A Weird Letter

A week ago, I got a weird letter from someone.  It was very short, vague and had a typo:

"hey i am new at the game; and you seem to know a lot about the, and i wanted to know how many different species in the star control game and how many of them can you play as?"

Honestly, I don’t know how many different species are in Star Control.  There are the 25 races from the 25 ships in Super-Melee, then there’s Precursors, brown Ur-Quan, Taalo, Dnyarri, the creatures on the planets that can be converted into biological data, Zebranky, etc.  I would say that there are over 25 different species, although not all of them are seen or encountered.

Regarding how many alien races the player takes control of is one:  The human captain.  However, when the player enters combat, the player will take on the role of the captain of whatever ship is chosen for each battle.  So my final answer for this question is one.  Whenever the player encounters another ship and engages in a conversation, it’s always from the perspective of the human captain.

Although I am a fan of the Star Control universe, I do not know everything there is to know about it.  I find myself reading the Ultronomicon, reading quotes from the forums and trying to remember certain pieces of dialog from Star Control II.

I hope that answers those questions.  It’s like asking “How many songs are in Rock Band and how many of them you can play?”  There is no definitive answer.  I’d like to say that all the questions that are left unanswered in Star Control can only be answered with a true sequel to Star Control II.

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