The Last Starfighter (NES)
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The Last Starfighter is a horizontal top-down shooter released by Mindscape. Alex Rogan plays an arcade game called Starfighter, but when he reaches the high score, he is approached by an alien named Centauri kidnaps Alex in order for him to help Centauri's race, the Rylan Star League against the Ko-Dan Empire led by Xur. Alex must go through fifteen levels, destroy a certain amount of enemies before having to land on a spacecraft. There are also bonus levels in which the player must press the button at the right time to earn bonus points.
The NES version of The Last Starfighter is actually a port of the computer game Uridium by Graftgold. This is supported by the Graftgold copyright text found in the game. The NES version was single-handedly developed by Nick Eastridge of Eastridge Technology under a small time limit given by Mindscape.
The game received mostly negative reviews due to the poor gameplay mechanics; one of which is not being able to tell which objects your spacecraft can hit and pass through, as well as the poor graphics and that there's only one song in the game.
Screenshots
Music
The Last Starfighter contains only a single track which plays throughout the entirety of the game. The song is an 8-bit arrangement of The Hero's March from the movie, written by Craig Safan. The song was arranged for the NES by Rich Shemaria, and this was his first time working on a video game. To arrange the song, Rich had to transcribe the song by ear and write it down on sheet music paper. On the sheet music, he wrote hexadecimal notes besides the notation, which represented the note pitches and lengths used in Nick Eastridge's sound driver. He then gave the sheet music to Nick, who typed in the notes on the sheet music into his sound driver and implemented it into the game. For some reason, the key of the song was changed from its original key of D to B♭.
Recording
| # | Title | Composer | Arranger | Programmer | Length | Listen | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | The Hero's March | Craig Safan | Rich Shemaria | Nick Eastridge | 1:42 | Download |
Credits
- Ripper: Gil_Galad
- Recorder: Doommaster1994
- Game Credits:
- Not Credited Composer: Craig Safan
- Not Credited Arranger: Rich Shemaria
- Not Credited Programmer: Nick Eastridge
(Source: Verification from composer, game's sound driver; Game lacks credits.)
Like the other Eastridge Technology games, this game lacks credits. However, Rich Shemaria, composer for Eastridge Technology at the time has confirmed working on the game. The game uses Nick Eastridge's sound driver.
Game Rip
The NSF only contains the one song. The recording was made in VirtuaNSF.
Releases
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