I put in ~20 hrs into Starflight 1 & I am giving up. I am going to gloss over the positive aspects because other reviews have a better appreciation of them. The save system is cumbersome. Starflight 1 saves directly to the executable files (STARA.COM & STARB.COM), so player have to manually back up them up . Closing out while the game is in progress will ruin your current save game, & it is common for the game to crash, ruining your save game, so you better periodically save & then manually backup the executables. Unfortunately saving requires the player to end the game in progress & then restart (& the music playing @ the title screen is not fun to listen repeatedly). Progressing in the game's storyline seems fun, but the game puts obstacles in my way. The player is told to upgrade her spaceship by raising cash through collecting minerals, artifacts & alien lifeforms. When I started out, I did this a lot (which is tedious). But it turns out I did too much, & stretched the limits of the game. Now when I try to pick up stuff on planets I get an error message about "not enough storage for that function". The game is punishing me for doing what it told me to do! Walk-thrus say that progressing requires getting a clue randomly placed in alien ruins scattered on a planet (the first planet in sector 68,66). I spent a lot of time trying to find this clue, but no luck. I suspect my game is damaged & I would need to start over to complete it. Controls are awkward. This would be less of a problem were the game turn-based, but it is not. Combat situations can result in irreparable damage to your spaceship because you are fiddling with the menus trying to raise shields & arm your weapons. Exploring planets is also frustrating, because violent weather can suddenly occur, killing crew members or making it difficult to traverse terrain, zapping your land vehicle's energy and stranding your crew, forcing the player to give up any progress made since the last save.
