Star Control

Star Control is a combination of a strategy game and real-time one-on-one ship combat game. The ship combat is based on the game Spacewar!, while the turn-based strategy is inspired by Paul Reiche III's 1983 game Archon: The Light and the Dark. Players have the option to play the full game with the turn-based campaign, or practice the one-on-one ship battles. The game can be played by one player against the computer, or two players head to head. The player can also assign the game's artificial intelligence to take over the strategy gameplay, the combat gameplay, or both.

The strategy campaign consists of several selectable scenarios, with nine missions on home computers, and fifteen on the Sega Genesis. Each turn-based strategy mission begins with opposing fleets arranged on a rotating star map, with each player controlling a faction of their choice. Each player has up to three ship actions per turn, which are used to explore new stars and colonize or fortify worlds. These colonies provide resources to the player's ships, such as currency and crew. The goal is to move one's ships across the galaxy, claim planets along the way, and destroy the player's opponent's star base.

Star Control reveals its plot through each scenario in the game's campaign, as well as the game's instruction manual. The story takes place during a war between two interstellar factions of alien species: the peaceful Alliance of Free Stars, and the invading Ur-Quan Hierarchy.

The Ur-Quan is the oldest and most advanced species in known space, resembling giant predatory caterpillars with a rigid social order. As slavers, the Ur-Quan recruit other species into their Hierarchy as serfs, which includes their genetically engineered translators, the Talking Pets. The mollusk-like Spathi are cowardly by nature, and were easily coerced into the Hierarchy. The fungoid Mycon joined the Hierarchy freely and fanatically, while the blobbish Umgah joined out of boredom, amused by the war as a great interstellar prank. Two Hierarchy species hold a grudge against Earth, including the humanoid Androsynth who escaped Earth as renegade clones, and the one-eyed VUX, who were insulted by a human during their first contact.

Star Control was created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, who both attended the University of California Berkeley around the same time, and both entered the video game industry in the early 1980s. Reiche had started his career working for Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR, before developing PC games for Free Fall Associates. After releasing World Tour Golf, Reiche created an advertising mock-up for what would become Star Control, showing a dreadnaught and some ships fighting. He pitched the game to Electronic Arts, before instead securing an agreement with Accolade as a publisher, thanks to Reiche's former producer taking a job there.

Meanwhile, Ford had started his career creating games for Japanese personal computers before transitioning to more corporate software development. After a few years working at graphics companies in Silicon Valley, Ford realized he missed working in the game industry. At this point, Reiche needed a programmer-engineer and Ford was seeking a designer-artist, so their mutual friends set up a gaming night to re-introduce them. The meeting was hosted at game designer Greg Johnson's house, and one of the friends who encouraged the meeting was fantasy artist Erol Otus.

Star Control was a commercial success at the time, reaching the top 5 on the PC sales charts by September 1990. According to a retrospective by Finnish gaming magazine Pelit, the game would go on to sell 120,000 copies, leading Accolade to request a sequel from creators Reiche and Ford.

The game earned wide acclaim for its arcade-style combat, including its tactical depth and player-vs-player mode. MegaTech enjoyed mastering the different starships, earning the game an editorial Hyper Game Award as "one of the best two-player Mega Drive games ever". Similarly, Computer and Video Games chose Star Control for their editorial "CVG Hit" award, highlighting the variety of weapons, the fun of learning favorable matchups, and the overall playability of the game's two-player mode. , recommending the combat mode for its range of options, its automatic camera zoom, and its implementation of physics.