Moonspeak Starfire translated to English

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

After about a year of work, the translation for Starfire is finally available.

This game has been on my radar for a while, and it was suspiciously absent in the Codex interviews with Winston Douglas Wood and Toshio Sato. After asking Winston Douglas Wood about it directly, turns out he had no idea it actually came out. After the Matt Chat interview, MrRichard999 and I teamed up to translate Starfire and Phantasie IV, making them playable to the rest of the world, as well as their creator.



Starfire initially started as a successor to Star Command around ~1990, but after a while Mr. Wood was dropped from the project and the game got reworked into a dungeon/space shooter RPG running on the Might & Magic 3 engine. The final game seems to have very little in common with the original vision, but it doesn't make it any less interesting. In fact, I'm still intrigued about what happened behind the scenes, but my attempts to look into it further resulted in dead ends.

The translation is compatible with both the 16-color version and the butt-ugly 256-color version. Please check the readme for instructions and gameplay-related tips -- trust me, you'll need them.

Download

PS: If you know a way to contact Toshio Sato, who directed Starfire and worked on other StarCraft Inc. projects, please let me know.

 

[RNGsus]

Thank you, zz and MrRichard999.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[MrRichard999]

Thank you, zz and MrRichard999.

Thanks! Phantasie IV will be the next one

 

[Zandig Slaytanic]

Thank you for this, very much appreciated.
Nice to see these obscure games being English translated. So many interesting PC-88 and PC-98 RPGs out there (like the Crimson series, Digital Devil Story, Last Armageddon, La Valeur, Herlesh, Lost Power, Xain/Sein Soft RPgs, etc, etc) that could use an English translation.

Went thru the first 2 levels and am now in the Mars Station (Intermission area). Everything good so far using the latest Neko Project 2 Fmgen emulator (22 June, 2021).
Something minor I noticed which I believe was on level 2....there is a " Y " missing from the word "YOU"

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Thank you for this, very much appreciated.
Nice to see these obscure games being English translated. So many interesting PC-88 and PC-98 RPGs out there (like the Crimson series, Digital Devil Story, Last Armageddon, La Valeur, Herlesh, Lost Power, Xain/Sein Soft RPgs, etc, etc) that could use an English translation.

Went thru the first 2 levels and am now in the Mars Station (Intermission area). Everything good so far using the latest Neko Project 2 Fmgen emulator (22 June, 2021).
Something minor I noticed which I believe was on level 2....there is a " Y " missing from the word "YOU"

Thank you for the report, I'll take another look at the game script. After looking at it, cramming it in, then editing it all the time, I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a character here and there.

 

[mondblut]

Nice job, but... where is an RPG in there? J or otherwise. It's a grid-based shooter like Space Hulk, or Hired Guns maybe. I don't see any stats or character development. In fact, enemies hardly ever move, and they only seem to attack in melee range, giving you zero reason not to shoot them from a distance unless you are really impatient (the number of shots to kill an enemy increases with every cell of range, but the ammo is infinite, so...)

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Nice job, but... where is an RPG in there? J or otherwise. It's a grid-based shooter like Space Hulk, or Hired Guns maybe. I don't see any stats or character development. In fact, enemies hardly ever move, and they only seem to attack in melee range, giving you zero reason not to shoot them from a distance unless you are really impatient (the number of shots to kill an enemy increases with every cell of range, but the ammo is infinite, so...)

The RPG elements are somewhat simple -- you kill enemies to get cash, then spend it to upgrade your Motor Shell and strengthening your cells (basically, boosting both HP bars as well as attack/defence power), as well as new equipment.

This is only available once you acquire your own ship later in the game. The ship can also be upgraded, but only at fixed locations that you find as you progress through the story.

 

[mondblut]

Don't think I will... But, staying hopeful for Phantasie 4!

 

[Mustawd]

Great job ZZ. Big Kudos.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Don't think I will... But, staying hopeful for Phantasie 4!

Phantasie IV is a more complex game. Starfire... the final game seems like a different concept altogether with little in common from the original design by Winston Douglas Wood -- only some aspects of the setting (alien race, colony names...) remain. The design notes that I've seen suggest that it would be a successor to Star Command and it would use top-down perspective for ingame dungeons, but it's hard to give an exact answer on how it would play.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I strongly suggest playing the 16-color version, as the 256-color version is butt-ugly.

I was thinking "Come on, how can that possibly be true".

Then I saw this:

Oh yeah, Phantasie 4 would be awesome. Is there a huge difference between 16 & 256 versions of starfire?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I strongly suggest playing the 16-color version, as the 256-color version is butt-ugly.

I was thinking "Come on, how can that possibly be true".

Then I saw this:

Oh yeah, Phantasie 4 would be awesome. Is there a huge difference between 16 & 256 versions of starfire?

Phantasie IV is coming, Richard is working on it.
And no, the only difference is the color palette and more elaborate shooting effects in 256-color version.