i always like it when the game designers put some thought into the different ways you can die. that about the only good thing i can say about fade to black, for instance.
I had this game for the NES, and after playing it forever I ended up getting stuck at the dragon. Little grade school Ahriman wrote a letter in pencil to Electronic Arts asking them for help, and a week or two later I received a personally written and signed letter from some guy there. EA is still okay in my book.
Oh, it wasn't a bad game, it was just hard as fuck. I never did get to the dragon. Starflight came out for the Genesis (also from EA, featuring fanfiction from a professional sci-fi writer right in the manual) and from then on my attention was diverted.
I, too, remember when EA was cool. Like those folding record-style disk holders, which would often have cool shit printed inside. Like on Marble Madness with the anecdote about how the home "port" was developed without the original source and the photo of the two main developers being chased by the giant marble.