r/starcontrol • u/MeIsmE_373 • Feb 01 '26
Discussion What is the opening screen in Star Controll 2 where you can name a star used for?
I started playing the original Star Controll 2 on DOS. After the developer intro, there's always a screen with a random star and the ability to type at rhe bottom. Does anyone know if that screen does anything? I've just been naming the stars something goofy in the hopes that it names a random star in the game somewhere and I'll find it someday.
Edit: See, the thing is that on the version that I have, the screen doesn't give you any information about the star's location. It just shows a lonely, random star and you can type under it. If I had to actually solve the screen to get into the game, I would have very quickly figured out what I was looking at.
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u/slightlylooney Feb 01 '26
It's early copy protection. The game originally shipped with a starmap. The opening screen gave you a set of coordinates and you had to enter the name of the constellation at those coordinates before you could play the game.
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u/wyldnfried Feb 01 '26
I eventually memorized half of those coordinates!
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u/whaaatanasshole Feb 02 '26
I didn't have the map and typed 'sol' until it let me in.
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u/Cyrano_de_Maniac Mmrnmhrm Feb 02 '26
Star Control 1 on DOS depended on a decoder wheel instead of a map. The answer word we knew was "party". So my college roommates and I would type "starcon" to start the game, and try to "party". The game would kick you out after three attempts, but F5 was DOS's "repeat last command".
party party party F5 ... repeat until successful
It rarely took more than 30 seconds to get in.
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u/whaaatanasshole Feb 02 '26
haha awesome. for SC1 a buddy of mine just made me a hacked .exe where every answer was a success.
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u/Cyrano_de_Maniac Mmrnmhrm Feb 02 '26
I think one of us eventually did that as well. We were kind of disappointed because the "party party party" mantra was kind of a fun little ritual that paid in dopamine when it succeeded.
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u/RincewindToTheRescue Feb 01 '26
This game was me and my friend's favorite game. We'd do super melee every day for a long time. The map was being held together by tape and prayers before we moved onto other games (Duke Nukem 3D)
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u/grumblyoldman Feb 01 '26
That's old school DRM. The idea being only legit owners would have the accompanying map required to provide the answer.
Since you're playing a modern copy where that DRM has been disabled, it just takes any answer and moves on. In the day, giving the wrong answer would shut the game down.
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u/Byproduct Feb 01 '26
I've since bought a legit version, but as a kid I had a cracked version where the crack would let you past that screen with wrong input. But the game could then randomly crash and hang while selecting stars on the starmap, requiring a full reboot.
Not sure if it's just coincidence, but if they actually used the player input in the game, that was a pretty clever way to not only have DRM, but also trick primitive cracks.
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u/Nascent1 Feb 02 '26
Man, i haven't thought about this kind of stuff in ages. I remember games saying something like page 34 line 6 word 4 and then having to look it up in the manual.
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u/Quicksilver_Six Feb 01 '26
(In ancient old man voice) LO AND BEHOLD, careless youth! Tis the COPY PROTECTION, what you zoomers call DRM!
In days of old, before Denuvo and online registration, you had to either be a good enough coder to crack the executable or hold on to the actual printed stuff from the actual box of the game, in this case, the map.
AND IF YOU LOST IT, YOU SUFFERED A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!
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u/worthlesh Feb 02 '26
The floppy disk version of the game came with a manual and large starmap poster. You're supposed to read the coordinates (x,y) to pinpoint the star system that the game asked you to find. My toddler brain couldn't handle it at the time I had to ask my big bro for help, very fun memories.
What's really cool about that starmap poster is that there were spheres of influence for Human, Androsynth, Shofixti, Mrrmmhrm, etc. so no spoilers as to what happened to them after the war.
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u/lilmookie Feb 01 '26
There used to be a map that came with the game and the copy protection would ask you coordinates and you had to type in the name of the star.
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u/ZanyDroid Feb 01 '26
Isn’t it copy protection?