Star Controller

This is one of six songs in a free album called “reTracked Patterns” by various artists:

“I took 6 songs by famous tracker musicians of early 90s and reworked them in Apple Garage Band with a few additional software synthesizers.”

This is the first song played in the PC version of Star Control II which describes the aftermath of the Ur-Quan war.

The original composer is Dan Nicholson

Manwe (Alexander Matchugovsky) composed this remix. It’s a really cool remake; it sounds fairly close to the original, with an electric guitar and synth sounds added. It’s good to see that there are more remixes of SC2 music emerging; a good sign that there is still a strong fan base. Think about any of your video games. Have you heard any remixes or seen the original tracks uploaded to a popular site such as YouTube?

Here is the link to the MP3: Star Control 2 intro

Thanks Alexander for taking the time to do the remake. I know there are remixes out there that I haven’t listened to yet.  I’d love to play them in Audiosurf if I ever had the time. For example, there are newer tracks from TheMisterCat that I still haven’t heard.  I’ll add “remixes” to my mental to-do list.

Links
reTracked Patterns
Pkunk’s Not Dead
PONAF: Star Control Fan Music

Edit: Crediting the right people for the remix and pointing out that Dan was responsible for the original music.

Tags: Videos by Anthony Suarez
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Game Developer is a monthly magazine that concentrates on professional video game development topics.  Anyone who is a game developer in the USA can get it for free, while everyone else can pay for the printed or digital copy.

Portions of Game Developer can be viewed online for free.  It is because of this that I have been able to find an article titled “2010 space is the place”, written by Jeffrey Fleming.  The article briefly describes 7 open source science fiction games, what’s great about them and where they can be downloaded.  Here’s a snippet of what Jeffrey said about Star Control II before explaining how it evolved into the open source port known as The Ur-Quan Masters:

Combining open-world training, exploration, and combat with a deep and cleverly-written dialog system, Star Control 2′s vast universe was given extra charm by a quirky graphic design that included art and music contributions from old school TSR illustrator Erol Otus.
- “2010 space is the place”, Jeffrey Fleming, Game Designer, Jan 2010

TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) was the original company that created Dungeons & Dragons.  They have been purchased by Wizards of the Coast who now own the franchise.  Erol worked as an artist for various Dungeons & Dragons manuals.  At that time, Paul Reiche III also worked as a game designer for D&D before entering the world of video game design.

This reminds of me of the PC Gamer Top 100 article I wrote before and I’m impressed that Star Control II got mentioned in a 2010 magazine so soon.  Who knows?  Maybe we can rally enough votes to get Star Control II in PC Gamer too.

I’d like to thank Jeffrey Fleming for including The Ur-Quan Masters in his article.

Links
Game Developer: “2010 space is the place”
Erol Otus’ artist credits while at TSR
Paul Reiche’s credits while at TSR
Vote Star Control II and 4 other games for PC Gamer Top 100

P.S.  Did you know that Erol did the voice of the Chmmr and Paul did the voice of the Mycon and Talking Pet?

Tags: Cool Stuff, News by Anthony Suarez
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