When we were little kids, a lot of us wanted to be astronauts and discover new worlds. Now is your chance to do it.
In this game you’re the director of an American or Russian space program. You start with little funds, no technology and few astronauts. Your goal is to be the first nation to land on the moon. But it’s not easy; failures happen, politicians are impatient (just like the astronauts) and you’re responsible for everything.
The gameplay is rather easy to understand. You invest money in rockets, space modules and EVA suits. Also, your task is to plan missions, but it’s not as easy as you might think. Should you please Kennedy by sending the first probe to Saturn, or rather invest into safety precautions on Apollo? Will you have time to work on the Atlas rocket some more, or should you go ahead and launch it, so the Russians won’t be first in space? These are the sorts of problems the director (you) must face daily.
When missions begin, you can see how they progress step by step, from countdown to landing. At every stage you will see the progress in small graphs below the video display. If you are lucky, everything goes all right, but sometimes you will have a partial failure, which usually means the mission will be a disaster. When one thing goes wrong, you can expect further trouble, such as injured astronauts etc. On rare occasions, a mission with a few minor problems can be completed successfully, but most of the time the outcome is a catastrophic failure resulting in the death of the whole crew. While a mission is in progress, you can hear operators and astronauts talking which really helps to create a realistic overall atmosphere.
Although quite challenging, Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space is definitely worth a try, since it's very entertaining.
Tips:
Astronauts are impatient and demand to fly all the time; they live for it! So if you forget about one crew-member, the other members will become frustrated and they will quit after some time.
Sometimes you have to pay for maintaining the same safety level (if you don’t pay, it will be lowered for this mission). If it’s just for one mission, you will encounter a partial failure, but the mission should still go on as expected.
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Remake(s) Posted on: 2018-03-08 by peyre The game has been ported to modern operating systems and improved a bit, while still keeping its look and feel: https://sourceforge.net/projects/raceintospace/ It has also been remade from the ground up with better graphics, and greatly expanded, as Buzz Alrdin's Space Program Manager: http://slitherine.com/products/product.asp?gid=462 |
