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Abe Sargent · 07-27-2006, 08:49 PM

This is the edited post. I am putting the next game here, which bumps Zelda up one. What game almost edged out Zelda and did for some time?

16. Star Control II
Accolade
PC
1992
GameSpot Rating - 9.3* (From now on, I'm just going to put a star beside the games that users rate but have no official rating)
Strategy/Simulation

If you think I'm kidding with rating StarCon2 so highly, just look at the users. The average user rating for StarCon2 is 9.3 versus 9.1 for Zelda I. This is not mere nostalgia or a pet game, this is one of the true classics from the middle era of PC Gaming.

Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well.

You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow.

You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station.

Earth under an inpenetrable Slave Shield:

After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other.

In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls.

If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time.

Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions.

Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship:

If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game.

You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel.

StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter.

Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations.

Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage.

The game has mutiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game.

The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away.

There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them:

StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik.

The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive.

The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz).

StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game, and there's one more reason to really like it:

Several years ago, the two developers of the game, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, released the game source code. Fans of the game worked to develop a freeware StarControl II, but they had to reanme it The Ur-Quan Masters.

Would you like to download and play, FOR FREE, one of my top games of all time and one of the true classics of the middle age of the PC?

Just click your mouse here and enjoy

The Ur-Quan Masters - News

-Anxiety

07-27-2006, 08:49 PM	#71
Abe Sargent Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Catonsville, MD	This is the edited post. I am putting the next game here, which bumps Zelda up one. What game almost edged out Zelda and did for some time? 16. Star Control II Accolade PC 1992 GameSpot Rating - 9.3* (From now on, I'm just going to put a star beside the games that users rate but have no official rating) Strategy/Simulation If you think I'm kidding with rating StarCon2 so highly, just look at the users. The average user rating for StarCon2 is 9.3 versus 9.1 for Zelda I. This is not mere nostalgia or a pet game, this is one of the true classics from the middle era of PC Gaming. Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well. You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow. You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station. Earth under an inpenetrable Slave Shield: After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other. In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls. If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time. Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions. Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship: If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game. You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel. StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter. Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations. Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage. The game has mutiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game. The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away. There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them: StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik. The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive. The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz). StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game, and there's one more reason to really like it: Several years ago, the two developers of the game, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, released the game source code. Fans of the game worked to develop a freeware StarControl II, but they had to reanme it The Ur-Quan Masters. Would you like to download and play, FOR FREE, one of my top games of all time and one of the true classics of the middle age of the PC? Just click your mouse here and enjoy The Ur-Quan Masters - News -Anxiety __________________ Check out my two current weekly Magic columns! https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/?action=search&page=1&author[]=Abe%20Sargent Last edited by Abe Sargent : 05-01-2022 at 11:45 AM.