Beautiful 4x space game that got cancelled 20-ish years ago?

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.

https://www.old-games.ru/game/screenshots/237.html

I thought they put this on iOS a couple years back and there was a rumor that they were working on a sequel. But never heard about it again.

How about Stars! Supernova Genesis?
https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Stars!_Supernova_Genesis

Stars! was an amazing game, and it was almost criminal that they couldn’t find a publisher for the sequel.

That was also gonna be my guess.

Yeah. Oh, if only Steam had existed at that time.

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.

It’s gotta be Fist of the North Star, then.

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

Yep that was it! I could not believe with as much work as had gone into it, that it would remain unfinished.

Iirc, Empire Interactive kind of left them out to dry.

I always thought this would have become a kickstarter project sooner or later.

Why must you all bring up such painful memories? I was finally over the fact that I would never get to play this game.

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. ;)

Can you jerks stop bumping this thread until the game is out of beta and released!

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!


Hey I posted that game in the game frame game thread. I liked it as a kid, no idea if it holds up.

Oh wow, Utopia looks great. I wanna try it!

OMG I had no idea Fragile Allegiance was the third game in a series.

Stars was never beautiful. It always used the UI windowing elements of Mac OS and Windows 3.1 didn’t it?

You’re thinking of the original, not its unreleased sequel.