Star Control: Famous Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict, Volume IV is an action-strategy video game developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade.

The story is set during an interstellar war between two space alien factions, with humanity joining the Alliance of Free Stars to defeat the invading Ur-Quan Hierarchy.

It has since been ranked among the best games of all time by Polygon and VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, remembered for the replay value of its combat, as well as the colorful worldbuilding that gave rise to its acclaimed sequel.

[5] As was typical of copy protection at the time, Star Control requested a special pass phrase that players found by using a three-ply code wheel, called "Professor Zorq's Instant Etiquette Analyzer".

[1] The story takes place during a war between two interstellar factions of alien species: the peaceful Alliance of Free Stars, and the invading Ur-Quan Hierarchy.

[7] Throughout the campaign, each side discovers powerful relics belonging to the Precursors, an unknown lost species who once inhabited nearby space, hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The first full battle breaks out where both spheres of influence meet with a mix of combatants, followed by a single Ur-Quan dreadnaught trying to stamp out a fleet of Shofixti scouts.

[10] Star Control was created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford,[11][12] who both attended the University of California Berkeley around the same time, and both entered the video game industry in the early 1980s.

[13] Reiche had started his career working for Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR, before developing PC games for Free Fall Associates.

[14] After releasing World Tour Golf, Reiche created an advertising mock-up for what would become Star Control, showing a dreadnaught and some ships fighting.

[11] The project would adapt the action-strategy gameplay of Archon into a science fiction setting, where unique combatants fight space battles using distinct abilities.

[11] Fred Ford's first prototype was a two-player action game where the VUX and Yehat ships blow up asteroids, which led them to build the entire universe around that simple play experience.

[17] These antagonists would be called the Ur-Quan, with a motivation to dominate the galaxy to hunt for slaves, and an appearance based on a National Geographic image of a predatory caterpillar dangling over its prey.

[15] The number of visible colors was a major technological limitation at the time, and the team created different settings for CGA, EGA, and VGA monitors.

[14] A separate team ported a stripped down version of the game to the Commodore 64, Amstrad, and ZX Spectrum, which meant reducing the number of ships to eight, as well introducing new bugs and balance issues.

[14] It took nearly five months to convert the code and color palettes,[21] leaving little time to optimize the game under Accolade's tight schedule, leading to slowdown issues.

[14] Frustrated with Sega's licensing requirements, Accolade decided to reverse engineer the console to disable the code that locked out unlicensed games.

[3] Italian publication The Games Machine celebrated Star Control as a modern re-invention of Spacewar!, recommending the combat mode for its range of options, its automatic camera zoom, and its implementation of physics.

[5] Strategy Plus appreciated the unique humor and personality of the aliens, highlighting the design of the Syreen and their Penetrator ship, as well as "silly" names like Chenjesu commander Bzrrak Ktazzz.

[5][3][37] Digital Press felt that the sound effects for the Ur-Quan and Chenjesu gave their ships a "fantastic" personality,[5] while Computer and Video Games praised the audio for drawing on popular science fiction.

[37] Entertainment Weekly criticized the star map as difficult to see,[36] while Raze Magazine found it tedious to operate the strategy game menus on the Sega Genesis.

[2][39] Advanced Computer Entertainment called the Amiga version "disappointing", denouncing the load times and "tacky two-dimensional combat sequences that look as if they've been borrowed from an early Eighties coin-op".

[3] Raze Magazine felt that it lacked the polish and depth of the original PC version, criticizing the sprites and environments, while still offering praise for the detailed portraits.

[8] Creative producer Henrik Fahraeus has also cited the game's influence on Paradox Interactive's character designs in Stellaris, particularly the bird-like and mushroom-like aliens.

[63][64] The story takes place after the events of Star Control II when the player must travel deeper into the galaxy to investigate the mysterious collapse of hyperspace.

[64] Accolade hired Legend Entertainment to develop the game after original creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford decided to pursue other projects.

[65] Though the game was considered a critical and commercial success upon release, it would receive unfavourable comparisons to Star Control II, with some fans regarding it as non-canonical.

[8][66][81] By the early 2000s, Accolade's copyright license for Star Control expired, triggered by a contractual clause when the games were no longer generating royalties.

[67][84] This led them to remake Star Control II as The Ur-Quan Masters,[85] which they released in 2002 as a free download under an open source copyright license.

[14] After a lawsuit, the parties agreed on the same separation of rights, with Stardock using the Star Control name, and Reiche and Ford announcing a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters after a mandated quiet period.