Star Controller Turns 2!
Star Controller turned 2 on August 4th. I know it was two weeks ago. I’ve just been so busy with personal stuff (e.g. new job) that I had to change the way I manage my time.
So much has changed in a single year. For one thing, we have info about Toys for Bob’s super secret game. Paul Reiche shared with Lukipela that they were given more time to polish their project and do more work with it. He even mentioned that there were some potential info leaks which were quickly plugged. It was also confirmed that “Above and Beyond” is not their current game. This rumor started from a blog called Superannuation who discovered the title and referenced Star Control with a link to Star Controller. Superannuation is an information-sleuthing site that collects information related to video games. Some of the posts include interesting domain name registrations from publishers.
It’s only a few more months until the Holiday season when more games will emerge. This is when we will start hearing about TFB’s game. In other words, the waiting game continues.
There are some indie sci-fi and fantasy games that have caught my interest. In addition, I know I haven’t mentioned Archon Classic in a while and I’ll start recording some gameplay footage. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t delved into yet. I know it’s been released on Steam as well.
A very interesting post showed up on the UQM forums about something I wanted to write about here: People were selling The Ur-Quan Masters on eBay. I do not like or support this since it does not benefit the UQM team. I have nothing against Ubuntu or Mozilla selling their own products since they benefit from sales. To keep it simple, there are a bunch of legalities that can make selling free software for profit legal.
Personally, I have a small grudge towards eBay. I tried to sell an Action Replay for GameCube. It was taken down in less than a day because it was an unlicensed product which can make the console do things it is not supposed to do. However, I see hundreds of these products like this on sale that make it to the end of the time limit. In addition, it is acceptable to sell unlicensed NES games (e.g. Tengen Tetris, Hot Slots, Shinobi, etc.) However, if I sell a reproduction cartridge of an unlicensed game that is clearly labeled as such, it will be taken down; an unlicensed game can still have copyrights. I have seen auctions for illegal items which were not taken down after I flag them. In summary, I continue to use eBay to buy and sell things occasionally and I wish they would enforce their rules more fairly and give users a chance to justify themselves and get a clear answer as to why their particular auction was removed.
In conclusion, it’s been 2 years and it makes me think of how much as changed in that time. I remember last year, I mistakenly thought they may have been working on Madagascar Kartz. One thing that caught my attention was a racer called BOB in one of the trailers. I thought it was a nod to TFB. It turns out it was B.O.B. from the Monsters vs. Aliens movie which was included in this game. And don’t worry, I’m still here. For those who use Twitter, I can be followed through @starcontroller.
Links
Someone going insane trying to discover the meaning behind Toys for Bob
AHH! Madagascar Kartz
@starcontroller
@paulreiche3
EDIT: Added Paul Reiche’s Twitter.
