Starcastle

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History of Star Castle

Star Castle is an arcade game of 1980, released by Cinematronics. The game is vector-based and monochrome, providing colors of the rings on the screen by a transparent plastic screen overlay.

In the game, the player controls a spaceship. The goal is to destroy an enemy cannon which sits in the center of three oppositely rotating shield rings of twelve segments each. Enemies, called "mines", spawn from the core and home in on the player's ship. They are avoidable and provide several options of outplay. If a ring is completely destroyed, a new one will emerge from the center, replacing the destroyed one, therefore, one must be careful to leave at least one of the segments of the ring. After the cannon is destroyed, the next level starts with an increased difficulty.

This was one of the first games to use experimental artificial intelligence to harrass the player's ship. It is an important innovation of the time and a fundamental element of many video games of today. Also, as opposed to some games, the score in Star Castle doesn't roll over at 1 million points (which could be reached at approximately four hours of gameplay). It is still unknown if the score rolls over at 10 million.

The game made appearances in many feature films and was referenced in various later games. It inspired a popular Atari 2600 game Yars' Revenge and a level in Angry Birds Space. It was ported to Vectrex and Atari 2600 video game consoles. It currently has adaptations for PC in executable and flash formats.

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