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Star Castle remake - Star Citadel - modern variant - gallery 1

Here’s the first of my Star Citadel galleries, showing screenshots of my remake of the fantastic old skool vector arcade game, Star Castle. If you were a fan of vector arcade games back in the day, or video games on consoles like the Vectrex (which, by the way, had a great conversion of Star Castle), you’ll probably like this.

Note that Star Citadel has two variants: a modern version, from which these screenshots are taken, and a classic version, which is designed to play as much like the original Star Castle as possible.

Click on the images to see larger versions.

PLAY GAME

Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Main menu screen showing buttons to play (both modern and classic), go back to the arcade.ly home page which contains the list of all games, show help, show hiscores, play full screen, and enable/disable music and sound effects.
Here we go. Note the Full Screen button which, as its name suggests, allows you to play the game full screen.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Starting the game showing part of a Cowboy Bebop inspired introductory sequence that you really only see on desktop/laptop computers because CSS performance on mobile is just too choppy.
You might gather from these two screenshots...
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Second shot of the Bebop inspired introductory sequence.
...that I'm a bit of a fan of Cowboy Bebop. The in-game music somewhat reflects this as well.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Cannon with shield rings and player materializing at the beginning of the game.
Here's our ship materializing at the very start of the game. In the original Star Castle it just appeared out of nowhwere.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Player attacking cannon and destroying shield rings.
No messing around here. Our little ship is going straight in to attack the cannon and is making mincemeat out of the outer shield ring. Note that a couple of mines have already spawned and are sat on the inner ring.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Player diving away after mounting an attack.
Having made a bit of a hole we're going to duck out and swing in from a different direction to try and punch all the way through the shields. The mines are still sitting where we left them - it is, after all, only the first level.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - Another attack in which the player has managed to punch through the final shield ring.
We've come in for a bit of an opportunistic strafing attack. You can see we've now managed to punch a small hole all the way through to the cannon. You can also see that all three mines have been spawned and are moving outwards.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - the cannon mounts a counterattack by firing back at the player.
A few more of our shots have hit home and made the hole bigger, which is good, but it's afforded the cannon the opportunity to fire back at us (the expanding blue energy projectile just in front of it).
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - The player spins round to start another attacking run against the cannon.
Coming back round for another attack. The cannon's energy projectile is heading off slightly to the left so doesn't present any real danger. There's a good chance if we press our attack we can take the cannon out because we've done a pretty good job of shredding its shields.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - The player mounts a vicious attack on the cannon as the energy projectile flies harmlessly off into the distance.
Here we go. The shields are disintegrating under our onslaught, and it looks like we've taken out one of the mines too. Note that the cannon can't fire again until it's first shot disappears.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - The cannon is blown to smithereens by the player's successful attack.
Success! The cannon is annihilated in a hail of fire from our ship. As per the original Star Castle when you destroy the cannon you're rewarded with a truly spectacular explosion as the cannon, shields, and mines are all obliterated.
Screenshot of Star Castle/Star Citadel - The massive detonation continues as the player races away.
The carnage continues here as we arc away from the destruction. Note that I just love me some particle effects so, as you'll see when you play the game yourself, this does all get a bit ridiculous, but (I hope) in a good way.