Star Control 3
Description official descriptions
Since the events in Star Control 2 the Ur-Quan have been pacified and the captain who bravely destroyed the Sa-Matra has had a horrible vision of the future. Suddenly without warning, all Hyperspace travel in the universe has stopped. Top scientists have pinpointed the cause of this disturbance somewhere in unexplored space in an area known as the Kessari Quadrant. Hastily assembling a fleet of ships as and an untested Precusor star drive... a loose alliance of alien races known as The League of Sentient Races sends a task force to the Kessari Quadrant. You are its commander.
Star Control 3 features a new 3D star map, new alien races to discover, new worlds to explore and colonize, new artifacts to research and a new isometric Hyper Melee battle system for inter-starship battles.
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Screenshots
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Credits (DOS version)
115 People (110 developers, 5 thanks) · View all
| Producer | |
| Associate Producer | |
| Assistant Producer | |
| Melee Ship Design Support | |
| Dialog Writing | |
| Dialog Editing | |
| Test Department Supervisor | |
| Test Lead | |
| Game Testers | |
| Test Support | |
| [ full credits ] | |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 68% (based on 23 ratings)
Players
Average score: 2.6 out of 5 (based on 55 ratings with 14 reviews)
This is what happens when games are designed by committee
The Good
Ummmm... the CD-ROM makes a lovely coaster.
The Bad
The plot was horrible. It was an awkward slapping-together of old Star Control 2 plot lines (much of the dialogue taken out of Starcon2 verbatim) and poorly thought out new ones. Most of the time you were simply waiting to be fed instructions from the hint sytem. (It's a sure sign that a game is bad if it needs an integrated hint system).
The combat was poorly-balanced. Unlike the old Star Control 2 melee, which I still play on occasion, the ships tended to be horribly lopsided, hard to distinguish from each other and boring to fly.
The music is terrible, especially when compared with its predecessor (why they went back to MIDI music from MOD is beyond me). While some of the voice talent is quite good, this is neutralized by the fact that the dialogue is quite horrible.
The Bottom Line
"An eloquent argument for why Accolade should stick to sports games"
DOS · by Jonathan Daggar (4) · 1999
Great adventure, fascinating story - poor strategy part
The Good
The adventure part is really superb - Legend standard at its best. The character races are highly elaborated and the voice recordings are really enjoyable. I often caught myself laughing heartily while listening to the whining Spathi or abusive Vux. The story could easily pass as an award winning SF novel.
The Bad
The strategy and colonizing part is a spoiler. I resigned to cheating and edited the required resources in the save file just to get the story going. The combat section is best done in watch mode with the AI set to max for the own side. When you subsequently switch from manual to auto mode you can even select your ship and then let the CPU do the dirty work.
The Bottom Line
A fascinating, deep story worth exploring. The rest of the game design is better left unspoken...
DOS · by Wimp (65) · 2001
The Good
The graphics are OK, I guess.
The Bad
Everything! It's a poor sequel to what I perceive as the greatest game of all times. Even the graphics (which are somewhat better) aren't half as good as in Star Control II. It lacks the elaborate, amuzing dialogues from II, the fast pace action, the broad plot and interesting twists...
A huge disappointment in every respect.
The Bottom Line
Don't touch that, and hope you don't know where it's been.
DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4538) · 1999
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Star Control 3 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Novel
A novel titled Star Control: Interbellum was published by Prima and written by author W. T. Quick. The book supposedly contains story and events that takes place between Star Control 2 and Star Control 3... however the popular opinion is that the author has never played or was ever given the plot to either game. Also the player character of both games is given a name for the novel, "Commander Omega".
Screenshot capturing technique
This game will dump a screenshot to a .PCX file if you hit PRTSC during gameplay.
Star Control III
Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III owned the character rights to the various alien races, Accolade owned the Star Control copyright. When the original creators declined to make the new sequel, Accolade gave them an ultimatum; sell the character rights or part three would be made with entirely new characters, no continuity involved whatsoever. The creators decided to make some final money off of their creations. A side note to this is that none of the original artists involved with Star Control II were even approached to work on Star Control III.
Information also contributed by Aaron Grier, Vance, and WildKard
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Related Sites +
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The Pages of Now and Forever
This site could perhaps be called the heart of the Star Control fan movement on the 'net.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Trixter.
Windows added by Picard. Macintosh added by Terok Nor.
Additional contributors: RmM, Shoddyan, PoliticallyCorrupt, Plok, FatherJack.
Game added May 21, 1999. Last modified March 18, 2024.