip a second time, and almost make it that time. I don't know what I'm doing at this point and the manual is extremely unhelpful, usually just telling me basic stuff anyone could figure out. This is going to be annoying.

This Session: 1 hour