伊苏：失落的伊苏古国 Ys: The Vanished Omens p.88

异星之火：

Alien Fires:

公元 2199

2199 AD

首先要说的是《异星之火（Alien Fires）》是一个非常糟糕的游戏。这本书中最糟糕的一个游戏。然而，它却有着一个非常不错的创意，如果不讨论一下的话，将是一个损失。

附赠的手册上解释说你是一个时间领主，由神秘的长者派来寻找一位名叫塞缪尔・库尔茨博士的科学家。作为一个天才，他建造了一台时间机器，想用它回到宇宙大爆炸，见证创造的那一刻。你必须阻止他，因为有些秘密是不该为凡人所知的。

这是一个十分具有创意的开始，当你启动游戏的时候，你的期望值仍然会很高，可以看到色彩鲜艳的开场动画，并具有良好的配乐并可以创建角色，你将在七个技能之间分配点数。

一旦完成，你就会登上形状奇特的银河尽头空间站。虽然几乎当时所有其他的地牢游戏都是在方格内游玩的，但《异星之火》使用了各种奇怪的角度，并允许玩家以 45 度转弯，这使得探索和绘制地图成为一个相当大的挑战。

你很快就会遇到一个友好的外星人，他不是用文字而是用语音对话来问候您！原来《异星之火》使用了 Amiga 的文字转语音功能来使其 NPC“说话”！该技术是非常原始的——每个 NPC 都有完全相同的“语音”，而且往往很难理解说的是什么。但真正的问题是，对话毫无意义。

你会通过文字解析器与许多异国的 NPC 对话，浏览奇形怪状的房间，收集若干钥匙和物品，但这一切都是徒劳的。钥匙没有什么用，NPC 没有说任何有价值的东西，您真正需要做的就是穿越六个小关卡，直到到达最后一层，找到库尔茨博士，然后再进行一次棘手的 BOSS 战。

实际上，如果不是频繁的随机遇敌，您可以在几分钟内就通关游戏。从这方面来看，游戏再一次未能提供任何满足感。

The first thing to be said about Alien Fires is that it's a very bad game. A terrible one, among the worst in this book. Yet it's such an interesting title that it would be a disservice not to talk about it.

The manual explains you are a Time Lord, sent by the enigmatic Elders to find a scientist by the name of Dr. Samuel Kurtz. A genius, he built a time machine and wants to use it to go back to the Big Bang and witness the moment of Creation. You must stop him, as some secrets are not meant for mortal eyes.

It's a creative premise, and expectations remain high as you boot the game, see a colourful intro with a nice soundtrack and reach character creation, where you'll distribute points between seven skills.

Once that's done, you board the oddly-shaped Galaxy's End space station. While almost every other dungeon crawler is built and navigated in a square grid, Alien Fires uses all sorts of odd angles and allows players to turn in increments of 45 degrees, making exploration and mapping quite a challenge.

You'll soon meet a friendly alien, who greets you not with text, but with voiced dialogue! Turns out Alien Fires uses the Amiga's text-to-speech feature to make its NPCs “speak”! The technology is primitive – every NPC has the exact same “voice” and it's often hard to understand what's being said. But the real issue is that dialogue is pointless.

You'll talk to many exotic NPCs via a text parser, navigate oddly-shaped rooms and collect several keys and items, but it's all for nought. Keys are useless, NPCs don't say anything of value and all you really need to do is cross six small levels until you reach the last floor and find Dr. Kurtz – then fight a shoehorned boss battle.

In fact, you could beat the game in a few minutes if not for the frequent random encounters. And here, once again, the game fails to provide any satisfaction.

《异星之火》后来被移植到 Atari ST 和 DOS 系统上，但没有了文字转语音功能。这个游戏暗示会有一个续作，甚至要求玩家保存他们的角色文件，但是《异星之火 2》始终没有公布。

Alien Fires was later ported to Atari ST and DOS, losing the text-to-voice feature. The game hinted at a sequel and even asked players to keep their character's save file, but Alien Fires 2 never arrived.

在战斗中，您只需按“战斗”按钮，然后观察角色和敌人的打击。不涉及任何战术，战斗的玩法大多相同，最重要的因素是运气。

最后，《异星之火》给人的感觉就像一个野心勃勃的技术演示，游戏的设计、艺术风格、音乐都很棒，将文字改成语音的想法很棒，用奇怪的角度创建地牢的想法也很有趣，但不幸的是，除了这些以外，没有真正的游戏性。

During combat you just press the “Fight” button and watch as you character and the enemy trade blows. There are no tactics involved, fights play mostly the same and the most important factor is luck.

In the end, Alien Fires feels like an ambitious tech demo. The premise is original, the art and music are often great and ideas like using text-to-voice and creating dungeons in odd angles are interesting, but unfortunately there's no real game beneath them.