The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase Review
Review by David Lent
In July of 1984 the movie The Last Starfighter was released. I was 11 years old at the time and remember seeing the commercials for it on T.V. The movie is about a young man who beats the high score on the Starfighter video game and an alien comes to Earth and recruits him to be a real starfighter gunner in an intergalactic war. This is one of the first movies that used CGI and it showed. I didn’t see the movie when I was a kid, but did see it recently on Amazon and can conclusively tell you that the board game is far better than the movie.
The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase from FASA is a game for 2-25 players that pits starfighters against each other in a tunnel system inside an asteroid. Each starfighter must try to navigate the tunnel system without crashing into walls in the hope of getting line of site on your enemy and shooting him down. This game continues until only one starfighter is left. The tunnel system is just as dangerous as any of your opponent’s lasers. The game may be played with standard statistics for your starfighter or you may build a custom ship with an allowance of points. Your ship’s stats are speed, handling, accuracy and protection.
This microgame includes a small rulebook, ship counters, map, dice and record sheets. The rulebook is very small and includes handling and combat charts. It only takes 10 minutes to read and is super easy to understand. This is definitely a rulebook suitable for beginners.
The Last Starfighter’s map is very unique. It is 7 hex pieces that are arranged to build the asteroid. The tunnels on each section connect and over 700 different asteroids can be built. This really increases re-playability! The two types of tunnels on the map are regular and narrow. Regular tunnels can just be flown through and you only have to make a handling check when turning into other tunnels. Don’t go too fast though, because the tighter the turn, the higher the difficulty rating. Narrow tunnels require your ship to fly sideways and you have to take a handling check for every space you go through. Your speed and handling rating affect your handling checks and any failed handling check causes you to crash into a wall and take damage. Your protection rating determines how many hits you can take before your ship is destroyed.
The 2-player game begins with both players rolling for initiative. The winner gets to choose to be the lead or tail ship. If you are the lead ship, you roll to see how far ahead of the other ship you start. The turn order begins with both players secretly setting their speed and revealing it. Whoever has the highest speed goes first and moves his ship the number of spaces his speed value is set at. Next, any handling checks that are required for going through curves or narrow tunnels are resolved. The other player then moves and resolves his handling checks. Last, if a starfighter is pointing at another Starfighter and within 8 spaces and line of site he may attempt to shoot the other ship. If both starfighters are on the same space after movement, they have to check for a collision by each player secretly choosing their altitude and comparing it. If it is the same, both ships take one damage in a passing from behind situation. In a head-on collision, both ships take 2 damage.
The game play for this game is simple, but very exciting. There is two main tactics you can use to win. The first is to shoot down your opponent and the second is to sucker him into running into walls. In the 2 games I played, I created a ship with really good handling and got my enemy to chase me through tight turns and narrow tunnels at high speeds. Since my handling was better than my opponent’s ship he hit the walls more often than I did and most of the damage he took was from that. I only hit him with my lasers a limited number of times. My opponent did some very clever things though, like quickly turning around in a roundabout and shooting up my ship while attacking head on. He also got smart to my tactic of trying to lead him into narrow tunnels and went around them and got on my tail as I was exiting. His ship was customized for shooting and whenever he had a line of site to my ship I suffered. Both games were very close, with the winner only having 2 or 3 hit points left.
I found this to be a very enjoyable game that does something that wargames rarely do. It appeals to a very large group of people. Anyone from the age of 12 to adult could enjoy this game and absolutely no gaming experience is required. I encourage modern wargame designers to take a look at this game, if they want to get some ideas on how to make a wargame appeal to a larger audience. The map is really well thought out and that combined with the fact that it can be reconfigured each game is a big plus. I had a lot of fun in both of my 2-player test games, but would like to try the game with 5 or 10 players. I suspect a game like that would be really exciting with the larger number of targets flying around the map and an increased number of possible collisions.
Buy your own copy on Amazon.
Watch the how to play video below: