I've written previously about Star Voyager for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I first wrote about the hidden method of triggering the win condition. I then wrote about what I call the hidden Minor Damage system.
There are still some interesting secrets buried within this 40 year old game. Today we're going to talk about Star Voyager's Star Bomb.
The Upgrades
You have 2 upgrades you can find among the 8 planets. One planet will give you the Hyperdrive Engine, and the other will give you the Super Laser Cannon. The rest of the planets have nothing for you to find.
- The Hyperdrive Engine gives you much more responsive controls, faster acceleration, and faster warp charging. It's very nice to have, particularly when warping long distances.
- The Super Laser Cannon, in addition to changing your laser weapons fire to the cool blue of your Home Base Station, will majorly buff your damage.
There's an additional mysterious upgrade called the Star Bomb. You find it by docking with a monolith in an unknown sector in the 10x10 grid of the galaxy that you're fighting in.
Initial Searches for the Monolith
Since the location of the Star Bomb is randomized, and it's not found on your map, players have had to hunt for it. Over the years, it's been realized that we could eliminate certain possibilities. StrategyWiki notes, "The StarBomb is a stationary object, furthermore it is never occupied by a planet or the enemy. While playing the game you can track which sectors are never occupied by the enemy or planets to help limit your search."
We can also eliminate sectors (B,0), (I,0), (J,0), and (A, 1) from the search. The game is hardcoded to eliminate spawns in those sectors for any stationary object, including the Star Bomb.
This is all nifty, but even eliminating all objects, planetary orbits, and special zones that still leaves about 42 possible locations. How many more can you eliminate by noting which sectors the enemies have traveled in? And if you wait for the enemies to travel across the galaxy, do you have enough time to search for it? This is why people only seemed to find it at random:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRnVUpK9kRM
Star Bomb Found
As it turns out, the devs wanted you to find it all along. They ended up tucking away the secret location within another location -- the Asteroid Belt. They chose this location for good reason. It's one of those sectors you really don't want to visit normally. You are bombarded by asteroids over and over, and even with the Hyperdrive, you may have to take some Minor Damage in order to escape.
Nevertheless, lying within the Asteroid Belt is the secret of the Star Bomb. Before warping to the Asteroid Belt, I'd personally recommend that you have your shields up. You take damage fairly quickly once inside the belt. I also would recommend that you have the Hyperdrive Engine already equipped for fast warp charging and overall efficiency.
Triggering the Secret
Once you have arrived in the belt, press A or B on Controller 2. Your ship's compass will suddenly snap-align to the location of the Star Bomb. If you can't read it, press Select and look at where your Ship's destination is pointed on the Map. Note this location.
Now go back to the Cockpit view, and warp out of there. You probably want to perform the fastest warp which will give you a jump distance of 1. Right before your warp is engaged, you can swap to the Map location, select where you actually want to go (again, you'll only have a jump distance of 1), and then go back to the Cockpit view. This should hopefully help you avoid anything dangerous nearby.
The Star Bomb Sector
Warp over to the sector your compass had suddenly pointed for you. You'll receive a message, "FAINT SIGNAL RECEIVED." Find the monolith and attempt to dock with it as if it were a planet. It'll rotate, disappear from view, and you'll be informed that you use Controller 2 to fire the Star Bomb.
Firing the Star Bomb
The Star Bomb will not fire in a sector that has a station, an asteroid belt, or a planet. It just won't.
It will, however, fire in an empty sector or in a sector with an enemy. Just press A or B on controller 2, and watch the missile fly away.
In this screenshot, the Star Bomb is the small blue square launched by the player at the mothership. Upon a successful launch, the message, "FIRE STARBOMB!" scrolls dramatically on the ship's computer screen.
StrategyWiki, as of the publication date of this article, incorrectly says that "[...] you will get the one and only Star Bomb in the game." In actuality, you get one shot from the Star Bomb per warp. It's as if the Star Bomb is charged by the warp of the Engines. Perhaps this inaccuracy is an attestation to how rare finding the Star Bomb has been for all of these years.
Conclusion
The developers tucked away this secret, but provided a way for players to find it. It's amazing that I've never found how to use the Asteroid Belt to find the Star Bomb until today. How many more secrets are left to be found in this game?
Top comments (2)
Fascinating. So what exactly does the Star Bomb do?
The Star Bomb is an unguided missile projectile that eliminates all enemies that are up close and in front of you. I think it was meant to do much more originally, since the error-ridden manual spoke of the possibility of using it to eliminate an entire flotilla.
In my recent runs, I find it lackluster. It can be effective at clearing multiple fighters that get in your face, which can speed up the fight just a tad. I have yet to use it successfully against a mothership. The upgraded lasers are quite effective against the motherships as is. If I can find a way to deploy it against the motherships consistently, it might mean that the best players could avoid searching for the lasers and go right into the fight with the Star Bomb for a speedrun.