After an unexpected catastrophe, everyone neatly divides according to ideology and decides to fight over a newly-found planet (creatively called “Planet”). It begins with space colonists leaving the Earth, because the planet’s always greener on the other side of the Kuiper belt. The morning light of the following day gave me my answer: yes, Alpha Centauri is still the electronic drug you always remembered. So, I launched it up again to see if it remains playable in the age of widescreen monitors, or if it was just a cult of nostalgia. While the older Civ titles are largely obsolete, the sci-fi spin-off, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri still maintains a loyal following. Our own Greg Tito has a tale of it absorbing months of his life away, like some shakespearian witch. That “one more turn” often has a way of stretching early into the following morning. Pretty much everyone who’s experienced Sid Meier’s Civilization can testify to its time-warping powers.
We kick off the new year with a celebration of the games of Sid Meier, starting with Alpha Centauri.
