Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters

Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters arrived on the 3DO in 1994 and brought to the console something nobody expected: a massive space game blending exploration, diplomacy, resource gathering, and arcade ship combat. The player returns to Earth with a prototype alien ship and discovers that an alien invader has since taken over the Solar System. From there, a galaxy opens up full of star systems, planets to explore, and races to deal with, trade with, or wage war on. None of it unfolds in closed chapters: the player builds their own flight plan and can easily run into things they're nowhere near strong enough to handle yet.

The structure is unusually free. Nobody tells the player where to fly; progress arises from conversations, in which every race speaks in its own, strongly characterized tone — from desperately servile to unbearably arrogant. Landing on planets and mining resources fund ship upgrades, battles play out in a two-dimensional arena with gravity, and every vessel has its own special ability, so even a weaker ship can win with the right tactics. Above it all runs a hidden time pressure: the galaxy keeps evolving even without the player, and delay only makes things worse.

The 3DO version used the CD to give characters spoken voices, which mattered a great deal for a game built on conversation. At the time, it was a critically acclaimed title that nonetheless sold rather slowly and only earned its fame gradually; a later community version built on the released source code has kept it alive to this day. Star Control II's influence shows everywhere that an open universe combines with talkative aliens and dark humor. Today it's still one of the best games of its kind, only it requires a willingness to take notes and find your own way, since nobody provided a quest marker. But that's exactly where its sense of discovery comes from — one that games an order of magnitude bigger still chase today.