Star Control 1
 

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Review and Download (if available)

Cool! Just browsing around the forums, looking at the Abandonia Games Discussion part of the forum.. reloading, and.. I see a new topic.

I just think wow, a new game uploaded to the site as I was online. And then I noticed the name of the topic. :shock:

Star Control I was one of my favourite games when I was younger. I just loved it. And that did last for a very long time. I played it for years without a break longer than 4 days or so. I remember so many nights spent only playing the Melee with my brother again and again and again.. until we noticed the sun coming up (and our mother awaking, not very happy about us being awake all night only to play a "stupid computer game" :roll:)

For some reason I never was a very big fan of Star Control II though. I have completed it once, but never played it with such enthusiasm as I did the first one. :)

But once again I'll have to thank Kosta and the whole Abandonia community for getting me back together with one of my favourite games of all time.

I agree.
This is THE BEST.

Remind me to log in.

Well I agree, the game was brilliant, but I always enjoyed melee in SC2 more - who knows why - but the full game was obviously much better than SC1 anyway.

Well yeah, SC2 was much more advanced in many ways and I don't know why it was that I never liked it as much as SC1. Maybe SC1 seemed in my eyes better for its time than the second one (on which I didn't have my hands very soon after the release).

And am I wrong or did SC2 lack the same kind of multiplayer melee thing that SC1 had? Or had my brother just grown out of gaming by the time we got SC2 in our hands?

sc2 had the same kind of 2 player. a free port can be found here.

Is there any way to switch the control setup?

Who cares about any of that stuff? Star Control 2 had one of the best plots I've ever had the fun of unravelling. And it was hilarious too.

Yes, run the "keys.exe" file included in the archive !

Have to say, I agree. In light of SC2, SC1 plays (for me!) like a test of its combat system. But SC2 has so much more to offer in the way of strategy, adventure, and wonderful humor.

Has anyone else had serious trouble running SCI? I can't seem to get it running up to speed.

have you downloaded and tried dosbox ?

Running SC1 in DOS box or under XP gives me the same performance issues. I'm stumped.

When you mention "up to speed," do you mean this literally? Does the game run very slowly? Or what are the problems you're having?

Yeah; I'm the same. Amazing though the MIDI sound effects are (I only ever had PC speaker goodness back in the day) the music plays at about 1/3 speed, meaning the end of each bout is.. painfully.. slow.

When I first ran it, sticky keys launched. When I quit SK, SC ran at proper speed for a few seconds then slowed down again when the arena zoom changed and I haven't got it back up again since.

Any ideas?

SC rocks! I still have my original copy of SC1. Ok its not an original its a copy that my friend's older brother gave me, one that had the copy protection cracked. I can run it without dosbox on my win98 machine, but the sound doesn't work. I actually really enjoy the full game mode. Fun strategy game with some action sprinkled in. Try playing against the computer on hard mode... I dare you to win!

SC2 is definately a great game also. Most awesome.

Master the ships in supermelee and the computer is a piece of cake at any level.

The review of this game makes me sad.
I know I'm chiming late and resurecting and old topic, but I'm a StarControl fanatic and one of the few for whome SC1 out ranks SC2.
!!?
SC2 completely avoided the SC1 full game, and that IMHO was somthing that I've yearned for. It's like playing chess with the stars.
Imagine playing chess on a 3-D board. Imagine that the board wasn't fixed and that to navigate you had to analize the board just so you could determined if it's possible to get from one place to another. Sound difficult? Well it is at first. But a little practice and soon SC1's rotating starmap becomes your playground. Navagating it's pathways you rush forward to baracade choke points and control the board, send your chosen flagship forward to seek out percursor artifacts to pump it up, follow up with some inexpensive units to colonize and mine behind them, then move with a concentrated effort to strike a deadly blow against your enemie's star base, crippling their future so that their remaing fleet becomes your play thing, pitting your ships strengths against their weakness.
Unless of course you're not playing a that type of scenario.
If future games would have built upon this strategic star map idea, expanding , refining and improving the idea as only time can I wouldn't have much to complain about. As it is, StarControl is the ONLY place anyone can go to experience this level of strategic brilliance.
For storyline, SC2 was equally brilliant combining equal parts drama and comedy with a pinch of gratitutus sex scene with an alien babe (in the dark) completly enclosed in the executable. SC1's storyline was found in parts durring the full game portion, but mostly you had to refer to the manual to get up to speed, but the full game, THE FULL GAME PEOPLE! WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LIKE THE FULL GAME! WHY DIDN'T SC2 HAVE THE STRATEGIC STARMAP! WHYYYYYYY!
I'm have to go. I'm sorry. Go play the full game. LOVE THE STARMAP!

:D :blink: :blink:
Hello unregistered SC expert, i am hoping you will check in
even though your last post was in April,
is the versoin on Abandonia NOT the full version? i am
intrigued by your eloquence and the details you share of
spaitial strategy and am very interested to try this game,...
i have tried unsuccessfully to find a manual, do you know
of where to get one? It woiuld help a lot.
let us know if you can....and any details on how to achieve
full playablility if you can help.
cheers
:ok: :ok:

dam this game runs slow. is it supposed to be like this?
normaly games under xp often run too fast but this one feels
like in syrup.

is there any solution to this? it would look promising... :(

I found it a little cold, anyway a like both stc and they are differnt tipes of game :ok:

I also found that the game was very slow when I ran it in windows or from a command prompt, but when I used DosBox, the issue was resolved.

I really like the Full Game of both SC1 and SC2, but I think it's silly that the review compared the two. I mean, SC1 is Strategy and SC2 is Adventure. They're totally different. I like both, especially with the SC1 StarEdit program...

-Lyrax

Okay, I've registered, finally. And I may make Abandonia my new home. The starcontrol boards are a bit slow.

As for the game running slow, the game itself is admitedly a bit choppy compared to today's standards, or even SC2. However, if you're getting significant slow down you're probably trying to run this game in WinXP. You have got to run this game in DosBox. Turn up the clock cycles and you'll be fine.

As for a manual for the game, I have one in PDF format. If yawl want it, tell me who to send it to.

Hi Lyrax, Guesst,

The main reason why the 2 were compared is because one is a sequel to the other. I do agree that the reviews might be slightly biased, but I did take into consideration what my friends said about it, so it's not totally just my opinion.

I do apologise though that my love for both games obviously did not propogate through the reviews. They are both brilliant games and I think 2 of the best to come out of that era.

My personal opinion, I love more the melee and the full game in SC2.

PS: There are manuals available for both games on the review pages. Although i

NOW. There wasn't three days ago for Star Control 1.

I don't mind comparing Star Control 1 and Star Control 2, personally. Like you said, they're sequels.

My objection has to do with you speaking ill of Star Control's full game. That's honestly what the game is about. If you don't like it then why are you reviewing Star Control? That's like saying "I can recomend Half Life as long as you just stick to the multi-player."

Do you even realize that Star Control's full game is what the game was about? Lemme give you a little history. Paul Reiche III, half of the programming team that made the game, has his name on another game that came out in 1982. That game is Archon. Archon, if you don't already know, combines the stragety of chess with a fast paced one-on-one combat so that you don't mearly "take" a piece. You have to conquor the square. So when Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford sat down to design Star Control their goal was to make Archon in space. Even the name hides Archon in it (stAR CONtrol). So if you only look at the melee you're not getting what Star Control was about, in other words the idea of strategic play melded with Space Wars like combat, mixing in a little of Archon's unit variety.

I hope this has been educational for you.

Unfortunately not likeing Star Control's full game is the popular stance. It's no surprise when Star Control 2 came about that they set the gyrating unpopular full game aside and focused on a gameplay type that would spot light Paul Reiche III depth of story telling skills.

Once again I've written more than I probably should. I just cant' help myself.

I don't think they set anything aside because of any consideration except that SC2 was to be something really new. So they made a (thrilling) adventure game instead of making the same strategy game again with minor modifications.

I don't really know why the SC1 full game is (relatively) unpopular, maybe having a quick alternative in the melee mode actually damaged its potential. Not as much, but the same goes for SC2. I've known of people who didn't even give a try to SC2's full game, they just played the melee, besides they remembered SC1's. Of course I though they didn't know what they had missed, and you must think the same for the people who haven't tried SC1's full game.

I did actually try SC1's full game. Curiously enough, I found it just brilliant, very brilliant, but it just didn't captivate me like other strategy games like, say, Civilization. Maybe it was too short for me, that's an uncommon feature in strategy videogames. As you've said, SC1 is much like chess. Surely playing against a friend is funnier.

*sniff* that's what I lament the most. could you imagine this sort of game WITH minor modificaions? Or major modificaitons! Imagine playing with a Chmmr on a starfield! I get sad just thinking about it.

And I actually enjoyed the stragety game vs the computer because I could always win it. And I like to win. You've also got to play it enough that you find out Syreens fill up their crew before destroying an enemy colony with an accompanying animation.

Recently Star Wars - Empires at War did provide a little bit of this sort of stragety/action combination pumped up to modern stanards. It wasn't so much like SC that you go "Oh, Star Control" (ie, no rotating starmap) but it did have the sort of branching planetary map with RTS battles. I wonder if Lucas Arts borrowed a page from Star Control?

I didn't really speak ill of it and I didn't say that I didn't like it. All I said was that I preferred the SC2 full game. It is a subjective view and I admitted to it above. Still, you liking SC1 full game is a subjective view too.



Actually it has ;)

<!--QuoteBegin-guesst@Apr 4 2006, 07:00 PM

Unfortunately not likeing Star Control's full game is the popular stance. It's no surprise when Star Control 2 came about that they set the gyrating unpopular full game aside and focused on a gameplay type that would spot light Paul Reiche III depth of story telling skills.[/quote]

Well there you said it. Most people (popular) liked the SC2 full game better. Maybe they just didn't understand the SC1 game, or maybe the graphics were the let-down. Who knows?

Look. If you really don't like the reviews and feel that they do not explain the games as they should, please feel free to write new ones. I don't mind, and I'm sure the current admins wouldn't mind either.

I'm really glad to hear you say this. See, I didn't know how to break it to you, I felt like I was sneaking around behind you back. But Kosta, when I got in contact with him suggested this very thing. So I did, and I think now... yup, it's up. There's a new review of Star Control 1 on the main board.

Trust me, it was nothing personal. The last thing I want is bad air as a newby on the boards. And besides, I think the rest of your reviews are great. Even the one for Star Control 2 I could add nothing significant to. So, I hope you're okay with this and I hope to write more reviews for new games on Abandonia (not new game, but new on Abandonia) soon.

What a coincedence, right now I am writing a review for Star Control 3 myself. (I think it's a quite bad game unworthy of the SC saga, and according to what I've heard most people agree, actually I've heard of nobody who likes it.)

Please let us know here at the forum as soon as your SC1 review is uploaded. Now that you've registered, have you thought about using an image from SC1 as your avatar? An image of your preferred ship, or maybe one of those cool images of the captain manoeuvring the ship. That would be just cool!

Revised review - Up already.

Star Control Avatar - I have an original picture I made years ago of an ancient shofixti warrior that I 've been using on the Star Control boards for years. (Using somebody else artwork is just not acceptable to me. That't not how I identify myself.) I just need to go hunt down the link and re-link to it. The only problem really is I think it needs to be re-edited first and I don't have the time.

Star Control 3 - Try as best you can to reveiw it on it's own merits. Star Control 3 had many merits of it's own. It wasn't a bad game. It was however an unforgivably lousy star control game. But if they had called it "Kroz Control" or something else it might have very well found it's own little cult following somewhere.

Although, I think the bugs in the game that screw you up if you do things in the wrong order is an unforgivable error. Make me lose because I played wrong, turned left when I was told to turn right, that's fine. Make to have to start over because of nothing I did wrong, you're not my friend.

You shouldn't have done that! You should rate the game as you think it's worth youself, the rest of the people's opinion is shown in the separate public rating. Well at least I voted 5 myself.

That's what I thought at first, but now I don't think so any longer. My review will compare it with SC2, without that it would be lame, but it will focus above all on the game itself. SC3 is part adventure, part strategy, but I think that it utterly fails on both fields. It's not only that it's so buggy, although a bug that makes you start over an adventure game is unforgivable on its own; and also the melee and the colony management had bugs, it was crystal clear that this game was issued without enough developing and testing work.

It's that the strategy part is not strategic at all, and the adventure part just looks lousy to me. To start with the story is silly even compared with run-of-the-mill adventures (while SC2 was epic), but even counting on that the dialogue dynamics is very bad, not to talk about other aspects... I'll explain myself more profusely in the review.

Not a problem. I've just seen it and your review looks great. Looking forward to more of them!

Strangely enough, what I loved most about Star Control 1 was setting up a game for 2 AI players to play against each other. Set all planets to mineral, and let them fight it out, a game like this can last for hours. Makes a great little screensaver of sorts to glance over at while you read a book or something.

I just wish the setup for scenarios was a little more involved. I'd place one pre-colonised organic world underneath the Starbase (planets are always randomly placed, except for which half of the playing field they are on), then they'd retreat sometimes to recrew their ships, instead of just charging in until the ship is destroyed. AI players seem to never colonise organic planets, only set up forts on all types of planets, and mines on mineral planets.

The only real gripe I had with SC1 (I actually quite enjoyed it though) was that I found it a bit difficult to judge exactly where you can travel to from star to star. Meant a lot of backtracking and wasted turns, while your computer opponent knew exactly where he was going.

Word. That is a blast. Also, when I got too good at Melee I would set it for cyborg (I think that was the setting. Gonna hafta go check) where I'd do the stragety, but I'd have to choose which ship fought which because it was computer vs computer in Melee. Really made the full game fun.

Lemme just quote myself here...And that's something we may never see.

Yeah, it took a couple of trys, but eventually you could get to the point where you can easily see the paths without help. What I would love to see is different camera angles. If it were done on a modern system I could see angleing up the camera so you could look down the star paths and see "oh, that one goes off to nowhere...that one takes me to their base." Then again, sometimes a mis-turn found you a precursor artifact that turned your ship into a monster, which more than made up for lost turns. Also, it'd be great if explored paths remained on the board, faded or dotted or whatever. But again, higher resolution would be your friend there.

*Sob* Somethign we'll never see.

I agree to both of you

Let's get some cross referencing here. this is a project that I've been fiddling with for a while, and now it's done. I give you:
Star Control 1 Animated GIFs.

Why can't I get the controls to work. All I can do is rotate the ship right with the D key. I'm using Dosbox so there doesn't seem to be a speed issue.

Run KEYS to set up the controls.

I tried that and still nothing.

play in the other side, i think that they got differenced controls in keyboard to allow old times multyplaying

well, is this star control different than yours? because i can't run awesome difficulty mode (same as hard). do you have any advice? thanks.
bye

but now i like sc1 better. it has easier control, no bugs (arilou doesn't transport INSIDE the sun, vux ALWAYS appears near enemy (that's the whole value of this ship), etc...) in melee. also, the full game is strategy, not adventure (for those who like strategy it's better).
personally, i believe star control is SPECTACULAR and ULTIMATE!!! :titan: . Star control 2 is AMAZING.
ciao! :whistling: ^_^ Mousazz

That's not a bug, it's intentional. Actually in SC2 Vux NEVER appears near you. The developers felt that otherwise would be too hard, and those combats were not supposed to be hard story-wise. Actually they came with a wonderful excuse. They said the Vux ships' always appearing near the enemy in the war between the Hierarchy and the Alliance (SC1) was due to admiral Zex's military genius. But during the events in SC2 admiral Zex was ostracised and the Vux fleet was commanded by less competent officers.

I just want to say thank you! i have this game, but my new computer doesnt have a floppy drive..cause I had to budget very carefully in its purchase. Now I get to play this game again! :kosta:

Although it took me awhile to get used to the strategic elements of the game, the actual space combat was spot on.

My friend and I would spend HOURS playing against each other in this little master piece. The sequel Star Control 2 happens to my my favorite game of all time, and there is a nice freeware remake playable on modern computers available here for those interested.

I know it's been a long time since anyone replied but... I get it! I only fought against ZEX in sc2 and his ships ALMOST always teleport near you. Normal VUX ships don't. Melee VUX teleport, but not always. I get it!
Thanks.

Holy crap, I just rembered to search here for this game. Used to have it on the Mega Drive.

I used to tell people about this all the time, about how good it was but no one knew it. Ah well screw them.

Sold on GOG now :max: