Star Dust II

Title – Star Dust II
System – Nintendo Family BASIC V2
Author – Hisanori Takeuchi
Publication – Micom Basic (マイコンBASIC) February 1986
Page Scans – 1 2
Preserved By – ximwix
Recommended Emulator – VirtualNES

Download ROM

Files:

notes.txt – The file you’re reading now (wow!)
Star Dust II (Hisanori Takeuchi).nes – Game converted to standalone NES rom
star-dust-2-prg.txt – The typed-up program listing
star-dust-2-prg.wav – WAVE file of the program listing, for playback to hardware
star-dust-2-bg.wav – WAVE file of the BG data, for playback to hardware
star-dust-2-prg.vtp – Virtuanes tape file of the program listing
star-dust-2-bg.vtp – Virtuanes tape file of the BG data
star-dust-2-prg.fbt – Mesen tape file of the program listing
star-dust-2-bg.fbt – Mesen tape file of the BG data
scan1.jpg – A scan of the bg listing from Micom Basic
scan2.jpg – A scan of the program listing from Micom Basic
screenshot1.png – Gameplay screenshot
screenshot2.png – Gameplay screenshot

Notes:

(1)
The instructions in the magazine for building the background have you scatter random G6 (star field) tiles throughout all of the columns in rows 2 through 20. So the BG provided here is a random scattering and not necessarily matching exactly what is in the magazine’s screenshots.

(2)
I have added additional tiles to the BG in the center of the enemy spawner (rows 8 and 9, columns 13 and 14), as it is visible in the screenshots and I personally thought it looked better.

(3)
In cases where lines in the program listing end with a string, I have omitted the closing double-quote, in order to save on memory (this is a thing you can do!). Without doing that, i was unable to get the game to work on V2 without hitting OOM errors.

Game Instructions:

This is a fairly simple space shooter that shows off some technical chops. Fly your ship around using the d-pad, up and down to control speed and left and right to steer. Use the A or B buttons to fire at the single enemy that is buzzing around you. One shot fires straight ahead, and the other shot will bend if you move left or right.

Take out a few enemies and a powerful enemy will appear that takes multiple shots. Take that one out and you complete the stage. Go for the high score! Take too many hits and your ship will explode. Game over!

Cheats:

The “F” variable is controlling how many hits you can before you blow up. Instead of letting it be set to “D” (3), you can set it to a higher value. You will probably have to run the game in V3 to do this, since the memory is extremely tight with this one running on V2.