The Halley Project

amiga_world_1986-01-006

Source: Amiga World – January 1986

The Halley Project, subtitled “A Mission In Our Solar System”, was a game released by Mindscape for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit and Apple II in 1985. A version with updated graphics was also released for the Amiga in 1986. For those old enough to remember, 1986 was the year Halley’s comet made it’s once every 86 year visit to the inner solar system. It was definitely a big deal at the time so it isn’t surprising that a game would be made to capitalize on that publicity.

The Halley Project is actually a pretty good game. It’s a sort of space flight simulator and you are recruited as a star pilot to participate in the “greatest scientific adventure in history”. This consists primarily of traveling to and exploring different objects in the solar system. The game is fairly high on realism for the time with realistic distances used. The game does give you a hyperdrive so you don’t have to spend months or years on each mission though. After completing all of the missions, you would be given a code that you would then have to mail to Mindscape in order to receive instructions on how to access the final secret mission. This basically just involved them sending you the password.

The Halley Project is a relatively obscure game by today’s standards. It has not been re-released and there are no sequels (maybe when Halley’s comet comes around again). If you want to give this one a try, you’ll have to find an original disk or use emulation. The Amiga version has somewhat better graphics than the others but they all play basically the same so you can just choose your favorite platform.

The screen shots above are from the Amiga version and the ad is from the January 1986 issue of Amiga World.





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