I'll be honest; this game is older than me. Still, I have a good grasp of gaming history, and I'm reasonably sure this game was considered groundbreaking for its time. Of course, that statement doesn't mean much to a potential buyer, so let's skip to today. Has Starflight aged well? Yes and no. Starflight has game mechanics that are still compelling today. There's clearly an underlying story for anyone willing to read the text (which isn't as long as it would seem) and it's got me genuinely interested. At the same time, the game has a sandbox structure. The moment you've set up your crew and christened your ship, you're free to do whatever you want. Despite the procedurely-pregenerated galaxy, this is still a galaxy I want to explore. I find something different around every star. What has not aged well is the controls and the save system. Granted, the controls are much simpler than other games of the era (for example, Nethack, where every key on the keyboard did something different), but honestly, a lot of things you do quite often take many more button presses than they need to. It's a minor annoyance at worst, though, and I'm willing to overlook it. The save system is...well...ugly. When you save your game, it modifies the actual executable file, then exits the game. You CAN work around this by copying and renaming your STARFLT folder every time you save, but this can get tedious. Still, it's only a minor annoyance, and I'm again willing to overlook it. The verdict: Starflight is not perfect, but it is still a great game, and is certainly a game worth playing. This is true tenfold for anyone even slightly interested in gaming history; this one was genre-defining.
