Space Station Oblivion - 1988 - MS-DOS Game Review

[@shdon]

Driller is one of the first games I bought as a kid. I totally suck at it and was never able to complete it, but it's always had a special place in my heart. I've even reverse engineered a lot of the Freescape engine and done a simple reimplementation of it, as well as contributed an absolutely tiny bit to the Freescape emulation in ScummVM.

[@msdosgamereviews]

With the walkthrough you might be able to complete it now?

[@shdon]

@@msdosgamereviews Probably not, as I had a walkthrough before 😁

[@jimmy21584]

It intrigues me that we could have seen a simple, low-poly, low-framerate Quake in the 80s; which still would have blown the minds of people at the time. I think what was missing was the accumulated knowledge of how to design and control FPSes.

[@msdosgamereviews]

This was the grand daddy of the FPS. As it was, the animations are not smooth, due to the low frame rate, which was in turn due to the low processing power of the lower end of PC that this game was aimed at. I played some flight simulators of the same era that had slightly higher frame rates, but with low colors and only PC speaker available the idea of a first person shooter was still a little in the future at this point in time.

[@k7a]

I'm always fascinated by early polygonal 3D games. One thing in particular that intrigues me is the option for hercules graphics. I can't help but wonder how that would look. I just imagine old vector display arcade games (which were the best).

[@msdosgamereviews]

Back in the day they really tried to cater for the computers that were out there. As computers were quite pricey, people tended to keep them around for longer, and wanted to get the maximum use out of their investments. The construction of the early home computers were quite robust, and made to last for a very long time.

[@k7a]

@@msdosgamereviews Very true, especially when "a very long time" was just a matter of a few years in that period of technology. Nowadays you can still play most games even on a 10 or 12 year old PC, but in the late 80s to early 90s just a few years was all it took to be completely left behind in some applications. Definitely don't miss that aspect of the era.

[@DropDeadFrederick]

As crazy as this is going to sound, even though the c64 version has less than 1 fps, Matt Gray's SID music track added a lot to the atmosphere of the game. I wish the DOS version of the game had the same music. :( Thankfully nowadays we can either run the game in a c64 emulator or use a hardware accelerator to speed it up to playable levels. :D

[@msdosgamereviews]

If you want to cheat a little, you could get hold of the sid file and a sid player and have the best of both worlds. :)

[@opa-age]

I think I remember it more as Driller

[@msdosgamereviews]

Yeah, the game was issued under that name as well. But, as this one has "Space Station Oblivion" in the title, it is going to stay that way. :)

[@NellWatson]

I recommend playing Freescape engine games in smoothe high res in SCUMMVM.

[@msdosgamereviews]

That is an interesting option!

[@williamchamberlain2263]

That's crazy

[@msdosgamereviews]

I know, right?

[@DeeDeeKL]

Space huh whoa? :-D Always Driller! ... Never knew that there is a MS-DOS version of it... looks like the Speccy version.. "I see no difference" (in the voice of a 8bit micro nerd)

[@msdosgamereviews]

Yeah, loads of people called it driller, but this seems to be the only version that I could get my hands on, and in the game itself it says Space Station Oblivion. Driller is a better title!

[@magrathean0]

dark side ..umm

[@msdosgamereviews]

Dark Side was a sequel to this game, and I reviewed that one already... I think?

[@magrathean0]

@@msdosgamereviews It's all a very long tome ago :) Cheers

[@lurkerrekrul]

I played this on the Amiga, but never got all that far. I knew the basic objective of placing the drills, but in some of the sectors, I had no idea what to do, what shooting the various stuff did, etc. I had a map that someone copied from a book for me, and I even made a printable version in Deluxe Paint. The map is actually a rough sphere. Well, an eight-sided sphere. Basically it looks like a folded Rubik's Magic Snake. I was just as lost in Darkside. I did enjoy and complete both Castle Master games though, as well as Total Eclipse. I hate that the TE sequel, Sphinx Jinx, only ever came out on the 8-bit systems. Playing it at the default speed is agonizing, but speed up the emulator and enemies wreck you in seconds.

[@msdosgamereviews]

Yeah, even the guy that wrote the walkthrough said that some places are unfairly difficult.