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	Title: Starcross
	Author: Margot Comstock Tommervik
	Source: Softalk, v3(3)
	Date: November 1982
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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**Starcross**. By Dave Lebling and Marc Blank. If it takes a minimum of
two instances to form a proposition, then *Starcross*, adventurous Infocom's
first foray into science fiction and second departure from the dungeons
of *Zork*, enables the proposition that this young company is one of
remarkable versatility and apparently unerring ability to implement fresh
and fitting approaches to multifarious subjects. *Deadline*, the you-solve-it
mystery, was, of course, instance one.

*Starcross* resembles *Deadline* and the *Zork*s only in the benevolent intelligence
that is a hallmark of Infocom's work. In every other regard, it
serves its own identity — that of a sci-fi situation and story. The scope, the
structure, the language, the events, the requirements on the player are all
dictated by the genre and its time and setting.

Where the *Zork*s are set in the fantasy world of Dark Ages magic and
myth, where *Deadline* is set in the very mundane world of the British-like
parlor murder mystery, *Starcross* is set in the no less fantastic and no
more obvious world of the possible future.

As the game begins, you find yourself on a one-person spaceship,
searching for black holes. With you are only your smart-aleck computer
and your mass detector. Amazingly, when the mass detector proffers you
a pictorial map of nearby space, you the real person can reach in your
*Starcross* package and pull out the exact map in four glossy colors.
You'll need it to direct the computer as to the course to take to your destination
(why on earth didn't you pop for the gadget that interfaces the
mass detector directly to that cantankerous computer?).

But instead of a black hole, you find an asteroid-size spaceship, the
kind that might be devised to transport entire civilizations to new horizons
when their own corner of the universe is becoming uninhabitable.

What you find there and what you do with it all are the meat of this
outstanding adventure. As with so many excellent adventures, determining
your purpose is an integral part of the plot.

*Starcross* is painted in briUiant colors with ultra-high-resolution
detail; as usual, Infocom has created these splendid graphics entirely with
words. This is a text, or, as the authors prefer, and appropriately so, a
prose adventure.

No puzzle in *Starcross* is illogical, although many require good imagination
and truly innovative thinking. Picture facing an apparent dead
end. Nothing you'd expect to work solves this puzzle. You mull the
problems and all the pieces a long time, and finally an idea comes. It's
complex, it's far out, it's got to be out of the question — no one else would
have thought of that — but it's thoroughly logical. Just for kicks, you try
it, expecting another dead end. Instead, the program understands, responds —
you weren't crazy; those guys actually think like you. But
wait — they've taken it even farther; you'll have to stretch your mind even
more. Like most good stretches, it feels delicious.

Infocom's adventure vocabulary continues to expand. The famous
*Zork* parser allows you to speak to the Apple as though it were a person.
When it doesn't understand, it makes perfectly clear what it doesn't
understand. No guess-the-right-synonym games here.

In the realm of science-fiction adventure for the micro, only *Cyborg*
holds a candle to *Starcross*. Both deserve places in the computer sci-fi
hall of fame. A year younger and benefiting from Infocom's extraordinary
technical tools, *Starcross* is the smoother, the more playable;
*Cyborg* still wears the crown for plot.

No adventurer should pass up *Starcross*. And, if you've never ventured
into this kind of game, *Starcross* is a good place to start.

<p class="smaller"><em>Starcross</em>. by Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, Infocom (55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge,
MA 02138; 617-492-1031). $39.95.</p>