Edit: What the hell happened to my post? It's fixed now. Sorry to those of you who had to read it while it was messed up.
I'm kind of confused after reading that article. Is it an alternate universe, or is it set during (and slightly before) the original war against the Ur-Quan that Star Control 1 sort of portrays? The former I'm kind of iffy about, but the latter is cool. Star Control 1 didn't tell its story well, but there's one hell of a story in it, one that is mostly told in retrospective through the aliens you meet in Star Control 2.
A Sentient Milieu game would also have been cool, from its early days to its downfall. For those who don't remember, that was the name of the big galactic coalition that first lifted the Ur-Quan race from a primitive planet-bound species into the spacefaring juggernauts they would later become, and the same coalition that the Ur-Quan later (unwillingly) decimated. God, just writing about it makes me excited. It's such a great story!
This little tidbit from the article caught my eye:
Star Control 2 had an excellent soundtrack consisting of 4-channel sampled songs (mod files, actually) from a number of composers around the world; each species featured its own unique theme, and the music functioned almost as an extra character. Wardell again recognized the importance of sticking close to the series' roots with respect to sound and music, telling Ars that Stardock is "hoping to take the same strategy as Star Control 2 did and work with the community as much as possible."
I have to admit, I've kind of been semi-expecting to receive some kind of word from Brad in my inbox for a while, but so far I've been disappointed. This quote leaves me hopeful that he might want to involve the Precursors remixing group, which I'm part of, in the new game somehow.
Brad, if you're reading this, know that I would be very excited if you contacted me through my email address at the Precursors homepage (you know, the site you link to at the official Star Control site
) if you want music from the community. Our emails are listed next to our names in the individual artist pages. While I can't speak for the rest of the team (well, maybe one of them, a very good friend of mine), at least I would love to contribute in some way. I can also get in touch with the others, if necessary.
You know... just saying.
Kraken wrote:wonderpug wrote:Kraken wrote:I sort of remember playing the original, if it was a 4-color DOS game. Or I might be confusing it with something else.
I'm going to throw out a guess that you're thinking about Starflight:
No, I'm thinking of a game that zoomed a window open and closed when one moved one's spaceship from screen to screen, which was innovative for its day. I think there were 3 zoom levels and it was a cyan/magenta/black/white game. But none of the image searches that I did under variations on the Star Control name look familiar. Might have been shareware.
I can tell you that you're describing none of the Star Control games.
The first game was a strategic/tactical "boardgame" in 3D space and with realtime battles (of the same kind as in the other two games) whenever two opposing ships met. It was scenario based, with little actual story outside of the manual (which had plenty of amusing backstory). The entire game, except for the battles, occurred on the same screen, which showed the entire map constantly spinning. The game was good, but not a classic... yet.
The second game is a grand space opera adventure with realtime battles, completely unique at the time, and still completely unique 22 years later. This is one of the best games of all time.
The third game... does not exist. That's the best angle to this. Yup. And if it did exist, it wouldn't be the game you're describing. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
There was also a 4th game, simply called StarCon, that was a third-person 3D action game with almost none of the stuff from earlier games. It was made in an effort to separate the original creators of these games from their intellectual property forever. Yes, it really was that simple. It was a transitional game to make Star Control into a valuable property without any of the races or story that Fred Ford and Paul Reiche had made, just to spite them. The game was canceled, thankfully. An internal, very early build of the game did eventually leak, but it's not worth tracking down.][quote=