Rabbit Software's Death Star
Attila the Hun. Ivan the Terrible. Count Dracula. The Daleks. More evil then all of them put together.
Ah! The old days when copyright didn’t matter.
I stumbled upon the first ad and had to share it. While researching the company, I found even more ads.
There is very little information about Rabbit Software. According to Wikipedia, the English software company made games for “the ZX Spectrum, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 in the early to mid-1980s”. The company was liquidated “around the same time Imagine Software had problems”, which would have been late 1983.
I found a description of the game on MobyGames.com:
“The last post of humanity in the Galaxy is on a planet on the edge called Earth, and the evil Garth Fader wants to destroy it with the most deadly weapon in the Universe, the Death Star. You are a pilot of a Ford Prefect 2174 and it is your mission to fly your craft down a corridor to destroy squadrons of Quasar Star Fighters over nine levels to save the Earth and humanity. Death Star is a 3rd person shooter where you sit behind your craft flying into the screen, and you can move it left, right, up and down, and the enemy ships fly towards you. As well as avoiding and shooting the enemy ships and their weapons, you are unable to touch the sides or the floor of the corridor or you will lose one of three lives. Before you play the game you can select your starting level (1-9) with one having the slowest enemy ships.”
So, essentially, this game is a rip-off of the trench scene in the first Star Wars, complete with a bad guy named “Garth Fader”. I don’t know how these guys didn’t get sued.
The August 1984 issue of Commodore User carried a review of the game:
“This program utilises three-way scrolling and simulated shadows to give the impression of 3D rather successfully. Star Wars devotees are given the opportunity to play the leading role (no, not the princess!) (why not - Ed) and fly along the trench of the battle planet Death Star.
Nine levels of undiluted blast-or-be-blasted combat, featuring classically designed interceptors hurtling towards your large fighter. You may unleash only common-or-garden laser bolts. Beware of their unpredictable, unstoppable, pulsating missiles; and don't crash into the sides when taking violent evasive action. No way are they sitting ducks... let's just say you have to be very nippy.
As the main colour scheme is black and grey, the TV controls will need to be set up just right. Nice graphics, though, and typical battle sonics but with scene-setting organ music on the title page. I suggest that you take a look at this little number at a micro shop near you.”
Personal Computer Games’ review was shorter and blunter:
“Blast aliens as they hurtle towards you in a 3D scrolling alleyway. Coloured stripes form the landscape and the aliens are chunky, if undistinguished. You saw it in Star Wars, you played it in the arcades, and now you can take it home with you. Unfortunately for Rabbit there are now a number of these Buck Rogers-style games for the 64, and theirs is not the best by a long shot.”
Finally, J. H. Cain wrote an in-depth review of the game for the July 1984 issue of Crash:
Death Star is a 3D shoot em up set in a trench on the surface of a massive alien craft, and as such is in the tradition of 'Star Wars' type games of which Blade Alley by PSS is another example. Unlike Blade Alley, this game has only the one screen. The scenario is that the evil Garth Fader has sent the most deadly weapons system in the Universe to destroy humankind and the only form of defence left is a squadron of three ion-drive Ford Prefects armed with laser canon. You are the only pilot left and by remote control you must save humanity, by flying along the trench firing at the enemy fighters as they hurtle towards you.
The trench is described on screen by three areas of the same blue, each divided by two pale blue lines going from the two lower comers almost to the top centre of the screen. This forms the 3D perspective view along the trench. Movement is indicated by a fine of dots funning down one wall, across the floor and up the other side. These appear in the 'distance' and shoot towards you, and continue to do so at intervals throughout the game. in the small slice of black sky at the top, stars are also moving towards you.
Your ship can move left and right as well as up and down, its position in space marked by its shadow on the trench floor. The aliens appear from the distance and are animated towards you through several stages. Some of them fire plasma bolts.
CRITICISM
• This is another of the 3D type shoot'em ups, but it isn't really a very good game, it seems to lack excitement. The ship keeps getting hit even when you attempt to fly over other ships Also it can be hit when flying high by attackers in the distance! It seemed to me that no matter where an attacker was (ie distance or height) it would hit you if it overlapped with your ship. This is surely a mistake in programming (or is it just poor program design?). The movements, etc, is okay but firing seems a bit on the "cheap" side with a streak or line going to the end of the trench (vanishing point). Not one of the best games of this type I have seen.
• Death Star doesn't have much going for it - rather disappointing after all those little ads in the magazines telling us life would never be the same again after Death Star. The graphics are simple to the point of not working - at least as far as the 3D goes, and there isn't anything special to do except shoot at enemy craft when they appear. The graphic of your ship is quite large and does distort in shape when you move from side to side, but oddly, remains the same shape no matter what height it is at. This makes it difficult to line up shots at times. The other irritating thing is that if this is supposed to be 3D, how come you can't get over a low flying enemy? Can't the programmer make his graphic characters merge or pass each other without the computer deciding you've been in collision when your eyes tell you that you haven't? All these points made the game unexciting and unplayable as far as I was concerned. '
• I probably shouldn't compare one game with another as a form of criticising it, but after playing Blade Alley, Death Star has little appeal. Everything seems wrong with it. Any sense of dashing down into a deep trench at high speed is lost by those silly little dots which move fast when they are a 'long way off', and slow down as they get 'nearer' to you. That's wrong, it ought to be the other way about. Some of the alien characters are quite nice but overall! thought the graphics poor and undetailed - also very flockery. Is this compiled? The user-definable keys are good though!'
Are you interested yet? You can play the game on Archive.org.
Have you ever played any Rabbit Software games? Do you know anything about its history? Tell us about it in the comments below.
I used to collect Rabbit Software's games for the C64, mainly because they could always be reliably found on Car Boot Sales in the UK. "Murder!" was a lot of fun, so too was Paratroopers. All were low in technical merit (BASIC) but still a lot of fun for the (discounted) price. Looking back I to wondered if the Copyright Lawyers were distracted on bigger things.