Lee Hutchinson

Howdy folks—my name is Lee, and I’m helping the Pistol Shrimp crew out with some of the writing on UQM2. I don’t post much—or, uh, ever, at least until now—but as we head into the holiday season and begin to take stock of the things we’re thankful for, the thing that sticks out for me is how thankful I am for The Ur-Quan Masters, and for all the other video games that manage to be so damn good that they carve out a permanent spot in our heads. Truly, is there anything quite like a wonderful interactive story, told well, with a fabulous cast of characters to befriend?

We’re barreling toward the 30th anniversary of UQM’s original release, which will roll around on November 30 of this year, and Fred and Paul and Dan and Ken have a bunch of cool stuff in work to show you guys. For my contribution, I wanted to tell the story of how I came to the Star Control universe, and then I wanted to show you guys a bunch of pictures of my original retail box, and all the stuff that came inside of it.

“Remember how it used to be…”

1992 feels simultaneously close and also terrifyingly far away. I was fourteen, a freshman in high school, and miserable even though it was the early 90s and I really didn’t have anything to be miserable about. The Cure released Wish and suddenly we were all in love on Fridays; in theaters, we begged our parents to drop us off so we could watch Encino Man, My Cousin Vinnie, and Army of Darkness while throwing popcorn at each other. And it was a banner year in PC gaming—Wolfenstein 3D, Dune II, Aces of the Pacific, and The Legend of Kyrandia all hit the shelves.

I vividly remember walking into the friendly neighborhood Babbage’s—the same Babbage’s I’d get a job at two years later—and being floored at the box I spied on the shelf. It was unexpected. It was shocking. It was awesome.

Of course I knew what Star Control was—being a DOS gamer of a certain age, I’d run across the game on the local BBS scene and, ahem, acquired a copy in a somewhat extra-legal fashion. Starcon‘s melee was a huge hit at my house, and being the older brother, I was the reigning champ and nigh undefeatable with my ultimate weapon, the Arilou Skiff. Much of my memories of the summer of 1991—the memories that aren’t pool-related—are filled with Ur-Quan explosions and the PC speaker beeping victory songs, set against a backdrop of long lazy afternoons that all eventually ended with my brother and me abandoning the computer for the pool. (Where we usually tried to drown each other, which my mom saw as an improvement over yelling at each other over the computer.)

But I knew nothing about a sequel. A sequel to Star Control? Would there be new ships to melee with? New aliens to blow up?

After successfully badgering my dad into buying the game—I was fourteen, it was 1992, and I had maybe five bucks to my name—I discovered that the sequel was far more than just more melee. Borrowing some of the most successful bits of Starflight and Starflight II (including Starflight designer Greg Johnson!), UQM was instead that most rare of things: a true space exploration RPG. There are a few more such games today, including and especially Starflight/UQM spiritual successor Mass Effect, but the genre remains disappointingly sparse. The few games that do fit into that niche tend to be cherished—and with good reason.

The Ur-Quan Masters is a rare thing. If you’re here, I don’t need to tell you how good a game it was (is!), but it is worth emphasizing, at least briefly, just how magical it was to have a story this well written and a universe this well-realized tumble out of four floppy disks. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a perfect game, but it is a supernal one. And it’s been locked in my forebrain since.

Boxing day

For whatever reason—probably because I don’t like to throw computer games away—that game box is still in my closet, having followed me through a half-dozen moves. And for folks who perhaps weren’t lucky enough to be around when the game came out, or who didn’t have a chance to buy a boxed copy, I wanted to take some pix of the box’s contents. There’s some great stuff in there.

One important caveat: I didn’t take any pictures of the original or deluxe maps of hyperspace. The original map definitely deserves a place in these images because it came in the original box, but it and the deluxe map (which came with the clue book) have been up on my office wall for several years and are folded up right now in a different spot in the closet. I can totally pull them out and take some additional pictures if needed, but rather than move a ton of boxes out of the way, I figured I’d just let ’em stay where they are.

(All images in this piece are clickable—if you want to read the tiny text, just click a for full-res version.)

So, here’s the box! It’s a big sturdy full-size software box, rather than the little flimsy half-height boxes that started showing up a few years later.

And here’s a big hero shot of everything that came inside of it—everything except the galaxy map, as noted:

Four floppy diskettes to rule them all!

The manual:

A “what’s in the box” inventory card, a warranty registration card, and a disk exchange form if you happened to need a 5.25″ floppy version of the game instead of the 3.5″ diskettes that came with the retail packaging. (It’s entirely possible that someone in 1992 might not have a computer with a 3.5″ drive—my family didn’t until the end of 1991!)

Two order forms: one in case you decided you needed a copy of the original Star Control, and the other in case you needed either the official cluebook or an actual-for-real Ur-Quan puzzle! (I have grilled Fred & Paul about this puzzle, since I’ve never seen one, but they both insist they have no memories of promotional items from decades ago. Alas.)

This one’s fun: a “manual addendum,” full of last-minute info that didn’t quite make it into the manual. (Most games also had a README.TXT file on the distribution disks for truly last-last minute stuff, too.)

Prodigy! Remember Prodigy? You don’t? God, I’m old.

It’s not a retail game release without a catalog and a “what’s new” guide!

And, finally, although it wasn’t included in the retail packaging, here’s a few pix of the game’s official clue book, chock full of secrets and inside jokes from Fred & Paul:

And that’s it! Hope you’ve enjoyed the walk down the lane of forgotten retail box delights. Here’s to those games that keep us all coming back for decades—games like UQM. Happy 30th anniversary to the end of the Doctrinal Conflict, and cheers for three decades of wonderful memories. May they soon be joined by many more!