Either way, I tried the single player, just watch idea, and it didn't stick.  Which is really unfortunately because she loved Mass Effect.  But a deal is a deal, so in a year or two I'll dig out the 3DO and try again, next time with a good co-op idea planned.

I never thought about the Talana ordeal.  That will be more humor than anything else I think. 

We gave it a go a little while ago.  The broken Ilwrath was a little much.  Didn't help that it randomly spawned fairly close by though.  I told her the truth: sometimes that one can get the best of us and we'd try again another day.

All valid points, but she's a console gamer only, so that's out.

I think the "co-op" experience is more about both of us being part of something than having fun, if that makes any sense.  Its a compromise we have.  Basically I'll give in and play Kingdom of Keflings if she'll play Borderlands 2 with me.  If she's not there playing though, I just assume burn the kefling games into nonexistance.

In effect, I have to play, at least minimally.  Otherwise I'd just sit back and watch and offer advice/history.

I pulled my ancient 3DO out of storage and have a friend I wanted to show SC2 to.  She's only interested in playing if we play co-op though, so I was stumped on how we might play the story mode with 2 people.

I toyed with the idea of doing the combat, she did everything else.
Another idea was I would only play areas where a lander was involved.
I'm not sure either are really great solutions, so I thought I'd see if anyone else had ideas.

Ultimately, I want her to spend more time than me playing, as I've played it to death 30+ times.  Besides, I want her to get involved in it rather than sitting and watching.

I've beaten football

hax

I beat football in high school.  And all I got from it was sore knees and a messed up back!

In a nutshell, without upgrades, you're looking (at best) a few dynamos, and likely 2 Ion Bolt Guns for straight and spread style. 

I actually meant to have all of those challenges in the same game.  Thanks for the link though.  Some of those I can't imagine being possible.  "Don't ever visit Star base?!"

I read someone saying they meant to play SC2 through as a galactic slave driver, but besides that, I didn't see any other ideas for playing through the game in "hard" mode.  Here's a few ideas I was tossing around to make my next play harder.  Opinions/suggestions/input would be appreciated:

---The Melnorme are lying bastards!  Kill them all!  KOS!

---No cargo bays allowed.  The starbase lost the blueprints on them, and your starting cargo bay was permanently broken due to an accident by one of your crew members.  The moment you can switch them out, you must! (This makes mineral farming impossible)

---Due to a lack of support and belief from starbase, as well as other aliens, they believe your mission is doomed to failure.  As a result, none of them will fight in combat with you.  You can still bring them along as diplomats to watch, but they may not enter combat.  Only the Vindicator can fight.

Here are 2 other ways to gain that information
1:

2:

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Thraddash!  I can take just about any other ship 1:1 vs it.  Probes can be a hassle, but any "tough" ship that typically pursues you is dogmeat.

On that topic, how hard would it be to sort of shuffle the stars? (Same exact positions/names, but for example Alpha Centauri could end up becoming what is now Betelgeuse, or maybe it could end up as what is now Zeta Persei) I am also referring to behavior of the stars as well as what minerals are there.

No clue how hard it would be to do, but it would be awesome to see finished.  Where's that Precursor "Mind blank" artifact I had lying around....

Ahh.  I thought after CD they went independent.  Cool deal.

While its true that they are clearly not immortals, and do eventually die, keep in mind the timeline. 
The Dnyarri enslavement was around 19,000 - 17,000 BC¹.  Now we know (fairly certain anyway) that all of the brown Ur-Quan were no more.  Whether they were killed off by the Black/Green forced by the Dnyarri, or died off naturally is unknown. 
However, assuming that a typical life is 5,000 years, the first generation of Black/Green Ur-Quan very well could have been been told by a few Brown Ur-quan of past history.  In fact, it would be hard-pressed to imagine that they were not able to, even under the control of the Dnyarri, especially with the implications you've made that they have a form of genetic communication.
The events of SC2 is 2155.  There's a big gap of 15,000 years that would account for the "ancestors" that the Kohr-Ah speak of on first meeting the captain with a Dnyarri on board.

However, this is purely speculation and theory, and just my personal idea of the Ur-Quan.  I personally believe they have very long lives, and until canon says otherwise (and my numbers match up) its


¹ http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/scwc/timeline.shtml

What exactly does the Activision/Blizzard merger have to do with Star Control, Accolade, Atari, or Infogrames?

You answered your question already.  There's no info on exactly how long an Ur-Quan's lifespan exists.  For all we know, a typical lifespan for them might last 5,000 years.  Their culture certainly is highly evolved, and in typical games/sci-fi, the more evolved races tend to have longer lifespans, and thus would make sense.