On Valve, me, candy coating, and why that doesn't matter:

[theweaselking]

One of the best games[1] ever made is Star Control 2.

I have an original copy, on both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks. I keep it in my office, next to my desk. In my COLLECTION of the classics, which includes[2] Pools Of Darkness, a first edition of The Man With The Golden Gun, Sam And Max Hit The Road, Machiavelli's "Discourses on Titus Livy", the original X-Com, Knuth's "The Art Of Computer Programming", and Sim City 1.

This game is not only still available, it's still PLAYABLE, on modern OSen and hardware, all the way up to and including *Android*[3].

This is one of the best games ever made. Most of this is because the story and dialog are clever, and timeless. The rest is because the mechanics are simple to learn, complex to master, AND ALSO TIMELESS. This is not a game like Deus Ex where the craptacular interface will make you wish for the sweet release of death so that your suffering might end - this is a game whose interface shows a LITTLE of it's age while remaining 95% seamless.

It is space opera.

It is classic video game.

It is playable even if you suck at video games.

It is one of the best games, period, ever made.

It was originally released in 1992.

It is free, and works right now on your hardware and your OS..

Right now, in 2011, you should play Star Control 2.[4]

[1]: Not "video games", games.
[2]: Among other things
[3]: The lesser, inferior, poor broken wretches who purchased iOS devices must wait JUST A BIT longer to experience the awesome, which should be a familiar experience for them by now.
[4]: Star Control 1 is interesting but not really required. There Has Not Ever Been A Star Control 3. Making an SC3 would be like making a sequel to Highlander - that would just be dumb.

Comments

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

I still have a soft spot for the old King's Quest games, even if they are a little clunky. Unfortunately, I can't get them for this computer. :(

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

This is not a game like Deus Ex where the craptacular interface will make you wish for the sweet release of death so that your suffering might end

Disagree. Asteroids controls were shitty in Asteroids and have been shitty ever since, including Star Control 2.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I take it you've never actually played the game.

By which I mean, "Deus Ex", not just SC2. Deus Ex is unplayably craptacular due to terrible, horrific, nonsensical interface failures - whereas SC2 is simply "old".

[iponly.livejournal.com]

Have you tried the fan-expac-patch thing that's been around? I've been wondering if it's worth another playthrough to check that out- how much content there is, where it shows up in the game, etc.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

So "No, but link me?"

Fuck

[echoeversky.livejournal.com]

Yes.

The audio.. the story of the two guys who up and left to grind out more content, the journey.

Yes.

That and Dune II.

*SALUTE!*

Re: Fuck

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Dune II was great, but doesn't stand up to the ravages of time NEARLY as well.

Re: Fuck

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

I played more of dune2 but I enjoyed dune1 more

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Does this edition have the voice acting, or is that just Ur-Quan Masters?

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I'm dumb. I thought that was a link to the original game on Steam. Your trickery has tricked me!

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed SC1 as a multiplayer game back in middle school (we just played Melee), but I've never seen what the main game looks like.

SC2 is great, but the resource-harvesting game doesn't seem like much fun (I always just exploited the bug where that lets you sell shuttles you don't have). Melee mode of that is a lot of fun too.

I actually enjoyed SC3... it's no SC2, but it's not as much of a violation of the previous games as say MOO3 or Chrono Cross.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

SC1 was a turn-based strategy. There was a starmap where your units could go from celestial object to celestial object, building fortifications, resource farms, colonies, etc to help fund the shipbuilding facilities. When ships met on the same space, melee ensued. There were a bunch of different maps with various win conditions set for each. Kind of confusing; I never bothered to figure out the nuances.

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the resource harvesting a lot. The lovely sound effects and music probably helped a lot - the little slurping noise as you pick up a cache of minerals is still in my head today. It was definitely more exciting when risk/reward trade-off played a big part - darting in and out of highly dangerous environments in an unprotected lander in the hopes of grabbing something valuable.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The resource harvesting got reasonably skippable, pretty fast, even without abusing that bug, but yeah, I tended to use the bug, too.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: No mod to reintroduce the bug, but there's a couple of mods that start you with a billion RU or so.

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

I did not own a PC during this mythical era. I only owned an NES, and occasionally saw my cousins playing King's Quest or something when I was at their house. I will take you up on this challenge.

[chizzer.livejournal.com]

Installing on my phone now.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Also: http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/uqm

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

Yeps. One of the best games ever. Real labour of love, too - from what I recall Accolade wanted to release it on the originally set date when the game didn't even have any dialogue. The devs refused and invested about $20,000 of their time and money into finishing the game (which I think is why they ended up sourcing all of the music via a competition among the then-burgeoning MOD scene - in retrospect a fantastic move).

I originally played this when I was quite young, so the space opera pastiche seemed fresh and exciting rather than clever and salutory.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

original x-com! fuck yeah!

[whisperkit.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Downloaded.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: It is well worthwhile to get the music packs. They're the same songs as the original game had.... but done by professional musicians, in MP3, not done by volunteers in MIDI.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

The Spathi Eluder, while good, is overrated.

The Androsynth is terrifying in the right hands. I will show you fear in a handful of bubbles.

Also: is there a mod to re-introduce the sell-infinite-landers bug of the original? Because I was never big on the resource harvesting either.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of combinations where one side simply can't lose - Supox vs Utwig, for example, cannot ever lose. There are fewer, but still some, cases where neither side can *win*.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

Also, SC2 is available straight from Android Market, no compiling required.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/ur-quan-masters/com.sourceforge.sc2

[ianvass.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, great game. However, I have one massive, game-killing complaint about the thing. I haven't seen it fixed in UQM. No journal/quest log/etc. You have to take all your notes on paper, which I tend to lose easily, and then when I walk away for 6 months and come back, I am lost - where was I? What was going on? Which rainbow worlds have I explored already?

So aggravating that I have actually never finished the game, though I have begun it and gotten deep into it multiple times. Is there some patch or fix for this?

I should note that I *love* the voice acting in the sound patch. I read super fast, so I could cruise through the dialogue in no time if I wanted, but I enjoy sitting back and listening to the voices. Great stuff!

Also - dang Sylandro. Hate 'em. :)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Rainbow Worlds are an entirely optional thing (and also doable in a single trip around the galaxy, if you have spoilers on 'em).

But quests: well, there's like four places you can go to get tips on current and future quests, in-game, constantly, and one of the wonders of a modern OS is that you can play the game windowed, with your "notes" in notepad next to it. Constantly. You can even configure the game shortcut so open the notes AND the game, when you start it. You still have to take the notes yourself, but you can't have everything.

Anyway. Many mods, but not that one. Nobody who's hardcore a fan enough to code for the game needs it, and quest logs are a HUGE amount of work to keep them from just being Think For Me Mode. And SC2 was never bad like the Wizardry games, where not only did you need to take notes, but you could permalose the game before ever reaching the first town if you stopped to explore.