Games That Weren't^®

A highlighted review from the http://www.gtw64.co.uk archives

Designed as the sequel to the highly thought of Star Fleet, Star Fleet II was aimed at being bigger, better and more complex than its already complex predecessor. Both were war simulation games where you controlled ships and armies, in the first game with the aim of defending Earth from aliens and in Star Fleet II you played as the aliens, intent of conquering planets throughout the universe.

However the making of the game was fraught with difficulty as the complexity of the game overawed the programmers, who struggled with the game until an eventual release in 1989 that was peppered with so many bugs and faults as to render the game almost unplayable. Although updated versions were released that solved many of the problems, according to designer Mark Baldwin, the brand name of Star Fleet was so damaged by this time as to make a port to other systems pointless.

Another major problem at the time involved legal wrangling within the company making the game, Interstel, which was an affiliate label with Electronic Arts. The original designer of the Star Fleet games, Trevor Sorensen, was deposed as president of Interstel while on holiday in Europe, meaning he spent the next few years involved in legal battles with the board members who had taken over. Despite winning the legal battles Interstel folded in 1992 and with it any chance of Star Fleet II being ported to other systems or another sequel being made for the PC.

Nevertheless, a programmer called Brett Keeton, who Sorensen describes as the greatest programmer he ever worked with, was making a C64 port at one point. Despite his best efforts the game was simply too large for a feasible port to be made, with the entire memory of the C64 filled yet the surface barely scratched on the game. There was another person working on an Amiga port, which may have had the capacity to run the game, but problems within Interstel meant that this too was never finished. According to Sorensen, an Atari ST version was actually closer to completion at the time the ports were pulled than the Amiga version.

Tragically, Brett Keeton passed away in 2002 so there is no chance of ever seeing what the C64 version of Star Fleet II would have looked like. He also possessed the only copy of the source code for a deluxe version of Star Fleet he was working on with Trevor Sorensen and another programmer called Mark Hartman. We may be able to find out more from Sorensens notes, which he has said he will look for. Perhaps they are our last chance for more information on the unfinished games.

The story of Star Fleet seems littered with tragedy and setbacks, but Sorensen is still hopeful of some day releasing a deluxe version of Star Fleet and the spin-off Star Legions. Judging from the high regard Star Fleet is still held in by gamers worldwide I think that support for this project would be considerable. You can read Mark Baldwins and Trevor Sorensens comments in the Creator Speaks section. They explain what happened far better than I ever could.

Creator speaks – Mark Baldwin

“Star Fleet 2 for the PC ended up being a disaster for a number of reasons. The biggest was the project was too big for our resources. We tried to do it as a 2-man project and we needed much more. The result was unplayable releases, for which we spent a lot of time patching. By then the game had such a bad name that it just was not viable to port it.

One side note. My responsibilities for Star Fleet II was the planetary combat portion of the game. That portion got extracted and released as a separate game called Star Legions. This may have been one of the first RTS games ever published.

What I’m doing these days mostly is teaching game design for University of Advancing Technology. I still consult to the industry some and occasionally write an article.”

Creator speaks – Trevor C. Sorensen