RPS has picked up some rumours about a new Alpha Centauri being in the works. Appearently, Alpha Centauri has been trademarked in US and Europe (Probably to avoid being sued by Bethesda who once had a centaur in its games).
My best guess? Facebook game…sigh
Edit: I’d love a new AC - its one of the greatest games I ever played, but I fear time has outrun the genre, and only CIV has any chance of selling anything turnbased these days.
It would be cool if they emulated (and enhanced for our current tech level) the fluff of the original, with all the cool wonder videos and the cool leader personalities and all that. I wonder if Firaxis ever quite grasped that the core gameplay was not the thing that people liked about SMAC compared to say Civ II, but the superficial stuff surrounding the game. Of course gameplay is important, too: if they just basically do Civ 5 (or Civ Rev) on another planet, even the best of fluff features surrounding the godawful tactical and diplomatic AI won’t help.
This might be true amongst you and yours but I highly doubt that’s true for most fans of the game.
SMAC was a huge step up mechanically for the genre. Civ IV built on this in some ways. SMAC still does some things better than everything that came after it.
I think the cool characters, and the voiced tech was a huge part of its success. It and the quirky humor of course.
The two things I remember the most from playing the game back in the day was Morgan Freeman and nerve stapling the drones was the most horrible thing ever to do! Oh, and the russian of course
How could this possibly turn out well?
It will be a FPS, with space marines.
Well as long as they’re bald.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it had absolutely nothing to do with SMAC, even in name. Alpha Centauri is the closest star to our own and is a perfectly reasonable name or part of a name for any number of possible games. They might just be using the name without even intending to draw a connection to SMAC, figuring SMAC is so old only the grognards will care (and they’re probably right).
Comb-overs confirmed!!?!
Hopefully it shows up for the iPad.
EA-PopCap will do it.
Brian Reynolds decides that making money at Zynga is too ezmode for him and creates SMAC2.
It is hard not to imagine how utterly brilliant SMAX++ could be.
Sniff …I want that game sooo much.
But yeah, I’m guessing FPS set in someplace with a lot of Zomb… I mean Musli… No wait, I did mean Zombies. I think.
the tech tree made more sense to me in SMAC than the civ games, and I liked the fact that the secret projects did not become obsolete, unlike wonders in civ.
Maybe that was the deal. “I make you X millions with a wild west facebook game and in return you fund BRAC”
I wish!
If there’s anybody out there who’s seriously thinking about doing SMAC2, you need to read the Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. That is all.
Nothing good will come of this. Heck, nothing neutral will come of this.
Didn’t some of the inspiration for the original come from Red Mars?
It’ll be a match-3 game, where you collect energy gems to power up your rover’s special abilities, while trying to prevent the mind worms from lining up brains that will unleash their psi attacks.