The nostalgic blog from last year’s anniversary
That’s awesome. It was so oversold, overhyped, completely lost in epic feature creep. Huh. Reminds me of a far more recent project ;-)
Yeah I gave you 30 bucks or something back then for it, just for the box. I ran it once or twice, couldn’t make head nor tails of it and let it be lost in time.
The first I heard of it was the review in Computer Games Strategy Plus (or had they changed the name to Computer Games Magazines already?). So I never even knew about it as anything but a disaster.
I remember buying this from a market stall pc trader, big box, looked great, got home and had no idea what i was doing. Great memories
I had it imported, even after hearing reports about the, uh, complicated technical state of the game. The guy in the store that imported it for me, having heard of the issues, asked me why I was importing this specific game. I said something like “I’m a voluntary beta tester”. :)
I still have flashes of flying near a wormhole at 5-10 FPS (at best) on my PC, which ran nearly everything else pretty well. I also remember being mesmerized by the scope and ambition of the game. I won’t say I had an easy, fun time with the game (though I did have that occasionally), but the fact that it still lingers in my memory speaks for itself.
Sadly I never tried any of the later Battlecruiser games for any significant period of time. I still have a soft spot for the first one, warts and all, and I’m still waiting for a game with that kind of ambition that also nails the execution. Closest thing to that is probably No Man’s Sky, though that is a very different kind of game with very different ambitions… but it makes me wonder if someday we’ll have a Battlecruiser-like game worth of that first dream.
I bought two copies. The pre-order didn’t arrive on release day, so I took all my money and rode to Egghead Software on my bike and bought it that day. Again. With all the money I had at the time.
I more or less became Scharmers when the call of USElessNET compelled me to join the BC3K fracas.
Got my copy at Egghead also. Those glory days of excitement!
What man wouldn’t mellow, once he’s found his white whale
I picked up my copy from Circuit City. I tried so hard to love the game. I was sure that the fault must’ve been mine.
It was good training for my eventual time with stuff like Arma or the X series.
I was there for all of the discussions on Usenet! Never got the game though.
I had just gotten the internet proper with my first computer since an 8bits one after a year of browsing through a local BBS terminal, so gaming was the lowest of my priorities, compared to the deviant porwonders revealing in front of my eyes!
Happy birthday though, I heard about your games many years later.
I remember the flame wars, but that’s about it. I did, however,buy both MOO 3 and Compost Outpost on release day,soI’m good.
(So did I- and I returned it!)
i was still at moo 2 in 1997 (bought blindly, what a discovery !)
I think I ordered BC3K and XBTF at about the same time. I don’t think I actually played either of them for more than a few minutes.
I was doing all of GameSpot’s space sim reviews at the time, but couldn’t fit this one in as I was working on a large corporate legal deal, which wasn’t so disappointing given the difficulties reviewing this game properly posed. Definitely admired the game’s scope and ambition though.
I’ve said it before. I see my inability to get into the game a failing of mine, not the game itself.