Stargunner Released as Freeware

[Joe Siegler]

ack on November 19, 1996, we released a title that was legendary in our company history. Why is it legendary? It's because this title was the final release to be released under the Apogee banner, the name we released games under from the founding of the company in 1987 until 1996. This game of course, is Stargunner. A shooter game in the vein of Major Stryker & Raptor that preceded it in our product line, Stargunner garnered many awards and sales in it's day. It was discontinued a couple of years ago, but today we're bringing the full game to you.

Available now as freeware, you can download Stargunner via one of the following links:

Fileshack
Filefront
Fileplanet

Please be aware that this game is being released as freeware - not public domain (or even abandonware which is illegal). You're welcome to enjoy playing the game, but this means that we retain copyright on the game, and you're not "free to do what you want" with it. We've got a few words from David Pevreal and Scott Miller about the release of Stargunner into freeware:

David Pevreal (Stargunner's original project leader):

Stargunner represented the first completed attempt at a game for all of the developers involved. While the commercial success of the game was mild, it certainly launched the careers of the 3 programmers who all moved on to find success in the games industry. Stargunner's artist also found success in his chosen field, though outside of games.

The game itself was written in C++, but with heavy usage of assembly for the video and sound routines. It was one of only a few games that could run at 60 frames per second on the current "486" hardware of the day. Most of the art was developed on the Amiga using Deluxe Paint. In fact, the game was originally supposed to be an Amiga game with a PC version supposed to follow, but the PC version soon overtook and led development, and sadly the Amiga version was eventually dropped.

We hope you enjoy Stargunner, and appreciate the attempt to faithfully bring to life on the PC a style of game seen most commonly on the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga throughout the 80's; the good old days.

Scott Miller (President and founder of Apogee):

Stargunner, released late in 1996, was Apogee's final game. Apogee had officially started in 1987 with the release of a shareware game, Kingdom of Kroz, solely developed by Apogee founder, Scott Miller. The Apogee label rang loudly for nearly ten years in the shareware arena, with games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Raptor, Wolfenstein 3-D (the father of the FPS genre), and Rise of the Triad. Apogee pioneered the shareware method of selling games, and it was this method that allowed Apogee (as well as Id and Epic) to rise from nothing to become a successful, entirely independent game studios.

But as the industry matured, it became apparent in to us 1994 that 3D was the future, and so a new company name was created, 3D Realms, and this is the name that soon replaced all signs of Apogee.

Stargunner was Apogee's final song. It was a great little game, but great little games didn't cut it by then, because in 1996 we lived in a would dominated by three-D's: Doom, Duke, Descent -- the 3D revolution had begun.

Many of Stargunner's developers are still in the industry, picked up by bigger studios and making their way just fine. So the story ends well. In fact, with the freeware release of Stargunner, the story continues...

If you'd like to read more about Stargunner, you can do so via this archived catalog page for the game on our website.

http://www.3drealms.com/stargunner/index.html

[Eddy Willson]

[avatar_58]

I'm downloading it now, odd...I've never played this one before. Must have missed it...

[pjohnsonjr]

Thank you for the present 3D Realms! time to get down with my StarGunnin' self.

[avatar_58]

Hey this is pretty cool! It also runs perfectly in dosbox!

[Altered Reality]

[Frenkel]

That was unexpected.

Does this download also include the CD audio tracks?

[GodBlitZor]

I cant get it

None of the sites work

[avatar_58]

GodBlitZor said:
I cant get it

None of the sites work

I had to sign up for fileshack and it worked fine. The other one doesn't seem to work at all.

[laffer]

Cool! Thanks a lot! Does this mean you'll release all of your discontinued games as freeware eventually?

[GodBlitZor]

^hopefully!

[Nacho]

Joe, I love you... In a non gay way.

[Joe Siegler]

Frenkel said:
That was unexpected.

Does this download also include the CD audio tracks?

Those were already released awhile ago. Look in the Stargunner section of the downloads page.

[Joe Siegler]

avatar_58 said:

I had to sign up for fileshack and it worked fine. The other one doesn't seem to work at all.

All of them work, or I wouldn't have put 'em there.

[avatar_58]

For some reason on both IE and Firefox the filefront one doesn't go anywhere past "Communicating with the server".

[Joe Siegler]

avatar_58 said:
For some reason on both IE and Firefox the filefront one doesn't go anywhere past "Communicating with the server".

I just tried all three right now. They all worked.

Dunno what to say.

[avatar_58]

Joe3DR said:
I just tried all three right now. They all worked.

Dunno what to say.

Correct, it must have been busy earlier because filefront now works for me as well. My mistake.

[Kev_Hectic]

Cool. I just downloaded it and tried it out right now. Fun game. The rendered graphics kind of remind me of another 2D spaceshooter that was made for the Neo Geo arcade hardware, called Pulstar.

I'm am having some problems getting it to run perfectly in dosbox though (the sound stutters on me), I should try it on my old Windows 98 computer, and see if it runs any better there without dos emulation.

[jbailey]

Make sure you're running the latest version of dosbox
(0.63 I think), I tried a earlier version, and stargunner
would not run properly, but with .63, it runs perfect!

[Dreams]

It looks and sounds great

But it's way too difficult for me, even at easy setting.

[Maarten Goldstein]

avatar_58 said:

I had to sign up for fileshack and it worked fine. The other one doesn't seem to work at all.

Registration shouldn't have been required on the site, in fact we removed the need for registration two days ago. Did you just sign up to get it faster, or were you having problems continuining after it asked you if you wanted to proceed downloading with a 100kb/s cap?

[cheeseboy]

Thank you very much. I never got a chance to play the full game, looking forward to playing it all now. Cheers.

[Frenkel]

Joe3DR said:

Those were already released awhile ago. Look in the Stargunner section of the downloads page.

What I really ment was; does this game have background music?

[motionblur]

That. Is. So. Cool. !!!

[avatar_58]

jbailey said:
Make sure you're running the latest version of dosbox
(0.63 I think), I tried a earlier version, and stargunner
would not run properly, but with .63, it runs perfect!

I use a CVS build As for stuttering, that will happen if you don't have enough cycles or if your machine can't handle it. I didn't know what this game needed so I gave it 34000 cycles to play with. Smooth as baby's arse.

[wxpoet22]

Next, 3drealms can do the honorable step of also releasing the following games as freeware:

Xenophage
Alien Carnage
Bio Menace
Boppin
Halloween Harry
Kroz
Dark Ages
Major Stryker
Arctic Adventure
Monuments of Mars
Pharaoh's Tomb

NO EXCUSES !

[Joe Siegler]

wxpoet22 said:
Next, 3drealms can do the honorable step of also releasing the following games as freeware:

Xenophage
Alien Carnage
Bio Menace
Boppin
Halloween Harry
Kroz
Dark Ages
Major Stryker
Arctic Adventure
Monuments of Mars
Pharaoh's Tomb

NO EXCUSES !

You give 'em one, they want everything. Someone always goes "Not good enough, release everything". Try and be nice, and you get complaints.

[jbailey]

I'm not complaining, I think what joe siegler/3drealms
has already done is great! More games will probably
be released in the future and hopefully more source
code too. Take your time joe, I'm fine with the way things are going, unfortunatly, I can't speak for
anyone else...

[Joe Siegler]

I was talking to wxpoet, I thought that was obvious because I quoted his text.

[motionblur]

Frenkel said:
What I really ment was; does this game have background music?

Yes, it does.
And it really runs perfect on DosBOX 0.63.

This game still rocks.

[laffer]

Well, I'm not complaining either, this is great!
It would be even greater if more games were released like this, but it's awesome on it's own too of course.
3DR rocks!!

[moron]

Joe3DR* said:
I was talking to wxpoet, I thought that was obvious because I quoted his text.

you know what they say "No good dead goes unpunished"

[avatar_58]

You guys are doing great so far with the whole freeware/source code thing. I only wish more companies would follow suit. Hopefully one day all the old classics which are no longer sold/bought will be freeware and we can all be happy

You guys also have to remember Joe isn't the one making these decisions. I wish he were though because he seems like the kind of guy who WOULD release everything or sell us one honking DVD at a good price

Alas....business comes before pleasure in some cases. I only wish vivendi were as generous to release their games....

[Lengis]

Joe3DR said:
I was talking to wxpoet, I thought that was obvious because I quoted his text.

He knows that, he was speaking on his own behalf because you made it sound like everyone was ungrateful.


I never played stargunner before.... Looks kinda interesting. Graphics are nice

[Gatinater]

Yes a compilation all on one disc would be a great idea, but most wouldn't buy, because none of the Apogee's or 3DRealms classics have been translated to win 2000/Xp or Win64.

[Shlubalubs]

Oh, Dos box can probably handle them, no worries.

Thank to you folks down at 3Drealms, even though DNF is taking longer than expected, your such a swell company, i geuss we'll have to forgive you lot.

[Cyrix]

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that Stargunner was released as freeware, but it is, and how awsome it feels to finally be able to play the full retail of the game. Superb!

Thank you 3D Realms!

[avatar_58]

Retro gamer said:
Oh, Dos box can probably handle them, no worries.

It can, the only ones that are too slow at the moment are duke and shadow warrior (even with a beast PC) Then again we have jonof to thank for getting those to work

Therefore with that in mind I would DEFINATELY buy the collection DVD.

As for sales....well, it didn't affect the Ultima Collection that EA put out seeing as how none of the games work on a comp that is post dos era (real mode and all). Once again, dosbox is your friend

[Gatinater]

I was just thinking marketing. Most people want it to work right out of the box. Not use emulaters.

[Shlubalubs]

Gatinater said:
Most people want it to work right out of the [u] box </u> .

Bad pun
Dos box has pretty much become the official program for running dos stuff in newer windows.