Episode 16 – Star Control
October 28, 2012Hello again Blockers!
The time has come for episode 16 where I cover the great 1990 game series from Toys for Bob, Star Control.
Before I even get to the news, a small program note: From now on, the show will be releasing on Sundays instead of Thursday as it has been in the past.
Housekeeping aside, news time!
Hero-U, the new game project from Lori and Corey Cole, creators of Quest for Glory now has an active kickstarter! If you want to give to this project, go check out their page.
Big news over at GoG.com, they have released over 50 games with native mac support! OSX-ers rejoice! The developer of Boxer, who is working with them also posted a great article talking details of his work.
Finally, SimCity 5 now has a release date!
After an email, we get to the main topic, the great Star Control series. I cover all the usual suspects for the first two games in the set. We end off with an email and a cool look into the lego community with a set of Star Control ships competing to be made into a real licensed lego set! If you want to see these happen put in your vote.
Buy Star Control on GoG: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/star_control_1_2/
Get the open source Ur-Quan Masters: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Check out Project 6014: http://code.google.com/p/project6014/
Stream the show live:
Direct download:
http://umbcast.com/podcast/016-UMBCast-Star-Control.mp3
I have to tell you a story about Star Control.
It was Christmas 1997 and some neighbors bought me a computer game at a thrift store that could run on my crappy outdated computer. That game was Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters. It had the floppy discs and the manual.
After reading the manual and hyping myself up incredibly for this game, I installed it and sat down for my first play. I immediately ran into the copy protection, which required me to have the MAP, which I didn’t have. There was no way around it, I could not play the game.
Fast forward to about ten years later, when I heard that the Ur-Quan Masters was being remade as an open source game. I remembered my bitterness at not being able to play, and went and got it. Several sessions later with my dial-up modem, I had the game files. It seemed to install and run okay, but could it be anywhere near as good as I hoped it could be?
The answer is: not only was it as good as I could have hoped, it was even better. And when I got the voice acting segments for all those quirky aliens, it was even more fun. This game was amazing I played it constantly for several months.
Fast forward to listening to your podcast on the game. I was playing Mass Effect off and on for the last several months on my son’s recommendation,but I remembered how cool it was, and so got it and installed it on my cool modern machine.
Yup, you guessed it. for the last few weeks, I have been playing the Ur-Quan Masters again and completely ignoring Mass Effect. And I see just how much Star Control II has inspired Mass Effect. there are a lot of similarities.
Thanks for the podcast
Awesome story, I know since I started the podcast my 360 has basically been sitting idle. Too many great old games to play!