Was just thinking about this today as I played a bit of Endless Space 2. All I remember is I think the developer went on to a non-game programming job.
I think it had Star in the name, but the graphics looked gorgeous for that era. I remember an alien, maybe yellow or gold colored, and it had a wonderful interface that captured the flow of alienishness.
This is kind of a longshot, but your description reminds me of Ascendancy? That’s what I think of when I think of weird but beautiful 90’s space gaming.
I remember my brother in law let me play some 4x space game on his 486 in the 90s. It had models of solar systems with the sun in the middle and planets orbiting it. The cover of the box featured a big fist. I never figured out what game that was.
The fist box sounds like Star Control 1, but I don’t think the graphics in the campaign mode RTS were that sophisticated… But I only ever played it on Sega Genesis
So you guys…I actually have disks for the Stars Supernova Genesis beta. I got them back at E3 in 1999 or 2000. I actually got to play it back then, and it looked to be GREAT. Every time it comes up, I wanna try to get it running again, but I think I’d need an actual Win98SE/XP machine to do it, as even in XP Mode, it refuses to run.
So, in closing, please stop bringing up Stars Supernova Genesis because it makes me very sad. ;)
For a moment I thought you guys were about Utopia: Creation of a nation, which was one of the very first 4 x turnbased city builders out there. I spent a LOT of time on this one. I remember the box had a phone number where you could call the developers in case you had issues, and an adress you could send a self stamped envelope to, for patches to the game. So awesome!