Star Controller

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NooBTooB is a weekly independent podcast hosted by Tobin Coziahr and Yuzo Watanabe.  They talk about and review video games and give their full opinion about whether or not is worth buying, renting or if it should be avoided entirely.  Each podcast is an hour long and their community is very strong and diverse.

Don’t be offended by their swearing.  They’re hilarious people and it helps them stick out from other podcasts.  They even joke about it by saying “We swear like truckers”.  I’ve been watching their podcast for over a year now and they put in a lot of work to reach out to their fans in more ways.

Almost a year ago, I was reading their about page and I discovered that Yuzo listed Star Control II as onf of his most favorite games.  Later on, they mentioned they bought a P.O. Box for people to send letters.  I realize that they have hundreds of e-mails, forum posts and voicemails, so I wanted to be one of the first people to write them a letter.  So, I decided to write a letter to Yuzo about what he thinks about TFB’s desire to make a new Star Control game.

I wanted the letter to stick out, so I decorated the envelope with some art I found from Deviant Art:

This is what I used as the envelope cover, which Tobin described as “eating my head”.

Ur-Quan Wallpaper Version 2 by =morganagod on deviantART

This is the image I placed in the top-right of the letter to fill in some empty space.

SC Races: Yehat by ~FreakyM on deviantART

When they mentioned the “mailbag”, I wasn’t sure if they saw my letter, and when Yuzo came back with it in his hands, I was so glad it got through; I sent mailed it to them from Canada with no insurance. It’s awesome that he knows about UQM and that he supports the idea of a new Star Control game.

“This game is probably one of the funniest games I have ever played. This is up there with Psychonauts. The humor and the script is really well done. It’s a great game.”

“If they make it, I think it would be awesome.”
- Yuzo Watanabe, NooBToob, episode 75

I can’t believe that I didn’t share this video earlier, and I’m glad that I did it now! Thanks NooBToob for reading my letter.

Link: NooBTooB Episode 75

Tags: Uncategorized by Anthony Suarez
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Zenzmurfy has worked on many pictures and videos of Star Control.  He also created various 3D renderings of Ur-Quan, Shofixti, Yehat, Spathi and more.

The video above is the beginning of his goal to recreate the ending of Star Control II in wonderful 3D:

“This animatic is over seven years old. Re-creating the Star Control 2 ending into 3D has been a goal I had ever since I completed playing the game. This version is fairly faithful to the original version. I also have a slightly embellished version with more scenes not in the original.

Thanks to finally getting a working video editor, I have taken the silent animatic and added temporary sound FX and music and dialogue from the original game.”
- Zenzmurfy

There’s a lot of changes between the first and second version and they’re both worth looking at.

After I watched these videos, I remembered how colorful Star Control is; every race used different sets of colors with shapes that looked very different from each other; if each ship was a silhouette, players can still tell them apart.

Thanks for sharing this, Zenzmurfy.  Great stuff!  Check out his fan page and his new blog.  Check it out!

Tags: Videos by Anthony Suarez
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