Star Control II

Yes, it's my favorite game of all time. No, I'm not sure you can really "get" the experience today. One thing older games were able to do was use time and boredom(!) for effect in a way that mostly doesn't exist nowadays with so many more well-made games with "optimized" reward systems.

I think of Grim Fandango, where a lot of the effect of the narrative comes in the way scrounging for clues by trial and error makes it feel as if you really were stuck in that town for a year. Play through quickly with a strategy guide and you won't actually get the effect of the environment.

Or take the difference between the original Zelda and the later games: I'd say the fact that the original completely lacked the well-marked trail of where you were supposed to be going and what you were supposed to be interacting with made it seem as if you had "found" a smaller part of a wider world, and you were reacting to its logic.

Star Control II did both of these things as well as any game has. The reasons for your actions were always intrinsic (not to make "1/5" go to "3/5" and then "5/5", quest completed!) and your course through the game was meaningful because it took place in an economy of choice, effort, and time that was consistent and weighty.

Beyond navel gazing, I think the real upshot is when something like Breath of the Wild is so universally adored, part of what you're seeing is all the potential being left on the table by the current paradigm of gerbil wheels with scrolling backdrops.

Just to make sure its known, the game source code was released to its fans in 2002. It has since been maintained under the subtitle The Ur-Quan Masters, and plays on everything.

It is freely available here: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Play it.

>One solution might have been to tie the evolving galaxy to the player’s progress through the plot rather than the wall clock, a technique pioneered in Infocom’s Ballyhoo back in 1986 and used in countless narrative-oriented games since. It can convey the impression of rising danger and a skin-of-the-teeth victory every time without ever having to send the player back to square one. In the end, the player doesn’t care whether the exhilarating experience she’s just had is the result of a meticulous simulation coincidentally falling into place just so, or of a carefully manipulated sleight of hand. She just remembers the subjective experience.

Ugh, I've played many games like this, and while it's true that they do have advantages, I think they're a poor choice in open-world games like Star Control II, where there are many different things you can do at any one moment. If I can just ignore the world-ending threat and mess around with side quests with zero consequences, it really makes me not take the threat seriously. Plus it's much less immersive when the evolving galaxy doesn't evolve independent of my actions - it's easy to perceive games that only progress the world when I hit some specific milestone in the main story.

IMO, "the world only moves when you do" is the safe and boring choice when it comes to stories. A truly independently evolving world like Star Control II's is radical and much more interesting - and if it was more common for games to evolve in wall-clock-time, you wouldn't have this issue of players having their playthrough unexpectedly ruined.

I think SC2 may be my favorite game from childhood -- I discovered it, of all places, in a Barnes and Nobles which had a playable 3DO console and had a playable demo of the Melee mode, which is still a blast to play because of the creative design of the ships.

But what I remember most was how brilliant the writing and humor was. Not just the hilarious alien races and their depictions/dialogues, but the creative drama of the overall plot and universe, in which humans were seemingly just a minor character in a conflict between warring centipedes. I don't think there's a game from that era that I want more to be remade/rebooted (with Fallout 3/4 being disappointments). Unfortunately, it seems to be mired in a intellectual property dispute between the original creators and Stardock [0].

[0] https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/25/17501084/star-control-crea...

I loved this game, and Ur-Quan Masters is a 100% faithful remake for anyone wanting to give it a try.

My favorite moment: when the Ilwrath tell you exactly from where, and on what radio frequency, their evil gods communicate to them. You immediately think: Wait, surely you can't ....? Ah, but of course you can.

Star control II is one of my favorite games of all time. I hate it that Toys for Bob lost the brand, and even more that stardock would take the name and use it for something completely unrelated to the original story.

Star Controll II, unlike any other game of its time, fired almost perfectly on all cylinders.

  - Excellent storyline, for the most part
  - Well written humor and dialogue
  - Creative dialogue options
  - Unique personalities for every species
  - A sense of vastness in mystery in the universe that rewarded exploration.
  - Great artwork
  - Fun mini games, especially the "Super-Melee" combat
  - Interesting RPG/upgrade element as you acquired new ships and parts for your main ship.
  - Did I mention the music was both ahead of its time (tracker format when everything else was midi), and amazing?

I have such fond memories of playing the melee mode at a friend's house, with a shared keyboard -- he would always pick the little alien that shouted insults. "Jerk! Idiot! Fool!" And the soundtrack, the soundtrack was so good you could just let it spin while you did other things.

I had such a weird relationship with this game.

My godfather got me a pirated disk (5 1/4"!) from Malaysia when I was about 9 or 10, which included the full manual. The disk was completely corrupted - I was able to get it to play just the intro and then the game would crash.

I devoured that manual though - the full future history of Earth and the Ur-Quan War story had me totally hooked.

Fast forward 15-years or so to when I discover the whole game is open-source now as the Ur-Quan Masters story, and I was giddy to finally be playing it (and getting to listen to the glorious Hyperspace music scores), while my kitten at the time had to be distracted from clawing my monitor because he wanted to chase the blue-spaceship across the screen.

It's an amazing game, that just goes all the places you want it to.

I recall being a small child and constantly bothering my older brother to play Star Control II so I could watch. I tried playing it myself but was too young to figure out how to exit the starter station. As I grew older, I could finally get to the point of crashing into planets.

Dipping into https://mastodon.social/@orz works for me when I'm nostalgic but don't feel like spinning up dosbox.

My experience with SC and SC2 goes back from high-school, we've got some "beefy" PC-XT and PC-ATs with CGA graphics, and the thing to do was to find a keyboard where two players can play hold 10 keys simualtenously and play against each other - choice of keyboard was critical, and there was an APP allowing to find these keys.

Played MELEE mostly from the game, and bit of the Adventure, but to be fair - MELEE for me was the best part - endless plays, much like we've played ARCHON, and ARCHON 2 before that - in fact these were the two most played games at school (somewhere ~1991-1993).

Then around this time my other favourite game came to be Heroes of Might and Magic 1, 2 and later 3 - and much like the ones above it - "multiplayer" was really people taking turns, and promising to not see while the others are playing - some sessions ended up being more than 24hr, after which the girlfriend back then of my best friend, had to kick us out (we drank, and not showered for whole day...)

Then the same experience in the army (mandatory service back then, where I came from), lol. So much fun...

And I've never really played much multi-player network game myself - PC clubs, or nowadays internet (with the exception of Hearthstone - nothing else).

I do miss the funky, weird, games of old times...

C. 1996 I was about 17, I remember interviewing for a job at Accolade in the old former Apple HQ black triangular building off I-280. SC3 just came out.

PS: That triangular building is somewhat "cursed" in that it can't seem to keep tenants. Is the space too expensive, is it too unusable by being shaped as such or do risky ventures pick it?

Boxer on Mac, a wrapper for DosBox, is a great way to play DOS games. http://boxerapp.com