Star Control 2, now Ur-Quan Masters, now free.
 

I searched the forums. Nothing about it. I checked the main site. Nada. How come? Personally, I have never played it, but I heard tons of great things about it from various sources, and it puzzles me that I had to find about its rerelease almost by accident.

A very brief history of Star Control 2:

• 1992: Star Control 2, a game that combines adventuring, action and unprecedented freedom of exploration is released ny Accolade. Never a massive bestseller, but instantly gets raving reviews and a cult following.
• 2002: Toys for Bob, the copyrights' owner releases 3DO (a console type from the early 1990s) version as an open source.
• 2005: After years of fans' voluntary hard work, entirely playable version 0.4.0 of the PC port sees the light of the day. Known under a name The Ur-Quan Masters, it combines the best of the PC and 3DO releases of old Star Control 2, and is downloadable completely free of charge.

Head here to learn more.

I'm a big fan of this game, I didn't post about it because I always considered it more a Sci-Fi Space Shooter RPG than an adventure game.

I've been downloading every version of The Ur-Quan Masters since the 0.1. Now it's much better, even better than the original, especially when played in 1024x768 with pixel filtering. It looks very clean.

Also the add-on music packs (which even contain remixes by original composers) are very good.

Oh? Let the mods sort this out, then. :) I was led to believe it's an adventure spiced up with elements of other genres. A bit in vein of Cryo's Dune - have you played it? That game had very strong elements of strategy (gathering resources, training troops), but they were a mean of acquiring very specific, and ultimately linear, goals. Also, there was a well-defined player character and the story was moved forwards mainly by numerous dialogues. This is close to what I imagined Star Control 2 would be like (judging only by other people's description, mind you).

Dune is easy to label an adventure since it looks like an adventure. Star Control 2 on the other hand looks and plays like a top-down space shooter, so it's a bit more complicated.

SC2 is a lot further from the adventure genre than Dune IMO.

I've never heard of it, so it couldn't possibly be an adventure game. :P

Heh, kidding. But from the screenshots it looks like a hybrid, so I'm going to move the thread into General Gaming.

With a lot of RPG elements like a party (a space fleet), resources, upgrades, a base and a very good story.

The Ur-Quan are some of the best villains ever, their story is so tragic that you can feel sympathy for them... except when they are chasing you :crazy:

Play the game, it's awesome.

Yeah, Star Control 2 is an amazing experience. When I first played it, it totally took over my life. All my spare time was spent in the Star Control universe, and when I couldn't play, I still wasn't able to get it off my mind.

It's definitely one of the biggest titles in gaming history.

I know what you mean, sometimes I found myself whistling or mumbling the hyperspace theme (my favorite), even today.

That's a cool tune, very demoscene-style. I've got a soft spot for the Thraddash-tune, it's just so in your face (like the aliens themselves). Very simple, but I like it a lot.

Btw, did you know that the developers couldn't afford hiring musicians (in fact, they had to fund a lot of the game out of their own pockets), so they arranged a contest instead. The best tunes were put in the game (and the authors won something, can't quite remember what).

There was a two-part article about the Star Control series in Retro Gamer issue 14 and 15, btw.
http://www.livepublishing.co.uk/retro/retro14.shtml
http://www.livepublishing.co.uk/retro/retro15.shtml

Reloaded has a review of it now.

Link