Starflight

Starflight, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Binary Systems in 1986, placed gamers as the Captain of a state-of-the-art starship created to rescue a dying homeworld in a seemingly barren galaxy. Starflight, the "result of 20 man years" of work, used a revolutionary in-game planetary generation system that enabled the galaxy to comprise of thousands of explorable planets - all on two 360k diskettes. Electronic Arts released the game originally for the PC and Tandy, followed by an Amiga release in 1989, an Atari ST release in 1990, and finally a revamped Sega Genesis version in 1991.

In a brilliant design decision, Binary Systems built Starflight so that the initial plot seemed, at first, fairly one-dimensional and linear. The end result, however, consisted of space opera of epic proportions containing shocking plot twists and deep mysteries. The RPG-esque gameplay consisted largely of mining, alien diplomacy, and ship combat and managed to enable gamers to, in a sense, re-enact scenes remarkably similar to Star Trek. Moreover, the game contained a subtle underlevel of humor, such as an encounter with the Starship Enterprise, infrequent but consistent messages between two disgruntled smugglers, and a race using binary code to reveal the telephone number of the developers' home office.

Starflight is widely known among the game industry as being one of the games responsible for pioneering the open-ended gameplay more modernly featured in games such as Grand Theft Auto

Starflight also spawned a sequel, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, and was very much the spiritual predecessor to the more popular, but invaribly similar, Star Control 2. One of the games' head designers, Greg Johnson, later crafted the Toejam & Earl series for Sega.