Starpeace

Starpeace is Yoko Ono's 1985 concept album, designed to spread a message of peace around the world as an opposition to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. As with most Ono albums it did not chart extensively but the single release of "Hell in Paradise" reached #16 on the US dance charts.

Aftermath

In 1986, Ono set out on a world tour to accompany the album's message. The CD reissue by Rykodisc in 1997, includes a live recording of "Imagine" from the sellout Budapest show of the tour. An a cappella version of "Now or Never" from the same show was also a bonus track on A Story. Words, music, concept, and vocals by Ono.

The 1984 video documentary release Yoko Ono: Now & Then includes footage of the recording sessions for Starpeace. Over the end credits, Ono performs an unreleased song apparently entitled "Rainbow Time".

A 12" promo single was released for the song "Cape Clear", featuring a re-edit of "Walking on Thin Ice" on the flipside.

Reception

The album was generally poorly received by critics. Sounds gave it a one star (out of five) review, calling it "a slab of pretentious AOR offal".Spin writer Armond White called it "a Sesame Street album for children who think My Weekly Reader has been withholding the truth", and said that "the album's placidity and earnestness make embarrassing claims on our emotions".Allmusic writer Richie Unterberger gave it two stars, stating that the tracks were "often imbued with a kind of sappy utopianism". Peter Buckley, in The Rough Guide to Rock, described the album as "a rather bombastic error of judgement, laden down by pseudo-cosmic philosophizing". Rick Shefchik, in the Charlotte Observer called it "the same old '60s hippie drivel".

Starpeace (disambiguation)

Starpeace is a 1985 concept album by Yoko Ono.

Starpeace may also refer to:

StarPeace

StarPeace is an open-ended online city-building computer game, in which thousands of players build and develop a large inhabitable world. Similar in many ways to SimCity 4, one major difference being StarPeace is fully online, and players compete against each other to build industrial, residential, retail markets, and more on a single planet, making sure to gain a steady income in which to fund their future expansion. Similar to other Sim games, there is no definite end. The planet continues to grow in a continuously evolving state as each player adds more buildings to it. Each player can choose between a large selection of planets on which to play.

History

The game was developed by Oceanus Communications, and originally published and released by Monte Cristo Multimedia in 2000. Despite good reviews and a dedicated fan community, it turned out to be a commercial disaster. While Monte Cristo managed to sell 50,000 copies to its distributors, less than a thousand games were sold to final customers in Europe. Additionally, the complex economic nature of the game required much higher server power per user than MMORPGs. Monte Cristo's investors believed in the potential of MMOs; therefore, the company prepared the infrastructure to welcome tens of thousands of users. Monte Cristo needed 20,000 users just to cover its hosting costs, but one month after the launch, it had just over 500 subscribers. It then tried to disengage from its relationship with Oceanus, which, incidentally, never agreed to the expensive hosting and e-commerce strategy. In March 2001, the two came to an agreement: Oceanus kept the rights to the game and would host it themselves for one year. Eventually, the developers at Oceanus showed the game at E3 2002 hoping to gain a new publisher. They caught the eye of video game giant Sega, which quickly became very interested in the game.