Star Trek: Birth of the Federation?

[bvanevery]

Does this title mean anything to anyone around here?  I encountered someone on Reddit who seemed to think it should have been falling off my tongue, as a 90s gamer.  Never heard of it myself, wonder why I would have cared or noticed.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, I've heard of it, but more as a trekker, not so much in my capacity as a gamer.  It --- was it the one that got together Original Cast for over an episode's worth of voiceover material - the last thing they ever all did together?  If you care, I could ask my sister about it.  She's the one involved with fandom...

[Syn]

YES!

By far my most favourite game ever.

That said... it's not at all well-known. Maybe if you're very into the 4X genre, but even then... It was not a game that did well and it also didn't age well from a technical viewpoint (it's a chore to get it to run on anything XP and up).

[bvanevery]

Ok, I think the Reddit guy was confusing being in love with it, for everybody knowing it.  I don't feel bad now.  I remember playing "most" of the planet based titles back then, granted I did not care as much about the space based ones.  GalCiv II is really the only one I did, and that was an early 2000s title.

[Buster's Uncle]

was it the one that got together Original Cast for over an episode's worth of voiceover material - the last thing they ever all did together?

Syn?

[ColdWizard]

Doesn't ring any bells for me. I was neck deep in Civ2 when it came out but it seems like something I would have looked into.

[Syn]

was it the one that got together Original Cast for over an episode's worth of voiceover material - the last thing they ever all did together?

Syn?

The game didn't have a story so nope. The only voices were the standard fare "acknowledged" call-outs as well as the intro/victory screens.

Examples...

! No longer available

! No longer available

If anyone's played MoO, I hear that BotF was very similar to that.

[bvanevery]

I was neck deep in Civ2 when it came out

I would have been gorging on Civ II: Test of Time.

[ColdWizard]

My first computer was in '98-ish and a friend gifted me a copy of Civ2. So I was well-seized by just one more turn up until (and beyond) finding the joys of Civ2 MP in fall of '99.

I did get GalCiv 1 when it came out and I remember wanting a space 4x by then, so I find not having heard of BotF somewhat puzzling.

[Buster's Uncle]

My first computer was a trash-80 in 1980.  Early adopter, here...

[bvanevery]

Mine was an Atari 800 in 1981.  I considered the Trash-80 but it didn't look like it would do games as well as an Atari, and it also had a reputation for being junky / breaking.  Timex Sinclair was much cheaper, I think only $99, but it didn't have a full keyboard nor a catalog of real games.  I'm not sure why I didn't seriously consider a Commodore VIC-20 as that was an equivalent computer at the time, and some people eventually thought it was better.  We paid $600 for the computer and $600 for the 5.25" floppy drive!  I paid half of the cost with my savings from chores and xmas / bday presents I'd squirreled away.  I bought an Atari 2600 when I was 8 for $150, all my money.

Games cost about $30 back then.  I'd order them out of an ad in Antic magazine, getting my Mom to do the credit card stuff, then I'd pay her back.  I didn't pirate much stuff, although I did have my obligatory disk cracking / duplicating utilities.

[Buster's Uncle]

My sister got one of those $99 TSs, and it was un-programmable junk.

I had the Coco for the game slot on the side, I assure you, and the games weren't terrible.  My folks said an Atari console, what I wanted, was never happening -you recall how much we all wanted them then- and I saw that slot on the side in the Radio Shack sales paper and went to Daddy and pointed and said "get me a computer for Christmas; it's educational".

Now, $400 was actually nothing to the man, but that was still brass-balls asking on my part, that I didn't think would work; he had the $400 because, Lord, did he ever know how to keep a nickel in his pocket.

God bless the on-commission RS salesman for pushing fake asteroids and chess cartridges on my parents with the machine. It was the only time, for about two years, that I ever thought I fooled the man about anything, and he thought so, too.  -Then Momma sank another $200 into a dot matrix printer - and it turned out I never got a single thing over on Daddy so long as we both lived.  The doggon thing turned out to actually be educational, and I don't know how I would have finished high school and gotten through college without it to type papers on.

Me, my older, sister and my little brother all gained basic functional computer literacy ahead of the great majority of people alive by a few years, and the Coco3 I eventually ungraded to is in the room with me and still works and can still whip me at chess, after I spent decades forgetting how to beat it.


It was educational alright, darnit...

[bvanevery]

You might have used an electric typewriter in high school, as I did.  In college we had public Macintoshes available.  Owning your own computer wasn't common back then, but some people did it.  My girlfriend, for instance.

[Buster's Uncle]

It got me considerable training in amateur writing-tutoring, having a computer and printer in my dorm room at two different schools...

And no; I was surprised to discover I was able to function adequately on just an electric typewriter in my newspaper job at a saurian-backwards operation in 1990, but all the advantages of working on a 'puter, I needed as I learned and barely squeaked through college not trying very hard and peeing away all those years not chasing girls in the best meat market I'd ever see outside a renfair...

[bvanevery]

Cornell was a miserably hard school and damaged me for life.  No fond memories of "parties" at all.