Reach for the Stars: The Conquest of the Galaxy

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MS-DOS 0 subscribers

0 plays 1983 #Strategy

Reach for the Stars is a science fiction strategy video game. It is the earliest known commercially published example of the 4X genre. It was written by Roger Keating and Ian Trout of SSG of Australia and published in 1983 for the Commodore 64 and then the Apple II in 1985. Versions for Classic Mac OS, Amiga, Apple IIGS, and MS-DOS were released in 1988.

Reach for the Stars was strongly influenced by the board game Stellar Conquest. Many of RFTS's features have direct correspondence in Stellar Conquest. The player commands a home star in the galaxy, and then expands to form an interstellar empire by colonizing far-off worlds, building powerful starships, and researching new technologies.

Graphics are minimal, yet the tactical and strategic elements provide countless rich combinations for colony development and interstellar warfare. The software's AI also offered a challenging opponent in single-player games. It is not uncommon for a Reach for the Stars game to take over twelve hours to complete in single-player mode and 24 hours with multiple players.

From Wikipedia's article Reach for the Stars (video game), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Controls

This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.

Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.

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Controls

This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.

Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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  1. 1.0Wake me up when it's over0+ out of 100
  2. 1.5Wake me up when it's over+ thumbs-up40+ out of 100
  3. 2.0Could be better50+ out of 100
  4. 2.5Could be better+ thumbs-up60+ out of 100
  5. 3.0Good job68+ out of 100
  6. 3.5Good job+ thumbs-up75+ out of 100
  7. 4.0Great job!80+ out of 100
  8. 4.5Great job!+ thumbs-up85+ out of 100
  9. 5.0Outstanding!90+ out of 100

GamePro named the five whole-number faces; a thumbs-up adds half a point to the same caption. GamePro’s original rating-face design, adapted from Ryan Quintal’s 2018 vector recreation; cleanup for YouConsoles.

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