The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

is it available as a free download? or is it still payed software?
i just played UQM and am looking forward to being disappointed by SC3, at least so it seems . . .

You can get a version from the home of the underdogs, but in my point of view SC3 lacks something that is present in SC2. But it's a nice game to play. Try it and see for yourself.

If you want true dissapointment, read the warlok files first.   :'(

still payed software.
Try a peek in local used games shops (in Aachen, Germany, i once found a copy of SC3 in a shop for used console games), or maybe e-Bay.
I will not recommend using underdogs or the like (but i do mention them). ;)

let's see;
I threw it in my trash can.
they put it on a truck.
the truck went somewhere outside of town and dumped it in the ground with the rest of the garbage.

sorry can't help you with that. but hey - go to your nearest dumpster and look inside - it looks just the same, you won't notice any difference.

Starcontrol III remain to this day as the biggest insult in the history of my video game playing.

I found the game to be a sarcastic insult to the makers of StarControl II and belitled everything that StarControl II has set up StarContol III to be. I hope Star Control IV starts out with captain waking up from a bad dream that was StarControl III

On a furthur note about StarControl III, I do have the disks... the insulting univers mode has no speed controls on it, soooo... if your computer is less then 4 years old... you clock is going to Wiz by at like light speed... makes it kinda anoying to play... if the game wasn't anoying enough already. I rarely purchased games in that day... but when i learned StarControl III was out, I was the first in line to buy a copy... I took it home and played it from start to finish... the entire time I played it from start to finish i was like OMG OMG OMG OMG, THIS SUCKS!!! I was insulted... I wanted it recalled and re-made.

Was SC3 that bad?  I remember playing it when it first came out and right away I did not like it because you did not do the mining like in SC2, but I tried and just gave up when I could not get anywhere. I went looking for it yesterday because I just finished playing UQM but I think I sold it on ebay a few yrs ago.  Too bad.  Wanted to play it anyway.  Any idea if they are going to release SC4 at all??

It was that bad

*spoiler*

One of the biggest let downs is one of the climatic points in the game is discovering that the  Precursor civilization had de-elvolved themselves into @!#$!!@ COWS so that they could avoid the pending destruction the energy force would suck up from the universe. Amazingly you discover a way to insure that destruction never happens in a few months while our omscient Precursors where to stupid to figure this out. I remember this well, like a really bad movie, you remember it for  long time. I thought it was a joke to the starcontrol legacy... I thought I could have written a better script for the game, and I have sub par creative abilitys at such things... who ever wrote sc3 had no love for sc2.

Well, they certainly had a love for plagarizing SC2. All throughout the game, that's what really leapt out at me; So much of the dialog from SC2 was simply recycled word for word. There were certainly other things as well...

More spoilers

The whole deal with the Mycon Deep Children was another point where SC3 totally disregarded what we had learned in SC2. The entire episode made me cringe. I've actually been thinking about that a bit recently (after having done the sequence with the Mycon and Syreen in UQM), and the whole situation is so stereotypical sci-fi. The Mycon are supposed to be as totally cryptic and alien as possible without being completely unintelligible; why is it that they have beings with a human psyche at their core? It just makes no sense.

The whole deal with the VUX and Vyro-Ingo was also embarassing. The VUX are supposed to be one of those races that are so hostile, narcissistic, and xenophobic by nature that they're simply impossible to deal with. They certainly start out that way, anyhow... And then WHAM. They meet some aliens, and all of a sudden, their behavior does a complete 180. WHY? Don't get me wrong, I understand the game's explanation. I just don't understand why it was necessary to do that.

I've read other posts where people want to make unofficial sequels, and the most common warning I see posted again and again is "Don't try to solve every mystery." I think, at its core (disregarding the crappy exploration and colonization system they created for the game), that this is why SC3 failed. It seems that the entire plot was written by someone (or, from what I understand, by a committee; this makes even more sense) with not only no love for the series and its background, but also with a deep-seeded desire to end the series with as much finality as possible. They try to explain every mystery left over from the early games, and so many of those explanations come up lacking.

I mean, just off the top of my head:

Why do the Mycon ramble so much, without making any sense? Explained.
Who made the Mmrmhrmm, and why? Explained.
What happened to the Precursors? Explained.
Who are the Orz really, and what do they want? Explained.
What purpose do the Rainbow Worlds serve? Explained.
Why are the VUX so hostile to everyone? Explained.
Why are there so many Precursor artifacts scattered all across the galaxy? Explained.
What do the Arilou want with the Human race? Explained.

About the only thing they didn't do was bring back the Taalo and the Brown Ur-Quan. And every one of these mysteries was explained in terribly unsatisfactory ways. The whole thing is just a cringeworthy money-grab designed to cash in on the name of an otherwise exemplary game. Trust me, avoid this one like the plague.

I should really sign up on this forum officially, I find myself compelled to post more and more often recently.

http://www.abandonia.com/games/143/StarControl1.htm

use a DOS emulator:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

 8)

He said SC3, not SC1 :P

plus if your gonna play SC1 on computer, get the genesis version rom, get a genesis emulator.. there no compatibility issues ;D

or just get a very old computer that can handle such an old game.

Read the whole post next time, before you reply.

hmm let's see;

download SC1 ROM, need emulator to play it
download SC1 original DOS, need (dos) emulator to play it

I see no difference in "compatibility issues".