#115 Rebelstar

Posted: 29th January 2019 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , ,

757th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: ZX Spectrum
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Julian Gollop
Publisher: Firebird Software

I’ve been staring at the Rebelstar series for a while. The list has a sequel in name only, in that it’s a tactical game with the same name, but not necessarily many other links between them. I start off with the 80s Spectrum version though, and just looking at the screenshots it seems clumsy – we’re still far away from the elegance of Final Fantasy Tactics or even the tactical combat from the original Fallout. Instead, I guess we get the next stepping stone to that level.

Our Thoughts

So the basic idea behind the game is that you have a strike team infiltrating a base to destroy it or get something out of it? Most of this would be in the manual, which I didn’t really see, so I mostly just ran around. It was also the two player version of the game I got my hands on, so there was no AI enemy. It meant that I just ran around trying things anyway – although that’s not really that different from most games I play for this list.

Either way, the options here seemed a bit vague – you need to infiltrate and shoot things, until you can destroy the cores, but it feels like a bunch of things would be interactive if I could get that far.ย  It feels like it should be more interactive and give you options, but I couldn’t spot any in there and struggled to comprehend the game. Obviously, the interface hasn’t aged well – I feel like a decent remake would make this an interesting game that wouldn’t be too long, but sadly that option isn’t here now.

  1. […] Rebelstar: Tactical Command is a clear example of a sequel in name only. While both the original Rebelstar and this game are tactical games, there isn’t a clear link in storyline or special mechanics […]