In the far future, Alliance and Coalition have signed an agreement that seems to have brought a slight peace to the galaxy – for the moment. Not long after, the Coalition breaks their side of the treaty, and an all out war is being fought from Earth to Pluto and beyond. The Coalition takes the Alliance by surprise, and the retaliation effort is in shambles. In an attempt to gather together more men for the battle, the Alliance beings asking for anyone with flight experience to join the ranks. You’re part of the 45th Volunteers Squadron, a rag tag group of pilots out to kick some Coalition butt.

What makes Starlancer so cool at times is the fact that the missions are almost nothing what you’d expect. More than 75% of the time a mission entirely changes from the original mission parameters (though you usually do end up completing them), and this is what makes entering a new mission of Starlancer such an interesting experience. While as a whole the missions are basically the same (escort and kill all enemies) throughout the entire game, there are always gameplay variations to keep things from getting stale, and then there are the times where Starlancer will throw a new objective that’s entirely different from the norm, such as tracking down a flight recorder through a field of mines, or jumping into an enemy warp gate, destroying the power generator and leaping through the gate before it explodes in a shimmer of flames.

Warthog should be commended for their work on simplifying Starlancer’s control scheme to fit onto the Dreamcast’s pad; for the most part, it works beautifully. All the immediately needed information (boost fuel, missiles, mission objectives, etc.) are all neatly organized on the interface, and never became cluttered a problem, even during the most heated of battles. Targeting an enemy is as simple as tapping X, selecting from a list, and following in the direction that the red arrow that then appears on the interface. The only problem I encountered was when attempting to roll or strafe. In order to pull either off, you have to move your thumb from the analog pad to the digital pad, in addition to holding the Y button. For what it accomplishes, it isn’t worth the effort to compromise aiming in order to engage in either maneuver.

Taking advantage of the Windows CE that’s built into the Dreamcast, Warthog was able to seamlessly translate the graphics of Starlancer from a usual high-end PC to the Dreamcast. The result is a high-resolution blast fest that’s fast, furious and just as good as its computer counterpart. There were brief times where slowdown reared its head, but that’s a rare occurrence when there are four fighters zoom around at once, with enormous capital ships looming near. You almost never see them up close for more than a second, but the ship models are very good, with detailed textures showcasing even the chipping paint on the wings.

The rendered cinematics that Digital Anvil produced for Starlancer is stunning at times, with an amazing amount of detail given to the facial movements. The translation to the Dreamcast seems to have blurred the cinematics somewhat, but it’s still impressive. It becomes very apparent how much work Digital Anvil put into the renders during the actual game when characters pop up to bring welcomes, warnings and help.

Rounding out Starlancer is support for SegaNet, Sega’s online multiplayer service for the Dreamcast. Starlancer allows up to six pilots to duke it out in deathmatch, with a surprisingly low amount of latency. Deathmatch does become a bit of a bore after a little while, and a co-operative mode with escorting missions would have been an enormous plus, but taking out some kid punk in New York from the comforts of your home is still worth it.

In all honesty, Starlancer is some of the most fun that I’ve had with a space shooter in a long while, and Warthog’s translation to the Dreamcast is a great one. The graphics, gameplay and online play are all first-rate, and the conversion as a whole bodes well for the future of the genre on home consoles.