Star Control 2 is one of the greatest games ever made. Don’t believe me?
Gamespot – Greatest Games Ever List
IGN – Top 150 best games list.
Classic Gaming, who say:

Star Control II is the best game ever made. Not the best classic game, not the best sci-fi game. Not even the best PC game. The best game. Ever. This is the kind of addicting game that invokes euphoria and will leave a great hole in your life after you’ve won. You’ll wet your pants in anticipation to play this game after you’ve had a taste of it. For those of you who have played the game and do not agree with these statements, I feel genuine sorrow for all three of you.

Wow. Huge statement there. I don’t know if it’s the best game ever. It’s really hard to say that. There are plenty of games that are fun. I don’t know. I don’t answer questions like that. Too hard to say, too opinionated.

Certainly the reason I picked this game up again is the fact that an open source re-released Star Control 2 as Ur-Quan Masters. Not that this is a simple task. I just think about all the work that they probably had to do, reworking the 2d engine, the sound engine – no 8-bit sound cards or Gravis Ultras – heh. It’s kind of overwhelming.

One of the things that got dropped was the /frenzy switch. It used to take the framelimiter off the game. If you had a 486, the game was unplayable. If you had a 386 (25-33mhz) then the game just ran a bit faster and was more exciting. I can see why they would not include that option. Modern CPUs would run the game at a billion frames a second and your head would blow up.

So kudos to the Ur-Quan Masters team. Great project, great release.

Beating the game with a walkthrough from gamefaqs.com was nice and relaxing. I had beaten it in 1992 and I didn’t want to strain my brain trying to remember star locations etc. Also, in 1992 I had taken so long to earn money that I lost. There’s some date that the Ur-Quan wins by. This is severely poopy for the following reason. If you are 5 gamedays from winning and you only have 1 day to win, you lose. So you have to revert to a really old save game and lose much time. This is what happened in 1992 and I was pissed back then. Still remember that.

This time was a bit different and I beat the entire game in about 14 hours (2 days).

In addition, several add-on projects are out there. You can download a bunch of mp3s of remixed in-game music at medievalfuture.com. Remix is a bad term to use because many of the songs are closer to original compositions and not just DJ-esque or resampling work. Good stuff.

In the end, it was many hours of “oh yeah I remember this” because it had been 13 years since I had played SC2. It was really great. The characters are pretty cheesy in this hard-life, Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill age. But it was a great blowback. I have no idea how something like this could be done again without a game shop taking major, major risks.

It’s like riding a bike. I remembered all the tricks of the ships. The gravity whip technique. How to *WTF PWN* an Ur-Quan with an Utwig ship. How much the Earthling ship sucks, how cool the music was, upgrading your ship with turning jets so going around the solar system was way easier. It goes on and on.

Great freaking game. Once again, I was sad to win because it was over.

<(‘-’<)

Oh yes. And also, you care alot. Followed a fantastic walkthrough.

I had been playing it a lot on my handheld. Easy way to level up when you are standing in lines and sitting in traffic. I had the day off today (long weekend of working) and I’m making a general effort to finish up all the games I’ve started.

I got to level 40 in the final dungeon which I think is way ahead of the curve. I think the 1st dead give-away was the fact that the walkthrough mentioned that the warmech was nearly impossible to kill … but I managed to kill him 3x for some really decent experience. To the right is a party that suffered a fate that I did not fighting the *Warmech*.

The entire game was completely an exercise in completion and nostalgia. The music is so incredibly simple. The plot is decent. The dialog boxes and conversations are really, really old school. Obviously this is true, considering that this game was released in *1987*.

I’d really like to check out Final Fantasy Origins now since I’ve seen the original.

Final Fantasy 7 had some weapons to fight that were actually more difficult to beat than the final boss. This is certainly not the case with 1. The last guy was definitely the hardest. He cure4′d himself and then I just said screw it and beat him to death with physical attacks. I love how big this guy is on the screen. Really makes you feel self-conscious. Maybe I’ll buy a sports car. Oh wait.

I found the entire experience a fabulous break from work, playing FFXI or actually trying to better myself by actually learning something.

My white mage got killed fighting the fiend of air the second time around. :( I cursed and tried to WARP back through all the levels. Unfortunately, I was pretty deep in the dungeon. I ran out of WARP spells and had to reset and reload. The second time through, I unleashed everything I had and whipped his butt. Like other people have said, a lot of the final moments have more to do with luck than skill or preparation.

Before I knew it, it was over. The End was on the screen and the music stopped. It was pretty sad. The total silence and seeing the roots of the Final Fantasy series. The end of the beginning of Final Fantasy. Sad and pretty.

I really picked it up late since 7 was my first FF. I was late into the game. That brings my list of Final Fantasy titles beaten to FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFI (in that order).