Namco Star Trigon 1.0

Star Trigon is actually based on an arcade game from this decade, and originally developed by the team responsible for the popular Mr. Driller puzzle titles.Designed to be utterly simple, Star Trigon places you in control of a character who is viewed from an overhead map screen showing multiple dot-like planets. This character spins around the planet in an orbit, detaching and flying to another planet when you press the center button. The only science of the game is learning the effect that pressing the button will have at a given moment in your spin; hit it at the right moment and you’ll jump correctly to a planet of your choice, but hit it wrong and you’ll fly off into space and lose one of only a handful of extra men you keep in reserve.



Moving from planet to planet properly is part of the game. The other challenge is doing so in a pattern: your goal is to make triangles by connecting the planet dots line by line, saving floating people who are lost in space between the planets. There are 79 stages, structured in clusters of unlockable beginner, easy, medium, and hard levels, and you ultimately need to not just beat these levels, but get through all of the levels shown to you on a given level of difficulty. It’s easy to do the several beginner stages with a few men in reserve, but you’ll probably need to go through easy three or four times before you unlock medium, and even more times to unlock hard. Some of the stages give you only one man to succeed or fail, others let you run down your stock of lives trying.