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Star Control

• Porting Disaster: The Sega Genesis version. Sooo muuuch slowdooown...
• Sequel Displacement: If you are familiar only with the freeware The Ur-Quan Masters, you might be surprised to know there was a first installment.

Star Control II

• Acceptable Targets: Suplox really don't like vegans. Mainly because it indirectly says that meat based lifeforms are superior to plant based life forms.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Some people believe Melnorme to be much more noble than they appear. Sure, they won't do anything for free, but did you ever wonder why they insist so much on dealing with a bunch of humans with nothing interesting to offer, save for some biodata and coordinates which they could have probably gathered themslves? Perhaps they really wanted to help the Captain, but in order to obey their Blue and Orange Morality they needed to ask for something in return. And then there are others, who believe Melnorme to have been Evil All Along and that helping humans out was really a part of some sinister plan.
• Broken Base: The voice acting. Either it's some of the best voice acting ever heard in a video game... or some of the worst voice acting ever heard in a video game.
• Complete Monster: Aside from the Dnyarri, The Druuge to a far lesser, but still entirely monstrous degree.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: "HyperSpace." Comes in DOS, 3D0, and remixed flavors.
  • This is fairly common in Star Control II's music, really. Any number of commscreen tunes (especially Yehat and Thraddash) qualify.
• Cult Classic
• Draco in Leather Pants: Admiral ZEX has become much more popular in certain sections of the fandom than was ever originally intended.
• Ear Worm: Melee mode. You know what we mean. Repeat after me: dum d'dum-d'dum-d'dum da-duh-duh dum d'dum-d'dum-d'dum da-duh-duh...
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Fwiffo, being a funny Lovable Coward who's also very good at fighting several common types of enemy ships, is quite beloved by fans.
• Freud Was Right: The Syreen and their Penetrators. They're not even trying to hide it, even lampshading it.
• Goddamned Bats: The Slylandro Probes, which are out of control Von Neumann probes. If you don't do the quest to get rid of them, you'll eventually find yourself up to your eyeballs in them. Or swimming in resource units resulting from shooting them down, depending on how well equipped you are.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the PC version, there was a bug that allowed you to sell infinite landers, gaining as many RUs as you like. Also present in previous versions of the game. Other notable glitch is the Cruiser's mighty point-defense laser (see it by yourself).
• Most Annoying Sound: If you don't control the Pkunk Fury, it has 50% chance to revive and will chant "HALLELUJAH!".
• Most Wonderful Sound: If you control the Pkunk Fury, it has 50% chance to revive and will chant "HALLELUJAH!".
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Defied by the second game's design. If you don't pay careful attention to the dialogue, you won't be able to complete the game.
• So Cool Its Awesome: IGN named it the 17th greatest game of all time. Gamespot also named it one of the greatest ever.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the tragedies of Star Control I was that the Hierarchy-Alliance War was also a civil war for humanity, with Earth joining the Alliance while the Androsynth had become Ur-Quan Battle Thralls. In Star Control II, it is possible to make friendly contact with a number of Hierarchy races, and even get one of them, the Spathi, to switch sides and join the New Alliance (technically two, if you count the Yehat). Does that mean you get a chance to contact the Androsynth and reconcile with them, apologizing for their past treatment and ending the rift between the two halves of humanity? Nope, the Androsynth turn out to have been eliminated in some unclear fashion by the Orz, and although the Orz are interesting in their own right, it was sad that the Androsynth were gone.
• Unfortunate Implications: David Bryce's excessively stereotypical Japanese Ranguage performance as Tanaka, the last surviving Shofixti.
• Unwinnable by Insanity:
  • Go to an enemy planet protected by an infinite fleet without your emergency warp escape unit. Lampshaded by the Thraddash, who keep score of how many of their ships you have destroyed, except for fights in their homeworld. Even they think that's incredibly stupid.
  • Run out of fuel and keep refusing contact with the Melnorme.
  • Attempting to complete the game without ever making contact with the starbase was impossible. The Ur-Quan Masters made it inhumanly hard and tedious.

Star Control 3

• Demonic Spiders: Radiant Angels. Their ships are very powerful, with large health pools, lots of energy, high-damage weapons, and a close-range weapon that fires in all directions as a backup. You probably don't want to tangle with them too often.
• Fanon Discontinuity: You do not talk about Star Control 3. You'd be hard pressed to find any fans who enjoyed it, even more if you're looking for fans who played the first two games.
• Game-Breaker: The Doog Constructor ship, especially with the upgrade. The main weapon automatically points towards the enemy, and the secondary ability is a self-repair system.
• Special Effect Failure: The Harika is eating the Yorn! No, wait, a puppet is holding another puppet in its mouth... and now it's back in his pocket.
• Squick: Victims of the Phamysht are eaten alive and conscious, and drugged into enjoying the experience.
• Tastes Like Diabetes:
  • The Pkunk's voice acting. Granted, it seems intended to be part of the charm, but it's a very "ear of the beholder" judgment as to how well it works.
  • The Xchaggers approach this too, but they are much more tolerable. Even though they have a much shriller and more childlike voice, what they actually say isn't nearly as saccharine.
  • Finally, the Green Mycon (the Deep Children) also have extremely sappy dialogue.
• Uncanny Valley: Where has the Syreen's sexiness gone? For that matter, why do all the other aliens look like they stepped out of a bad Roger Corman film?
• Values Dissonance: The Harika and Yorn. The Harika don't find it odd at all that they eat the sentient Yorn, while the player (As well as anyone who isn't into Vore) finds it... disturbing. Especially once the Yorn finally pops up and says "We like being eaten" and that they view it as exaltation and only go to be consumed if they want.
• Vindicated by History: A rare inversion. When it launched, Star Control 3 was given several high scores and was a critics' darling. Nowadays, not so much.

Star Control: Origins

• Demonic Spiders: The non-boss Scryve Juggernauts. They have a ton of crew, their main Wave Motion Gun is extremely powerful and has a mind-boggling range, and their speed is comparable to that of Fragile Speedster ships, though the latter was nerfed in the 1.02 patch.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Many reviews and online communities have judged the game on the basis of the bitter legal battle currently raging between Toys for Bob and Stardock, and its popularly thought that it hasn't sold as well as it could because of the awful publicity generated as fallout.