Star Control

The Star Control series is a trilogy of science fiction computer games with a cult following. Based around a space combat game modeled after Spacewar!, each of the three games adds to this a strategic or adventure portion. A new game in the series is being considered by Toys for Bob and Activision [1].

Star Control

The ZX Spectrum version of Star Control, showing an Ur-Quan Dreadnought (red) and a Chenjesu Broodhome (magenta).

File:Star Control 1 strategic game.png

Screenshot of the strategic section of the PC version of Star Control.

The first of the series, Star Control: Famous Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict, Volume IV was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade. It was released for DOS and Amiga in 1990, followed by a Mega Drive/Genesis port in 1991. Simple ported versions were also released for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. The game came with a full-power scenario creator.

The game featured the basic Spacewar-style combat engine, mêlée (as it was called due to the close combat involved, even though the ships actually fired projectile weapons at each other) as well as a strategic game engine with a three-dimensional cluster of stars as the terrain. There was no real story component to the game, aside from a cursory background story explaining the existence of two alliances of alien races at war, the Alliance of Free Stars and the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls. However, the main attraction to this game was the well thought-out ship design, resulting in a highly effective balance between the two sides. It could be played by one or two players as the complete game, or purely as either melee or strategy. Single player mode pitted the player against the computer AI, ferocity of which could be chosen. For example, certain types of ship, like the mighty 'Ur-Quan Dreadnought' (Hierarchy ship), seemed to be the ultimate choice, but could actually be very easily taken out by a small 'Arilou Skiff' (Alliance ship) with ease if the Alliance player was skilled. Ironically, the Arilou Skiff was often one of the least valued Alliance ship to a novice player due to its poor weaponry.

As in the later games, the various races' ships have widely differing appearances and abilities. The ships' sizes, maneuverability, and speed vary; in addition, each ship has a distinct primary weapon and a secondary ability. For instance, the Ur-Quan Dreadnought has a powerful main gun and the ability to launch independent fighters; while the Mmrnmhrm Transformer has the ability to change between two forms, a slow one with a short-range laser as its main weapon, and the other quick with long-range guided missiles. Despite the mishmash of unique ships the designers were able to create a finely-tuned balance.

The Sega version was a rushed release, not having been optimally coded. Rampant slowdown marred much of the core gameplay and the creators admit and regret having released such a hasty conversion. It was, however, notable in that it led to a lawsuit between Accolade and Sega of America. At the time, Sega regulated the release of third-party software through a licensing arrangement, which Accolade had bypassed. Although the lawsuit was settled in Accolade's favour, making an extremely important legal precedent in the matter, the company later became a licensed Sega developer. Star Control was touted as the first 12-megabit cartridge created for the system.

Star Control II

See also: The Ur-Quan Masters

Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (officially "II", often written as "2") was written by Toys for Bob (Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III) and originally published by Accolade in 1992 for PC; it was later ported to the Macintosh, and the 3DO with an enhanced multimedia presentation, allowed by the CD technology.

SC2 is generally regarded as the best of the trilogy and the reason for the series' devoted fanbase. It added a large number of species and ship types to the already diverse cast and replaced the first game's strategy-based scenarios with a story-driven space exploration adventure game that included diplomacy with the inhabitants of the galaxy, some resource-gathering sub-sections, and instances of the mêlée combat of the first game whenever diplomacy failed.

The Captain's ship enters the Sol System at the beginning of the game.

Interaction with the various alien species was a chief part of the adventure game; the backstory of both the species from the first games and new ones were fleshed out considerably. There were literally hours of dialogue, each species bringing out their characteristic conversational quirks, music, and even display fonts. In mêlée, Star Control II maintained the originality of ship design from the first game, extending the strategic possibilities of the combat section greatly with the addition of a multitude of new ships. A two-player mode was available, named Super Mêlée, consisting solely of the ship-to-ship combat. All ships from the first game were included, even if they made no appearance in the story.

To many, the game's strongest aspect is its atmosphere. The carefully designed plot significantly impacts the game experience by requiring the player to explore every corner of the galaxy and make discoveries and connections independently; all this, occurring within a huge game world featuring numerous alien species, a vast number of star systems to visit, and dynamic events depending on the actions of the player created a powerful sense of openness, cause-and-effect functionality, and freedom; this gives the player the feeling that they are indeed interacting with a realistic universe instead of merely pitting their wits against those of the game designers.

The soundtrack of the PC version was top-notch — the contents were determined by running a contest which anybody could participate in, composing tracks based on a description of the game. Included on the soundtrack were compositions of Aaron Grier, Erol Otus, Eric E. Berge, Riku Nuottajärvi and Dan Nicholson, the president and founding member of The Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Music was in MOD format which utilizes digitized instrument samples while most of PC gamemusic still relied on FM-synthesis based instruments at the time.

Star Control II was highly influenced, both in story and game design, by the games Starflight (1986) and Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula (1989), developed by Binary Systems and released on a variety of platforms by Electronic Arts. David Brin's science fiction series about the Uplift Universe is also often mentioned as inspiration for the Star Control II universe.

IGN named Star Control II the 17th best game of all time [2], and Gamespot named it one of the greatest games of all time [3].

Star Control 3

Star Control 3 was developed by Legend Entertainment, hired by Accolade to create a sequel when the original creators expressed their disinterest in churning out a sequel right away. It was released for MS-DOS and the Macintosh in 1996.

A view of some solar system in the game after colonizing and developing of ships.

Although some consider the third game to be good enough in its own right, a stark majority found the third installment a dire disappointment after Star Control II. A select number of fans of the two earlier games have even decided to consider SC3 non-canonical.

The game changed the default viewpoint of mêlée combat to a confusing 2.5D look with switching camera angles, called Hyper Mêlée (and considered unplayable by most). 2D combat was still available, even though all ship designs absent from the story mode were omitted, unlike SC2. The eclectic module tunes of the second game were replaced with homogenous MIDI music, and pixel animations for communication with aliens were excised in favour of rendered and digitized puppets.

However the adventure portion — the real meat of SC2 — was weighed heavily down with Master of Orion-type colony management (producing fuel for your travels and ships for battles), and while the story would hold its own to ones new to the series, it came as uninteresting, lightweight and ridiculously linear for people who had played SC2. The scenario was much more black-and-white than the multifaceted conflict of SC2, conversations were for the most part repetition from the second game and the story's continuity with the second game was flawed, and while the player was basically given free hands in the second game, the third one leads the player by hand, presenting game over at the slightest possibility of the player doing something vaguely unfitting.

Adding insult to injury, numerous critical bugs present sealed the fate of the game for many. The computer AI for the mêlée section was severely chaotic, sometimes employing tactics that would make the battle unwinnable (by eternally flying away from the player in a faster ship, for example). Worse yet, it was absolutely possible to lead the game into dead ends by performing certain tasks in a particular sequence, and there never was a way of knowing how to avoid them, because it was not intentional. The impossibility of completion would become evident hours after it had been introduced, the bugged state of the game could be unknowingly saved, rendering the saved games unfinishable, and forcing the player to make a fresh start at the very beginning. Patches were never issued to correct any anomalies. In comparison, SC2 was relatively stable if not immaculate in operation, the few problems possible mainly coming from bugs introduced by cracked versions, or slightly raw sound card drivers — it certainly had no dead-end bugs.

The different feel of the game has been suggested to originate in the lack of involvement of original Star Control designers — Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. Colony management was likely a result of Accolade's requests to determine the direction of the game, as it is unlikely for Legend, known for their interactive fiction, to have decided to introduce such elements into what was a deeply story-driven computer game in the first place.

StarCon

Star Control 4, or later StarCon, was Accolade's final attempt at profiting from the franchise. Few details are known, as Accolade reshaped and eventually cancelled it during the development stages; however, the Harika had been confirmed as a returning alien race. While originally touted as another space adventure, the idea quickly changed into an action-oriented combat title, to be viewed largely from behind the ship, with gameplay similar to Psygnosis' Colony Wars series, somewhat like a shooting-oriented X-Wing.

The Ur-Quan Masters

File:Figth with a Slylandro Probe.png

A Slylandro Probe attacks the Captain's ship.

The Ur-Quan Masters (UQM) project aims to port Star Control II to modern operating systems. The project began in 2002 when the original creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III released the source code of the 3DO version as open source under the GPL. It is currently at version 0.5 [4], and has accomplished its goal. As of version 0.4, the long-missing intro and ending movies were finally added, as was an in-game setup menu.

The name of the project only uses SC2's name sub-title due to a thriving company owning the IP rights for the name "Star Control", having acquired them through Accolade's dissolution and being unwilling to give them up.

While development on the UQM codebase continues, a second group of professional musicians called The Precursors are creating new musical tracks and remixes of the originals. They are an optional package that can be listened to in-game, replacing the original music, or just played with an audio player.

Star Control: Interbellum

Star Control: Interbellum is a novel written by William T. Quick set in the Star Control universe. It was first published in 1996, shortly after the release of Star Control 3. Many fans were disappointed upon reading the book, as several details in it were inconsistent with those of the games, especially those dealing with the depictions of some of the alien races featured in both.

Races from the Star Control universe

Appeared in SC1/SC2	Mentioned in SC1/SC2	SC3
Androsynth ("false men", human clones) Arilou Chenjesu Chmmr Dnyarri Druuge Earthling (Humans) Ilwrath Melnorme Mmrnmhrm Mycon Orz Pkunk Shofixti Slylandro Spathi Supox Syreen Thraddash Umgah The Ur-Quan: Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah Utwig VUX Yehat Zoq-Fot-Pik	Algolites Burvixese Faz Drall Dramya Gg Keel-Verezy Mael-Num *Nnngn* Precursors Taalo Yuli Yuptar Zebranky	Arilou Clairconctlar Chmmr Daktaklakpak Doog Exquivan Eternal Ones Harika & Yorn Herald Earthling (Humans) K'tang Lk Mycon Orz Owa Ploxis Pkunk Precursors Spathi Syreen Ur-Quan (Kzer-Za) (Kohr-Ah) Utwig VUX Vyro-Ingo Xchagger

Possibility of a new Star Control game

On April 11, 2006, Alex Ness (Producer of Toys for Bob) wrote an article on the Toys For Bob website, titled "Star Control Sequel - Get Out Of My Dreams..". It stated that Toys For Bob had been working on a new, unnamed title for the previous year, and that it was scheduled to come out in early November. Near the end of the article, he hinted that "if enough of you people out there send me emails requesting that Toys For Bob do a legitimate sequel to Star Control 2, I'll be able to show them to Activision, along with a loaded handgun, and they will finally be convinced to roll the dice on this thing."(quote:Alex Ness) The article also mentions that Activision has apparantly revealed their game at the 2006 E3 convention.

On April 16, 2006, the Ur-Quan Masters website added an article to their page titled "Toys for Bob want another Star Control and need your help!" It gives a link to a petition page with a form that would e-mail a message to Alex Ness, so that users would not have to open any other third party clients. In addition to an e-mail form, the mailing address of Toys For Bob was also given on the website.

Since the mention of the possibility of a new Star Control game, the amount of visits to the Ur-Quan Masters and Star Control Timewarp website have doubled.

On April 28, 2006, Alex Ness wrote another article titled "Only 997,700 more emails to go!", stating that he has received around 2,300 e-mails on that day, with a long way to one million. With the time passed since April 28, 2006, it is assumed that this number is much greater. He then made joking references that both Jack Black and Steven Spielberg are fans of Star Control.

Similar games

• Star Sonata
• Starport: Galactic Empires
• Escape Velocity Nova
• Starscape
• EVE Online
• Freelancer
• SubSpace
• Space Rangers
• Starflight

External links

• Petition, A petiton to support creation of a new Star Control game
• The Ultronomicon, a dedicated Star Control wiki
• The Pages of Now and Forever, a comprehensive fan-site
• Toys for Bob, Game developer's website
• MobyGames entry on the Star Control series
• The Ur-Quan Masters open-source port
• Tea Leaves, spoiler-free review and retrospective of Star Control II
• Star Control port on Mega Drive/Genesis
• Precursors, a Star Control 2 remixing project for The Ur-Quan Masters