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These days it is rare that I can get motivated enough by Smac to play through a whole game. I think it is finally starting to show its age if I'm honest.
However, rather than being sad about this, I have decided to compile a few random thoughts/questions on my favourite game of all time, to ease its passing to the next life:
1. Does Smac represent the best value for money ever in a computer game? I wouldn't even attempt to estimate how many hours I've spent on it, but the price per hour must be so low as to be almost non-existent.
Considering most games go on and off my hard drive in a month, Smacs 4 year stay is truly amazing.
2. Has there ever been a game that assumed such a level of intelligence in its audience, and actually makes you think (in the way a good book does)? References, and applications of Nietzsche, Milton, Collectivism vs Individualism, genetic engineering, the list goes on and on. This made Smac one of the few games for mature adults to be made.
3. Does the fact Smac is STILL top of the tree in the TBS genre mean it was way ahead of its time, or that TBS is a dying art form?
4. Damn, that game had soul: From Yangs smirking face to the brain in a jar philosophising on the nature of existence, there was more personality in one pixel of Smac than in the whole of Civ3/Moo3/the entire RTS genre combined.
5. Alpha Centauri - you got my girlfriend into strategy games and so quite possibly saved our relationship. Many happy hours have been spent hotseating together. I wonder if the more intelligent nature of the story and aesthetic sensibility have produced more female smac players (women in my experience being generally not too mad on strategy games)?
6. The Free Drones - the first tiime socialism has been taken seriously in computer games, and not just treated as 'the enemy'?
7. I think it says an awful lot that a game with non-existent ai, pug-ugly graphics, no real scenario editor, and base management from hell, can still be so revered.
Alpha Centauri - a flawed masterpiece, and a beautiful if diminishing light in an era of FPS, RTS, and lowest common denominator blockbusters. I salute you.
However, rather than being sad about this, I have decided to compile a few random thoughts/questions on my favourite game of all time, to ease its passing to the next life:
1. Does Smac represent the best value for money ever in a computer game? I wouldn't even attempt to estimate how many hours I've spent on it, but the price per hour must be so low as to be almost non-existent.
Considering most games go on and off my hard drive in a month, Smacs 4 year stay is truly amazing.
2. Has there ever been a game that assumed such a level of intelligence in its audience, and actually makes you think (in the way a good book does)? References, and applications of Nietzsche, Milton, Collectivism vs Individualism, genetic engineering, the list goes on and on. This made Smac one of the few games for mature adults to be made.
3. Does the fact Smac is STILL top of the tree in the TBS genre mean it was way ahead of its time, or that TBS is a dying art form?
4. Damn, that game had soul: From Yangs smirking face to the brain in a jar philosophising on the nature of existence, there was more personality in one pixel of Smac than in the whole of Civ3/Moo3/the entire RTS genre combined.
5. Alpha Centauri - you got my girlfriend into strategy games and so quite possibly saved our relationship. Many happy hours have been spent hotseating together. I wonder if the more intelligent nature of the story and aesthetic sensibility have produced more female smac players (women in my experience being generally not too mad on strategy games)?
6. The Free Drones - the first tiime socialism has been taken seriously in computer games, and not just treated as 'the enemy'?
7. I think it says an awful lot that a game with non-existent ai, pug-ugly graphics, no real scenario editor, and base management from hell, can still be so revered.
Alpha Centauri - a flawed masterpiece, and a beautiful if diminishing light in an era of FPS, RTS, and lowest common denominator blockbusters. I salute you.
Various comments here at Apolyton about the in-game quotes piqued my interest.
... RTS
none of that bothers me in the least.
I can't allow myself to set it aside to play SimCity, which I've played since the early 1980's on my C64, and I just bought SC2K/SE at a garage sale. 
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