What is your first Homeworld memory?

[ÜberJumper]

It's ten years ago today (September 28th, 1999) that Homeworld was "released" into the wild.

For those of you that have been around for that long, please spend a moment to share your strongest memories of Homeworld... single player, multiplayer, or moments from the community.

For me, my strongest memories of Homeworld are seeing the opening intro (from the demo actually). Following that is the mothership's arrival back at Kharak. Another strong memory is the "wow" moment when I finally "got" the camera system. That of course happened in the middle of playing a demo skirmish game and happened to coincide with me thinking how much it reminded me of Robotech, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.

What are your memories?

(For those of you that haven't played Homeworld before, please see this post for info about downloading Homeworld Raider Retreat).

[Chrysophylax]

From the demo as well, playing a skirmish. I noticed how beautiful the backdrop was (iirc it's the same background as the first mission).

[Kapyrna]

I was over at a friend's house summer 2004, and we had gotten tired of GoldenEye 64, so we jumped on his computer for some Worms Armageddon (another 1999 beauty), and I spied on his dekstop a strange looking icon names "Homeworld". I borrowed the disk from him and my family essentially lost their computer for a solid month. I was hooked from the first minute of the game, right until landfall.

Strongest memory would have to be the voice acting, brilliant upon return to Kharak. I am not ashamed to say I cried. Since then, the game has become a staple on every computer I've owned, always being one of the first to be installed and the last to be removed.

[Archangel of Death]

The return to Kharak... I still almost tear up thinking about that moment on my first play. Only the third mission and it had me that deeply involved in the plot, but I guess reading through all the first backstory helped strengthen that effect.

[Dess_Aramea]

The music.

Adagio's strings was it called?

The mothership's departure from the scaffolding. I also gasped when it returned to kharakk, watching it burn; I really felt angry and launched my fighters against the turanic raiders.

But I still remember the music.

[Coey]

Return to Kharak ofcourse, and the asteroid field mission where you to guide your fleet through, first time I did I lost about 1/4 of my fleet and I loved and hated the game at that moment.

[JAL-18]

The way I was exposed to Homeworld was through a counselor at some YMCA camp. We were on the bus when I noticed him reading the Prima strategy guide. Seeing the Mothership on the cover piqued my interest, and I asked him if I could read it. I thought it was the coolest book I'd ever read and spent weeks reading and rereading the guide and the manual until finally my parents bought me the game for my birthday.

The incredible ship designs are still what stick out for me most about Homeworld.

[Integrity]

I've never played Homeworld.

[Kapyrna]

Oh this is shameful. How could I forget the music?

[Chrome]

My stepdad got Homeworld back in 1999. First memory I have is of watching him play the early missions, and the return to Kharak. That shocker of "Oh god it's DESTROYED?!!?" made me a Homeworld fan, simply because a game was daring enough to try doing that with the players so early in the storyline.

Plus, the music was awesome.

[SquidDNA]

Playing the Demo I downloaded from Adrenaline Vault, and just loading up the tutorial and playing through. The camera I loved IMMEDIATELY. I remember following the on screen directions and being a bit amazed. I may have called in my roomate and said "Hey, man look at this!" It made perfect sense and I knew I was going to love playing through the game with the freedom to examine space battles from all kinds of angles like that.

The other strong memory I have is, after getting Homeworld from my gf for Christmas, sneaking into the bathroom when everyone had gone to sleep in her house and reading the manual.

[Busby]

My dad bought Homeworld after reading about it in some magazines. We still have the guides he cut out of some of them in the game box. Watching my dad play it (and lose a few times) really got me into it, and me and my brother ended up finishing it by the time he got to the Cathedral.

[Saberdark]

My first memory of homeworld...well, I was in Best Buy with my Dad, and he spied a copy of the game of the year edition on sale for cheap. He knew I was into Star Wars and other sci-fi stuff, so he pointed it out to me. This is of course the part of the story where I say that I put it into my computer and exploded with the awesomeness. Not what happened. I played through the first few missions and then it sat on the shelf for several years until a friend of mine pointed out the box to me when we were looking for something to do. That's when it hit me that the game was awesome.

This was around a year after HW2 came out, I didn't know about it at the time, but the friend who pointed Homeworld out to me picked up a copy and told me about it. Not long after that, I was looking for Homeworld related websites and ended up here.

Best memory was probably when I realized how awesome the Salvage Corvette was. Captured all of the ships I could in mission 5, and then destroyed everything in my path. And of course the music. And the story. That opening cutscene was great, and then it scrolls over the mothership with the music in the background. Brilliant.

[CorsairX]

The music is very memorable
Moments i remember the most:
- cinematic when sending a probe to khar-selim location
- return to kharak
- all cathedral of kadesh missions especially first contact which was awesome, and when i first saw multi-beam frigates
- the oh shit!@ when i frist pressed space to view the radar in the misson when you brake the empire perimeter by taking out the space inhibitor and saw houndreds of frigates.

But i have to say there is no part of homeworld campaign i did not like.
Every mission was interesting and original. I got a little frustrated in the graveyard mission when i tried like a zilion times to fly groups of fighters and vets to land at that base among all that autogun fire

[Norsehound]

Damnit Uber! I was saving this for a bombastic celebration thread of Homeworld's 10 year anniversary! It's not yet the 28th where I am.

But since I figure the mods would merge my thread with this one, I might as well spill it:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOMEWORLD! TO TEN YEARS AND BEYOND!

As for my first memories?

It was sometime during the 90s that I got a hold of a Sierra magazine, and in it were previews for up-and-coming Sierra games. One of these was Homeworld.

3D space combat with ships colorable by the players sounded really interesting to me then, and in my head I rolled over what the spaceships looked like in battle. (Looking back, they were great alpha shots of a red fleet. For a long time I thought the alpha carrier was a part of the mothership that moved up and down the long axis of the ship!).

Homeworld looked great to me then, but the only version on the shelves was Cataclysm. Figuring it was Homeworld too, I bought it and booted it up to play. I wasn't disappointed- the music and flying spaceships RTS combat style was everything I wanted from the game.

But I had the urge to play the Taiidan and Kushan spaceships, moreso than the Somtaaw and Beast ones. So as soon as I spotted the GOTY edition of Homeworld I purchased it without hesitation. To this day, I still have the box mounted on my wall (one of two games, the other being Outpost 2) and my manual has seen wear from heavy reading.

It was then that I fell in love with Homeworld's story. It was quite different from any science fiction I had encountered before, having grown up on the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek. Energy beams need a whole ship to fire? Bullets for weapons? No energy shields? It was something completely different from what I was exposed to and loved every second of it.

As the years go on I only appreciate the story and mythology more and more. The Biblical allusions in the Homeworld mythology only highlight the epic scope of the undertaking. The epic journey of a mere 3-600,000 refugees to their true homeworld lost to myth and tale was astounding, creative, and new. In my mind, Homeworld forever stands apart from the rest of science fiction because it was so different from the norm.

Despite the rough-and-tumble treatment of the name, franchise, and mythology in its sequels I still continue to hope for a future of this unique universe without watering it down for the sake of sales. Homeworld is like the book you never want to see made into a movie because of what Hollywood would do to it, yet you want the author to make more of.

So, again, Happy Birthday Homeworld! May your world see greatness once again!

!

[/fanatic]

[ÜberJumper]

Great post Norse! Love the picture!

[Shin]

Relicnews' countdown going into the negative :P

Many, many matches in WON in Subjugate.

[Octopus Rex]

First memory: "hmmm, the graphics aren't as good as the other one."

[Kapyrna]

The community soundtrack packs can be found here and here.

[Colonel]

I cant remember what I was doing in 1999 when I got the game.. but my earliest memory of the game is sitting in awe at the intro, then playing the first 4 levels before having to goto bed.

And now 10 years later my disc is correupt so doesnt install

I do remember playing the starwars shipmodel conversion online once with a guy who didnt have the mod.

Thats about it for me.

[Someguy]

I remember having the game pre-ordered having seeing the homeworld trailer in the half-life CD extras. Also I recall the demo being out as well before the game too.

I've loved the graphics and playing it on my P3 450 with a Nvidia Ultra TNT2 at 1024x768 was a joy.

[Vijil]

I made a thread in fanart for this too... maybe superfluous? I'll let the mods decide.

First memory: seeing some early alpha shots in a magazine and thinking it looked like the coolest thing ever. I assumed at the time that it would be an FPRTS like Battlezone, don't know why.

Second: Getting the demo off a magazine disk of Dad's, and sneaking into his office at 2am to play it every night for weeks. I was 16 at the time and very, very scared of getting caught!

Third: Reading DanVanCrone's amazing open letter to Relic and the denizens of this board. Completely sums up the way I feel about the game.

[Kinjiss]

Seeing the mothership launch from the scaffolding, while adagio for strings played in the background. Or stumbling onto the wreckage of the khar-selim, or returning to kharak, or encountering the bentusi for the first time wondering if they be friend or foe.

ahh nostalgia...

[typhoonoftempest]

my first memory of Homeworld was leading a capital fleet to victory, and only because my dad (who had worked to get it there in the first place) had to go to the bathroom and didn't want to pause.

of course, that was the demo, and I had asked if we could get the real deal.

I was 11 then

[Vaarok]

I actually got the preview disc with PC Gamer a month or so before release, the Feet Archive or something. I remember the ship viewer and a couple little videos, with descriptions of the ships and the ability to spin the models and change the colors around.

When I first got the game, just that first crying noise as the crawler rises into view in the opening animatic sent shivers up my spine and let me know I was in for something good.

Ironically, both my parents bought me copies of Homeworld for christmas, and then decided to fuck with me by presenting me the spare copy and saying we had to return it. I immediately saw through the deception, since it was the ONLY thing I'd asked for for christmas. The employee at the store when we returned it was, however, properly befuddled, until I explained circumstances to him.

Also, I have no shame saying I cried during the epilogue.

[A176]

Adagio for Strings.

Greatest PC demo. Ever.

[QuixotesGhost]

"We are away."

*sniffles*

Before I actually ever bought the game, I poured through a promo CD called "Homeworld Fleet Archives". It was this white CD with a pdf of about 60-90 pages of backstory, history of the various kiths, technical specifications of combat craft, theories of the biological origins of the Kharak people.

[Harmanoff]

I'm pretty sure we had another thread like this because i feel like i'm now about to copy whatever i said then.

Anyway, being merely 18 at the time and not very much into the internet thing yet i still dealed in such curiosities as getting burned games from friends instead of checking out demos. In the cache i got somewhere around the end of 99, which included both new and old stuff like UFO and Panzer General 2, my friend included a then totally unknown game to me.

Homeworld eh? Well why not. Installed.. and omg! I had no idea such a game was in the works but it took me about 5 seconds to get hooked. Only other time i remember such instant clarity was with X-Wing and Jedi Knight 2(lightsaber fps?! Run to store!). After about 3 missions it was clear whatever copy i had was broken and the game would crash to desktop before mission 4 started. It didn't bring me down very much, i bought it right away.

I only finished it 6 months later however and thats when i regged here. After coming face to face with the sphere of death some time in january i didn't pick it up again due to a sudden feeling of insurmountability. And, quite possibly, final semester in high school was making itself known. Anyway, in the HW strat forums someone quickly answered that you could steal the sphere. Joy!

[Aesaar]

The manual. So much backstory. Sure, I was 8 at the time (and couldn't really appreciate it), but I remember watching my dad play it while I read the manual. Twas great.

[3DMARINE]

The return to Kharak...it was the only time I've cried in a game, and the only time I've felt a massive hate for the enemy. I just wanted to kill all the mother******s

[Afoxi]

Trolling the Tiberiumsun.Com forums with Alpha_Duck or something, generally spreading news about the game all over the web, and then finding out there were only 1,000 beta slots.

[QuixotesGhost]

Also, Homeworld is the only RTS I've ever played where I've talked out loud to my units.

"Alright, Group 4 hold... hold... hold.... Now! Target the corvettes, evasive tactics, draw their fire from the bombers."

Pretty much constantly throughout the entire match, narrating my commands as I give them.

[Ira Aduro]

The opening cinematic let me know something very special was about to happen. Beautiful, beautiful black and white line art animation in an area of crappy CG intros. Yeah, good times were about to begin.

My next door neighbor, who I played a lot of games with/against introduced me to Homeworld. I was immediately hooked because I had just finished reading Ender's Game and was ripe for my own space adventures. Plus, hitting the space bar created something similar to how Ender saw the space battles in the book. All those dots flying around.

Besides the Ender's Game tie-in, Homeworld obviously stood on its own strength. The emotional depth of the game being the strongest, IMO. Homeworld is a work of art and resonates emotionally even to this day. The idea of you against the universe. The underdog coming home. The sense of exploration. I also immediately fell in love with Agnus Dei and the rest of the Homeworld soundtrack. The soundtrack really really adds to the emotional weight of the game. Like I said, Homeworld is a work of art. I have the GOTY edition and so got the soundtrack with it. I still listen to it after all these years.

Besides the emotional aspect, the gameplay was just solid. True 3D movement was phenomenal, but for me the ability to carry units from level to level was the best. Homeworld was the first RTS I played where that happened and you bet I "liberated" every enemy unit I could. Yes, especially the sphere of death. Cloaked salvage corvettes are your friend. In fact I had so many ships the last few missions were slide shows. The majesty of 50+ Ion frigates slowly moving across the map obliterating all in their path must be seen not described. :P

Even this day the space battles are just beautiful. I almost hate having to play the game competitively because I'd rather just watch all the pretty pew pew.

Oh, and sphere formation.

[Afoxi]

I guess it says something about the game where the only complaints you have are the ship construction queues and the way strike craft docking is handled.

[sajuukar]

It was sometime during the 90s that I got a hold of a Sierra magazine, and in it were previews for up-and-coming Sierra games. One of these was Homeworld.

That's the same way I heard about it! InterAction magazine, eh?

I was so excited when I finally got the game. I was saddened by the burning of Kharak and enthralled by the appearance of the Bentusi harbor ship, but when I got to the Gardens of Kadesh, that's when I thought to myself "whoa, this is the best game ever."

When I finally made it to Hiigara, I was so overwhelmed that I had to tell everyone at school. No one cared *that* much, but folks were amused enough to tolerate my telling of how I had finally reclaimed the homeworld at least three times.

I was young and impressionable. Thus Homeworld became the (unsurpassed) benchmark by which all following games would be judged.

[Kapyrna]

Funny you mention Ender's Game, Ira. I did a class project in '05 for that book, and we used screenshots of Bridge of Sighs to illustrate the final battle of the book. My teacher thought we handmade the images and we were given an "A" right off the bat. All my gamer classmates were thoroughly impressed and insisted on getting a LAN together the next weekend. Subsequently I forgot to write a paper for the same class and my excuse was that we were all generating material for a comprehensive study of the tactics used in the book. The only way I skated on that is when I said in front of the rest of the class "The enemy's gate is..." and all the guys echoed "down".

[Norsehound]

That's the same way I heard about it! InterAction magazine, eh?

That might have been it... all I can remember about it was that it had alpha versions of Homeworld (Kushan Mothership, derelict carrier and heavy cruiser all lit up in red-and-yellow schemes against backgrounds with no stars in those shots), and it had a preview of Half-Life which I looked forward to as well (Ironically getting to it loooong after Homeworld, and in the source version). I really, really regret loosing that magazine because it is the ONLY place I've been able to see the super capital derelicts in action before they got junked for the retail version.

I can remember reading about the guidestone, and how it was originally supposed to be a crystal that kept transmitting by radio the galactic co-ordinates for your homeworld, instead of the rock with the carving. I think I like the rock better, since it's less bizzare sci-fi ness on the level of Trek or Wars, but still cool nonetheless.

[Ira Aduro]

That's awesome Kap. I do think reading that book helped me with the game just for the 'thinking in 3D' aspect.

[sajuukar]

lol @ Kap.

I also used Homeworld for a book report once, but it was for an Honor Harrington novel. I videoed some interceptors attacking a heavy cruiser with the beat from the scene in Cataclysm where the fighters are weaving through the asteroids over Hiigara. I'm sure there was some violation of copyright law in there somewhere...

[Methuselath]

The part I really remembered is the burning of Kharak. I think that moment is forever etched into my brain. I still feel sad when I remember about it.

Quixote, I also did that with my unit, except there was a program I used to bind the voices to the shortcut (Microsoft Sidewinder product, if I recall). I loved to say, "Reinforce group 1!" and a couple of my friends who saw my playing was surprised when the game replied with "Group 1 reinforced!" They actually thought the game talked back haha.

[Wintermute]

That might have been it... all I can remember about it was that it had alpha versions of Homeworld (Kushan Mothership, derelict carrier and heavy cruiser all lit up in red-and-yellow schemes against backgrounds with no stars in those shots), and it had a preview of Half-Life which I looked forward to as well (Ironically getting to it loooong after Homeworld, and in the source version). I really, really regret loosing that magazine because it is the ONLY place I've been able to see the super capital derelicts in action before they got junked for the retail version.

I believe I still have this magazine in my room at home. I will treasure it forever.

Sadly Home is about one-thousand miles away... so I can't check and see if it's the same magazine of which you speak (but I am pretty sure it is).

Anyway, first memories (ruling out the magazine)? The opening. Definitely the opening. God I loved the opening. And then everything after that.

[Targeter]

Opening the box just after dinner, the glare from the window reminding me what time it was about halfway through Bridge of Sighs around 8 AM the next morning.

[Ishaar Niirfa]

A friend telling me about the HW demo after a summer program while we were waiting to get picked up (I was 10). I remember he had a hard time explaining the mechanics to me and his comparison of the game to StarCraft clearly wasn't working.

[Silver_Wolf#]

First memory of Homeworld...hmm it was on my first PC (a dingy old thing not even capable of 3D acceleration for more high end games of the day and a 300 Mhz Pentium processor) in the early evening, my brother had gotten the game as a gift from a friend who said it was really good. First mission...cool movie...hmm never seen this type of movie before...wait the controls are nothing like Red Alert 1 ... I spent better part of a week (back then I played a myriad of games so I had alloted times for each) trying to figure out how to hyperspace jump before I noticed the big button at the bottom of the screen labeled "hyperspace jump" proceeded through the next 3 missions but got butchered repeatedly at the mission where you had to destroy the fleet that destroyed your homeworld...gave it up for 2 years due to that .

[Rincewind]

I remember going "Aaaargh!" over the fact that I didn't have a modem to download the demo with. I remember reading every bit of info from every magazine I could get my paws on. I finally got Homeworld as a gift for my 15th birthday and totally fell in love with the setting, the plot, the drama... I remember reading the manual while eating my dinner, waiting for the game to install from my puny 4xreading speed cd-drive. I remember how utterly flabbergasted I was that my cutting edge (not) pentium could even draw such awesome graphics.

I just installed Homeworld once again. I only ever got through the campaign a single time, 10 years ago. Time to have another go.

[Exetus]

My first memory was the prompt to install it...

[Homdax]

Diamond Shoals.
Had to do that 5-6 times before I was happy with it and had enough ships.

Also:
http://www.hwaccess.net/viewpage.php?page_id=19 Briareos' info on the game with lots of goodies. From 2001.

[MadCatChiken]

I basically cried when i went back to Karak after the first hyperspace test for first time.

[Exsus]

The intro was more than enough
And mission 3 of course.
Meeting Four Frigate for the first time and having only 17 Fighter and 6 Corvette. I just destroyed all but one of them. They deserved it.

Happy 10th Homeworld

[TheDividedGod]

My first memory of Homeworld was definitely the manual, especially of course, the backstory and narrative elements. I was....oh, 15 maybe? and the game was about 6 months old...bought it with my own money, and was astounded by the manual. I had always, and continue to always read manuals, even if it's just a quick run-through of the control system, but i ended up poring through the sophisticated backstory of the kiith clans for over an hour. I recall that I especially liked the stories of kiith paktu and maanan.