Star Hawk

Star Hawk

Star Hawk
Developers	GCE
Publisher	GCE
Release Date	1982
Genre	First Person Shooter
Modes	Single player 1-2 players alternating
Media	Cartridge ROM file

Origins/gameplay

Star Hawk was a First Person Shooter arcade game made by Cinematronics. Up to two players could play simultaneously, destroying ships that flew over a planet by positioning their onscreen cursors on the ships while firing. The games were timed, which the player(s) had two minutes to score at least 10,000 points (or a multiple thereof), which would lead to an additional 20 seconds worth of gameplay added to the clock. However, the alien ships would become harder to hit as a difficulty increase.

One certain ship that flies past the center of the trench of the planet below (on this port; originally it would appear from a corner) will make a warning sound as it appears, which, if destroyed quickly, will give the player 800 points, enlarge the player’s cursor (that shot the ship), give double points for every ship destroyed and increase the planet’s scrolling speed for several seconds. If the ship wasn’t destroyed, it would subtract 800 points from the player(s’) score.

Note: on this port, the game starts off with one minute on the clock, not two, and the planet did not speed up, nor the player’s cursor enlarge when they shot the Command Ship on the original. However, the starting time on the clock could be changed via the game’s dipswitches on the original, depending on what the individual arcade owner wanted.

Controls

Main menu

• Choose number of players–button one
• Choose game–buttons two and three
• Start game–button four

In-game controls

• Position cursor–joystick or D-pad
• Fire–button four

Scoring

• Bomber--100 points
• Missile--200 points
• Rocket--300 points
• Starship--500 points
• Command Ship--800 points

Notes

• Is this game called "Starhawk" or "Star Hawk"? From its entry at the Killer List of Video Games site (note: this is for the original arcade game), it appears to be one word, but when it’s fired up on a Vectrex or emulator, on the title screen it’s two words.
• Game two is geared towards the original Vectrex analog controller, where the player can move the cursor in one direction, but if they let go of the stick, the cursor will snap back to its original starting position. Control on this game will not work with modern day converted digital controllers.
• A modern day online version was created in 2010, which included the Vectrex port feature of the target site and point value doubling when the Command Ship was destroyed (see Links).

Links

• Stage Select review (4/10)
• The modern day recreation of the game can be seen here, although the site only works with Internet Explorer, Opera Mobile, or FireFox (although it is currently not known if only the most recent or older versions of the latter will also work). Its video can be seen here

This article uses material from the Star Hawk Vectrex wiki article and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.