Star Control

Inspiration

The "special thanks" in the manual list off an equally large number of sci-fi authors whose work in some way influenced the game. It's fairly rare for game designers to be so rigorous in documenting their inspirations.

References

The vast majority of captain names in the game were taken from various famous and semi-famous sci-fi sources. (far too many to list here. For example, there's a Syreen Captain Alia (from Dune) and an Earth Captain Pike (from Star Trek))

Title

From almost the very beginning of his video game design career, Paul Reiche III has revisited the theme of pitting varied teams of carefully balanced but widely varied opponents against each other, first in 1983's Archon and most recently in 1998's The Unholy War (and its Japanese analogue, Little Witching Mischiefs).

Star Control also falls in the middle of this chain, and its heritage is plainly spelled out phonetically in its abbreviation:

__Archon Star_Con

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #127 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list

Information also contributed by Pseudo_Intellectual