Planet's Edge Download (1991 Role playing Game)

Planet's Edge is a game from the creators of Might and Magic, featuring resource collection, space combat, and RPG aspects as your team explores different planets. Space-combat is real-time, while ground-combat is turn-based. Your group travels the local region of space, interacting with various alien races and gathering equipment.

The story of Planet's Edge is best described as a 'space opera'. After discovery of an alien craft entering our solar system causes quite a stir, but when the small craft is accidently fired upon, it creates a strange electromagnetic effect that envelops the earth, causing it to disappear. While its gravity remains, the physical earth simply isn't there. The moonbase, surviving on scrounged resources and manpower, construct a interstellar ship and a team (the players) to find unique parts to construct a machine that the moonbase scientists hope will cause a reverse effect.

Planet's edge is a sci-fi game from creators of Might and Magic. It is somewhat similar to Star Control II, but unfortunately not as good.

Story An alien vessel is discovered flying close to Earth, so the defensive system is activated. It fires on the ship and destroys it, but the explosion causes a strange electromagnetic effect that envelops the Earth, causing it to disappear. Scientists on the moon base find out that Earth went through a wormhole and is now in an unknown place. The wormhole was created by machine known as the Centauri device. Team of cloned astronauts is assembled to find ways to create another device and bring the Earth back. You're their leader.

Gameplay You start on the moon base where you can build new ships, equipment and clone dead members of your crew. You can also save/load the game in one of the base buildings, but don't forget that you can do it anytime by pressing ctrl+s/ctrl+l. After everything is prepared, you can lift off. Surprisingly, your ship doesn't have any inertia, so the flight is easier. However, if you are already used to space simulators, this "mode" of play may take a while to get used to. In space you can visit other star systems, as well as communicate or attack other ships. To bring up different menus you need to click on members of your crew.

When you reach a planet's orbit, you can scan it and, depending on the scans, choose if you want to transfer some raw materials or beam down. You can explore the planet surface, talk to friendly inhabitants, complete quests and search for the pieces of Centauri device. Your crew can use variety of items, including armors, guns and many quest items. You can also attack other beings on planets. In that case the gameplay will switch to turn based mode and you can move your character or shoot. Your crew has certain predefined abilities, like marksmanship and repair, but sadly they do not improve.

Controls This game is controlled with keyboard and mouse. Controlling of the starship isn't the best as the ship turns very fast, and any interaction with planets or ships is done via the crew menu. In practice, this means that most often the object you're interacting with will go away before you can do anything. The controls of your crew on the surface are done nicely.

Graphics This game has 256 colors and the graphics are nice, colorful and not too pixelated. However, it lacks better animation

Sound All sounds in this game are just various noises and beeps, nothing extraordinary. The music is better, but doesn't really fit the overall atmosphere.

I found a bug in this game which prevents you from landing on first planet in star system. When you use the orbit button to orbit around that planet, nothing will happen. There is a solution for it. Just press O on your keyboard to enter/leave orbit.

One of the longest and most overlooked RPG ever, Planet's Edge is a solid offering from the makers of Might & Magic series. Despite the lack of pedigree and fame that the M&M series enjoys, Planet's Edge is an excellent RPG in its own right that features sprawling world to explore (hundreds of planets and maps), epic plot (as intrepid crew of earth's last spacecraft, find out why earth has mysteriously disappeared from the solar system, and find its new whereabouts), and cool weapons. Although it lacks the detailed statistics of other RPGs, it is definitely one of the best futuristic RPGs that you wouldnt' want to miss.

Note: There is a nasty bug that will prevent you from finishing the game without knowing the secret workaround ;) Basically, the bug prevents you from orbiting the first planet in each system. To get around this, just use the keyboard command "O" instead of the mouse. This will make your ship orbit whatever planet is selected in the nav console-- even the first one.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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