Similar to Delphine's Out of this World years later, Project: Firestart seamlessly integrates adventure game elements with fluid 2D side-scrolling action, classy cinematic cut-scenes, and an intriguing storyline. Classicgaming.com's thorough review of this underdog says it all:

"The basic plot is as follows: Communication with space station Prometheus has been lost. You have been chosen to investigate. Sounds simple enough, right? But there's a lot going on aboard Prometheus, and you're in for quite an adventure... You are a guy in a nifty black suit with green stripes and a pretty hefty laser. Your job is to fly up to Prometheus in your shuttle, get on board, and retreive any logs or other evidence of what happened to the crew.

The first thing you notice as you board the station is a man with his arm ripped off, who has scrawled the word "DANGER" on the wall in his own blood. Undaunted, our hero presses onward into the depths of the space station, determined to discover just what the danger is. As it turns out, Prometheus was involved in a special genetic research program, the goal of which was to breed a race of creatures that could withstand the extreme conditions required for mining ore from asteroids in deep space. Something went horribly wrong, and the creatures mutated, gaining the ability to reproduce, escaping onto the ship, and slaughtering most on board.

Your job, then, is to find a way to destroy these creatures before they get loose into the universe, then to escape from the space station alive. The shuttle you arrived in is conveniently destroyed during your adventure (as part of one of a few interesting subplots), so you'll have to find another way out. The replay value is high – in addition to the subplots, which have numerous conclusions depending on how you approach them, there are several different end sequences, depending on how well you completed your mission. You are treated to a couple of rather bloody cut-scenes as part of each one. Along the way, while reading scientific journals and logs and discovering new methods of defeating the creatures, there is also plenty of good-old-fashioned laser-blasting as you run down the corridors of Prometheus, encountering more of the ugly green creatures at every turn.

The most memorable thing about Project: Firestart is the atmosphere. Creatures will appear out of nowhere, cut-scenes, while few, are very well-done, and violence and gore abounds. More than once, as a young boy playing this game, I found myself saying "I can't believe they put that in a video game!" Even so, the violence is not excessive, and the story is quite gripping.

Overall, I would rate Project: Firestart as one of the top ten action/adventure games ever produced, and among my top three favorite C64 games. I am sure that many gamers will play this title and say, as I often do, "Man, why don't they make games this cool anymore?" A must-play for fans of action/adventure games everywhere, and an entry into our Hall of Belated Fame.