I have something that I need to confess.I am, and always have been, a gigantic fan of space games.Don't believe me? When I was in elementary school I wrote stories of epic battles that I waged in Escape Velocity. For those who don't know (and I don't expect many of you do) Escape Velocity is a game developed and published by legendary Macintosh developer Ambrosia Software. Nowadays, all they do is make utilities for the Mac and port some of their less complex games to the iPad. Back in the day, where games for the Mac were few and far between, Ambrosia stood as one of the top developers. To me, they had equal stature - equal! - to Bungie Software on the basis of Escape Velocity alone. The basic premise of EV is along the veins of the venerable classic Elite: you are a lone pilot with a mere 10,000 credits in your pocket and the worst ship in the game unleashed upon a sandbox universe to mold to your will. Want to run a big trading business? Buy freighters, frequent spaceport bars, hail fellow travelers, and figure out where the best prices are to buy and offload goods - just watch out for pirates along the way. Like fighting? Run missions to accumulate wealth, buy strong fighting ships, go after pirates, and if you're good enough you'll be noticed by one of the two opposing sides in a conflict - Rebels or Confederates - and drafted into an intense shooting war. You could buy and upgrade ships to your heart's desire, recruit escort ships, and if you were fearsome enough force entire systems to kowtow to your awesome might and pay you daily tribute. My stories in elementary school often revolved around my exploits in my beloved Clipper ship - a mid-range fighter-class vessel costing 300,000 credits - and overcoming tremendous challenges. The most notable of my conquests included my fight against a Rapier - a high-range fighter-class vessel costing 1,000,000 credits - and beating it through reflexes and clever tactics. Thank heavens asteroids are so good at absorbing missiles!Flush with success, I would invest in a Corvette - a small capital ship costing around 2,000,000 - and feel as if the universe was mine to take. Thinking after my encounter with the Rapier that I could punch way above my weight, I decided to tangle with the holy grail of civilian captains - the Kestrel, a 10,000,000 credit capital ship that could give high-end military vessels a run for their money. Charging into battle, I watched with horror as my beloved Corvette was torn to pieces by both the Kestrel's turrets and its complement of three fighters. Horribly outmatched, I punched the eject button to live another day and watched my pride evaporate into space dust. Before there was EVE Online, I learned the pain of losing a ship and that there were consequences to such wanton violence. Starting again in a meager Shuttle, I still had my money but I also learned my lesson.Escape Velocity's latest incarnation - produced back in 2002 - is here, by the way. It's shareware - an old concept of digital distribution before the days of Steam - but totally worth supporting. And their way of enforcing the 30-day trial is quite creative, if I do say so myself. Also, Escape Velocity is totally hipster and was into modding waaaaaay before modding was cool. Even the basic Escape Velocity supported plug-ins, fan-made creations that changed the game in exciting and unprecedented ways. This was all made possible, of course, by Ambrosia Software generously providing the entire EV Bible (essentially, how the code worked) to anyone free of charge. In this sense, it was and always has been a game far ahead of its time.The other game that establishes my cred as a space junkie is just as obscure these days. No, I'm not talking about TIE Fighter or X-Wing or even X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter - I have never played those games, by the way, and if LucasArts and Good Ol' Games are looking to make some serious bank they need to start talking to each other about re-releasing those classics. No, I'm talking about the greatest space opera of them all: Star Control 2 - the greatest game you've never played.Why do I say this? Star Control 2 is routinely included in every "Best of..." lists for all time. In an era where gaming sites seem dazzled by the present and ignorant of the past, the fact that Star Control 2 still makes these lists is a testament to both the timeless design, enduring legacy, and fantastic story. Any race in Star Control 2 is easily more engaging than 10 Captain Prices, funnier than any Mordin Solus, and more well thought-out than any plan in Rainbow Six. The image of your ship being sucked into the gravity wells representing solar systems is symbolic, representative of how easily the game sucks players in. Games like Mass Effect tout weighty decisions like deciding which crew members live and die, but Star Control 2 has you deciding which species live and die. And perhaps as a parody of the role that players expect themselves to play, you can even impersonate the gods of another species in a scenario that seems more like prank calling than actual divine authority. And the personality of these species! Your encounter in the early game with Spathi Captain Fwiffo is not only hilarious and well-written, but is also utterly absorbing and gives you terrific insight into the Spathi race as a whole. You become such a part of the game universe that when the Spathi High Council says "If you held a weapon to Fwiffo's head, he would say anything you wanted him to say. In fact, if you held a vegetable to his head he would probably say anything you wanted him to say", you find yourself nodding along in agreement. Fwiffo is, after all, a Spathi and therefore first and foremost, a coward. This trait even has implications on Spathi ship design, where the ship is far more dangerous running away than it is in a head-on dogfight. Naturally, the ship is one of the fastest in the game to boot.What's more is that the Spathi are just one race. The narcissistic VUX, the fun-loving but mysterious Orz, the ultra-capitalist Druuge, and the chronically depressed Utwig are all just as engaging and well-developed, just to name a few other species. While the plot seems like a typical "save-the-universe" plot, your enemies - the Ur-Quan - are presented to you as an all-too-powerful, dominant species that you can never hope to win against and whose motives seem utterly evil. It is a testament to the writing, the plot, and the design that in your travels, you ultimately discover the true motives of your enemy, why they are the way they are, and find yourself sympathizing with them. The conclusions that they have come to are ultimately misguided, but you cannot fault them for doing what they believed was right. In an era where enemies are increasingly portrayed as black-and-white, it's stunning to see how storytelling in games has devolved. We've gone from an era of player-driven agency and discovering the story to riding on rails and having the story TOLD to us - rather explosively, I might add. Despite this legacy, Star Control 2 has never had an official sequel - Star Control 3 was made by a different developer and while OK, it's not a worthy or true sequel to this masterpiece - and most likely never will. The developers of Star Control 2 are now owned by Activision, a studio famed for valuing profits over a great game, and the rights are owned by Atari. I won't go into anymore Activision-bashing - and I would argue that as a publicly-traded company, from their perspective they are doing the right thing to deliver profit to their shareholders - but I will comment that the potential for a real Star Control 2 sequel seems dim. Perhaps DoubleFine's success with Kickstarter will encourage the Star Control 2 developers to leave, make a new studio, acquire the rights, and create the sequel we have been waiting for. The part about needing to acquire the rights means I won't be holding my breath, though.Until then, you can always whet your appetite by playing the best version of Star Control 2 available. You can buy it from Good 'Ol Games here or you can get the whole game in open source for free here. In order to avoid legal disputes it had to be renamed The Ur-Quan Masters but you can improve the graphics and get all of the voiceovers from the obscure 3DO version as well. I wouldn't recommend the remixed music, though - there is something distinct magical about the old MIDI tunes that Star Control 2 originally used that gets me every time.Space games are certainly a niche genre to be certain. But they will always hold a special place in my heart as some of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.Mike is currently debating purchasing Starfarer, as it looks to be an excellent game in the vein of Escape Velocity. There's nothing quite like Star Control 2, though...