The Starbridge

Years ago, I was a fan of a game called EV Nova. One of the few examples of a situation where being a Windows-based gamer was a disadvantage (along with Spiderweb Software's excellent games), EV Nova was published by Ambrosia Software and was a game that is in its own as a genre.

When I try to describe EV Nova, the best comparison I can think of is to draw a comparison to the old arcade game Asteroids, but with the sorts of game systems that you would expect to see from modern open-world space games like Elite: Dangerous.

While the world of EV Nova wasn't massive, it was a shareware game, which meant that it had a nice, generous trial. To compensate for the fact that you could basically go anywhere in the trial, the game had several deep, rich storylines, and it basically had to outlive its thirty-day trial period or hook you into a story to get users to buy it.

However, what first hooked me (I was young and couldn't quite appreciate the complexities of the story, though I would enjoy it quite a bit in later years) was the sleek form-factor and incredible power of the Starbridge.

Starbridge in-game art asset, copyright Ambrosia Software

Think of the Starbridge as EV Nova's answer to the Milennium Falcon in Star Wars. It wasn't necessarily "the best" at any one thing (though it was an incredibly fast ship of its class), but it oozed sex appeal and a "dangerous rogue" image.

It was just about as agile as anything, but much larger than other similarly nimble ships; if you are using forward-facing guns, the ability to easily engage enemies could be the difference between life and death, and the Starbridge (and its black Pirate variant, which was even cooler if that's possible) was capable of doing pretty much anything if you wanted it to badly enough.

It was also relatively affordable–if you were willing to go for a bargain-end model. One of the things that EV Nova did is that it would offer ships at the shipyard in configurations; some would be used and sub-par, but others would be improved variants.

The most important difference was typically the price. You paid a high premium for the best class ships. However, the best Starbridge in the game could put a hole in any ship, so long as it was in the hands of a good pilot.

I fancied myself such a pilot.

It took me days of play to get the licenses and credits. I was a big fan of mining and safe cargo missions, and not much for combat, especially since by the time I'd begun to covet the Starbridge I'd upgraded to a freighter at the expense of any meaningful capacity for self defense.

Finally, I had enough to get the Starbridge. Not the most expensive ship in the game, nor the most dangerous, but certainly the fanciest. When I showed up at school the next day I bragged to all my friends that I finally got a Starbridge (though only a few of them played the game), and generally found myself to be quite cool.

Looking back, I still have fond memories of it. There was something resembling Quixotic bliss in piloting a Starbridge; fast, sleek, immortal. You could fly circles around everything else, showing off your skills and a devil-may-care attitude.

When I think about it now, I'm reminded of the carefree nature of youth. Even though it's been a long time since I've played (EV Nova doesn't play well with modern Windows machines), it's still one of the things that I would call not just a defining moment in games for me, but one of my most prized possessions in any game, despite its banishment to the digital ether.

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I wrote this for the @archdruidgaming prized gaming possession contest, which is open until October 8.