Star Controller

Long Tail Gamer is a new blog about video games. What sets it apart from other video game blogs is that it is dedicated to the games that have stood the test of time, still available to play, cheap and has a strong community. For his first episode of Long Tail Gamer, Cameron Goble started with his favorite game of all time, Star Control II!

He shows off his spectacular starmap which comes with the game; I wish I had one. In addition, Cameron mentions the ability to search the starmap by typing the name of the constellation. This feature made it’s first appearance in UQM 0.5.0.  I only discovered it after I finished the game:

The Starmap is searchable! Type / then the beginning of the constellation name, and you can tab through all possible completions.

When Cameron mentions Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, he mispronounces Paul Reiche’s name. It’s a tricky last name because it is not pronounced the way it looks. Reiche is actually pronounced the same as “Richy”. I made the same mistake when I saw Paul’s last name. I remember typing his name into a text-to-speech program, which pronounced it as “Ray-Chee”. I didn’t get the correct pronunciation until I listened to a video interview with Paul.  It’s probably not the first time anyone has mispronounced the name:

“I recently got into an argument about this very thing. We’ve always pronounced it RITCHIE, but I’ve lived in the UK for the last five or so years, where people are more apt at european pronunciations. So when I tell people that I do not in fact pronounce it the German (technically correct) like RAI-CH-JH-IA, they frown upon me.

But short answer Ritchie.”
- Arianna Reiche

While describing the different races, he recites a funny poem:

There’s the spunky Pkunk, new age avian kooks.
They’re friends with the humans, who have all the nukes.
There’s the bold, bash Thraddash, who have many cultures.
Then the devilish Druuge, those cruel corporate vultures.
There’s the slinky Syreen, who all look like whores
and the enigmatic extra-dimensional Orz.
There’s so many more. I could go on and and on.
And at the heart of it all, we’ll face the Ur-Quan.

After reciting his poem, I thought he said “I’m sorry about that. I am not generally moved to poetry but I love Ur-Quan Masters and [zi ha tu no si retz en rous]“.  I thought he started speaking in another language.  It turns out he actually said “The heart, you know, she writes her own rules” in a strong French accent.  Either that, or he understands the Orz language and I should have used *asterisks*.  I feel a little embarrassed and I’m just glad I that it’s been cleared up.  Thank you Cameron for clearing that up for me; I haven’t heard anyone use a French accent in a long time.  It’s still poetic nonetheless.  We can all relate to his poetry; Star Control has touched our hearts at one point or another.

He covered a lot of stuff about Star Control within 8 minutes and 17 seconds, and it’s definitely worth watching.  Thanks Lukipela for posting a link to his blog and to Cameron for making a video about Star Control.  It shows that for a game from 1992, the fan base is still strong and there’s people out there willing to write about it.

In his blog, he linked to a thread I started a long time ago called “Star Control Photoshops”.  I’m not an expert at photo manipulation and I somehow became inspired to take random images and make some changes to add a Star Control theme to it.  I was surprised by the responses I got at the time.  I wanted to do it after seeing the “Photoshop Phridays” on SomethingAwful.

Check it out!

Link: LTG 01: Ur-Quan Masters

Tags: Thoughts by Anthony Suarez
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I was watching a bunch of video game trailers when I came across a new expansion to Spore.  I wrote an article about Spore a long time ago, where I quoted other reviewers who compared its space stage to Star Control II.

Their next expansion to Spore will be Galactic Adventures.  It will be entirely set in the space stage and will have more adventure, exploration and diplomacy elements.  Will Wright has left Maxis and is not involved in this expansion; he has moved on to another project called the Stupid Fun Club.  Maxis and EA are making Spore games without its original creator.

The reason why I wanted to write about this expansion is because I immediately thought of Star Control the second I read the words “Galactic Adventures”.  I’m anticipating reviewers comparing it to Star Control again and I wanted to put in my two cents about it before they do.

If I had to put everything in a single sentence, Spore: Galactic Adventures is not even close to Star Control and it will not change how we see sci-fi adventure games.  It still retains its simulation style gameplay where there is not definitive end to the game.  There is no spoken character dialogue.  There is no ship vs. ship combat.  The player will only have 1 ship which will beam down a crew to any planet it visits.  There’s no epic soundtrack which reflects the race it is being played for.

Since the game is being published, it will probably have the same SecuROM protection which limits the user to installing the game 3-5 times.  A friend of mine once described it as “a $50 rental”.

I’m not quite sure if this can be considered “milking the franchise”; developing an expansion in hopes that the Spore license will be enough to sell it. Like The Sims expansions, players will need Spore first before getting this.

The user-generated content is what made Spore famous. As far as I know, there is not set plot or epic quests; it seems to have a player control a set of user-generated characters and is still bound by Spore game mechanics, so the player will still need to dance in order to form alliances.

Personally, it will not change the way I look at video games set in a science fiction universe. User-generated content is a good because it encourages players to come up with their own ideas; its a clever way of saving time in development.

It’s just not the same as Star Control.  There’s no ship vs. ship combat.  If reviewers do try to compare this expansion to Star Control, I would be very curious to see what they would write about it. What both games have in common is they take place in space, there is a captain and the player can travel through space.  They’re 2 seperate games.  I would take Spore: Galactic Adventures more seriously if Will Wright was involved in its development.  I will continue to stand by the fact that nothing will replace Star Control.

Tags: Thoughts by Anthony Suarez
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