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Everybody's heard of Wing Commander, Freespace and the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, but during the 90s heyday of the space sim, many clones were produced. Let's reminisce about them.
Retribution (1994) by Astros Productions: http://www.mobygames.com/game/retribution
I received this game as a birthday present from some friends when I was a kid. Retribution's schtick was that instead of deep space combat, all missions took place planetside. Unfortunately, although a few of the game's missions were kind of interesting (including a few where you get to control a tank instead of a fighter), generally speaking flying around mountains and taking out surface-to-air missile pods is a lot less interesting than dogfighting, so things got repetitive quickly.
Story-wise, instead of Wing Commander's emotionally engaging character-driven plot, all you had was the same three characters at HQ to talk to between missions - the commander, the mission control lady, and your dropship pilot/mechanic. The most interesting part of it was the game's textual mission log, that had a lot of nerdy sci-fi stuff in it. For example, you can learn that one of your missions takes place on a planet that's actual a huge sentient biomass, who joins you after the mission. But none of that stuff has any impact on actual gameplay, which is just a linear series of missions as you fly towards Earth.
Retribution (1994) by Astros Productions: http://www.mobygames.com/game/retribution
I received this game as a birthday present from some friends when I was a kid. Retribution's schtick was that instead of deep space combat, all missions took place planetside. Unfortunately, although a few of the game's missions were kind of interesting (including a few where you get to control a tank instead of a fighter), generally speaking flying around mountains and taking out surface-to-air missile pods is a lot less interesting than dogfighting, so things got repetitive quickly.
Story-wise, instead of Wing Commander's emotionally engaging character-driven plot, all you had was the same three characters at HQ to talk to between missions - the commander, the mission control lady, and your dropship pilot/mechanic. The most interesting part of it was the game's textual mission log, that had a lot of nerdy sci-fi stuff in it. For example, you can learn that one of your missions takes place on a planet that's actual a huge sentient biomass, who joins you after the mission. But none of that stuff has any impact on actual gameplay, which is just a linear series of missions as you fly towards Earth.
