Hope for Another Star Control Sequel?

Pluvius writes "A recent post on GameSpot's Rumor Control blog suggests that there may be a chance for a new entry in the classic Star Control series in the foreseeable future. It would be developed by Toys for Bob, the creator of the first two games in the series, and it is implied that the company already holds the rights for the franchise. Quoting from the article: 'But maybe, just maybe, if enough of you people out there send [Alex Ness, producer] e-mails requesting that Toys For Bob do a legitimate sequel to Star Control 2, I'll be able to show them to [Toys For Bob parent company] Activision, along with a loaded handgun, and they will finally be convinced to roll the dice on this thing.'"

Best game of the 1990s

[TrevorB]

I spent years believing that Star Control 2 was the very best game of the 90's. Particularly for the plot. Layers within layers within layers, and humour to boot! Side stiching laughter.

Hell, I admit it. I played one of the pirated versions from the 90's whlie I was at university. The ones that deliberately crashed in the starmap because (said the urban legend at the time) it knew if the game was cracked in the "obvious" manner, and crashed a lot as punishment. It didn't matter, I managed to play it all the way through anyways.

I've played the game several times since, including the latest version of the open source Ur-Quan Masters, which is pretty rock solid at this point. I also now own the game (A CD re-release), with the box proudly displayed in my computer room.

I've raved about this game for the past 13 years. Plotwise, the only game I've seen that's beaten out SC2 has been "The Longest Journey" by Ragnar Tornquist, which has a sequel "Dreamfall" finally coming out on Monday. I've been dreaming about a Longest Journey sequel for 5 years, but come to think of it, I've been dreaming about a SC2 sequel, a *PROPER* SC2 sequel, for 13. SC2.1 would have "nerd-squee!" (or "OMG! Ponies!!" if you prefer) written all over it.

Hell, at this point I'd be happy if they used the existing UQM open source engine, and gave us a new plot in the StarCon universe. Hell, I'd be willing to do voice acting for the thing. (UQMites, I'm also hopeing that someday soon we'll see UQM mods with user made storylines. That would be cool too)

Star Control Zero

[Zephiris]

Of course, rumors are usually just very silly rumors, but why does everyone seem to want the same sequels for the same series over and over, and why are game developers so comfortable in producing those sequels over and over? The results usually don't turn out that great after a few iterations (cough, Wing Commander Prophecy pretty much was Doom all over again, and then Origin Systems died), and unremarkably, most don't feature all that much 'new', let alone earth-shattering plot and character development. Games are a lot like movies, once it's up to Rocky 3, or (darnit) Rocky 5, if you aren't doing much new and innovative with it, it's usually time to just move on. Take the example of System Shock. Now, there was System Shock, it blew, well, the few people who gave it time away. Capitalizing on that, there was the amazing System Shock 2, but because of the slightly unforgiving interface and unique gameplay, it was never really a huge commercial success. Now, with the 'spiritual successor' BioShock hitting shelves next year, it uses some of the same interesting and different concepts, but is a completely different game. Originality? It sure looks like it. But why don't more developers 'take the plunge' and use their famous name and bankroll to do something more interesting and original? Instead of Half Life 3 and X4 and Civilization 5, why not try producing something actually playable, fun, and interesting, like so many of the 'new and original' games of the early to mid 1990s, not to mention some of the great games of the late 1980s? If studios are so 'concerned' about sequels that they constantly put out, then they just need to be strong-armed by big-name studios into putting up for more original and interesting games. There's a reason why 'indie' game quality, despite being rough around the edges, is starting to casually surpass that of big commercial games. Even if the big commercial games are flashier and have 1GB worth of graphics and 50MB worth of content, it often doesn't make them very playable or intelligent, and why spend $50+ on a boring big-name game when you can spend $0-10 on a fun and remarkably polished indie game? Many, even if in the 'same old' genre, do things that haven't been done in similar games for more than a decade now, and do it very well. Nevermind that they also tend to be maintained and patched for a bit longer. It's pretty infuriating when that 'big game' only gets one or two patches, but they never fix the critical issues that some people or everyone are getting, leaving some games even completely unprogressable after a certain point for many people (cough, Knights of the Old Republic). And that's not to say that all sequels are bad, but...if it's a good continuation of the same story, which actually tells that story, and does a good job of it objectively, before fanboyism? Then sure...by all means (just like Wing Commander and WC2, or even WC: Privateer and the lesser known sequel Righteous Fire), but if the primary goal is just to sell an engine, or otherwise make money? Screw you. As a game developer (though certainly not big name), it's just really not right to completely sell a game out, rather than offering something that's actually meaningful, playable, and a fun and unique experience.

Re:What platform would it be for?

[Junta]

I think it's easy to say Star Control 2 was the definiitive game for the continued fame of Star Control. I'll also say that the PC version is the one people really got, and the 3DO's only legacy is being the one that they still had source code to make UQM a reality.

With this in mind, I would say their target market would be largely comprised of those who were around and immensely enjoyed Star Control 2. While probably many of that market have game consoles of some variety, they all are probably more likely to be heavily into their computer. People who played DOS games in the 90s generally were consistantly computer oriented, probably because it was more of a hastle back then for so many games that required x amount of conventional memory and you had to fiddle with things to get rid of memory resident things not needed for that game and move whatever else you could to 'high memory'. Those were the days...

Anyway, considering the bulk of their target market would be those who already played SC2, the platform that makes sense is personal computers. To go a step further, it should be cross-platform and run on at least Linux/x86 and Windows. Though I don't have definitive evidence for it, I strongly suspect large portions of SC2's fanbase is on linux and that uqm usage statistics may be enlightening. Additionally, developed correctly it isn't that hard to make even a fairly sophisticated game run on different Operating systems, so the cost/benefit ratio should be good regardless.

It's hard looking at their list of games to establish them to now be console-only, they haven't developed enough games, and none of them have been notable enough compared to SC2. Their best bet if they had the opportunity to do a sequel would be to target their old fans as closely as possible. If it is a good game, it would be a nice revival for their name which hasn't seen a big title since 1992.