Life on the new planet wasn’t about to get any better, however, since the colonists split into seven philosophically distinct factions prior to their arrival, and founded seven different colonies around the planet. In Alpha Centauri’s story, this was less a triumph of technology and more of a necessary escape from an Earth that had been torn apart by environmental catastrophe. What kind of game casts a 20-year shadow?Īlpha Centauri was the spiritual and narrative sequel to Civilization, picking up after a Civ match has been ‘won by launching a spaceship to another star. It topped countless lists of the greats, and for many it is still unsurpassed, especially in the 4X genre. And Sid Meier gave us 4X games with his magnum opus: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.įor some time, Alpha Centauri was the undisputed greatest game of all time.
Planescape: Torment wove an interactive story that remains unequalled. The Longest Journey was the Last Good Adventure Game. EverQuest launched a thousand MMO addictions. In 1999, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic founded the team-based shooter. Perhaps it was the fear of imminent annihilation from the Y2K bug, but never before or since have so many groundbreaking, genre-defining and defying games been released at once.
Though it orbits its star much more closely than the Mercury does the sun, it is believed to be in the habitable zone because of the cooler temperatures of Proxima Centauri however, the star is of a type that tends to produce solar flares readily, which would bombard the nearby planet with high levels of radiation and strip any atmosphere from it.It’s been over two decades since the greatest year for PC gaming: 1999. A roughly earth-sized planet has also been identified (2016) orbiting Proxima Centauri. In 2012 the discovery of a roughly earth-sized planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B was announced the planet was reported to orbit the star closer than Mercury orbits the sun.
Proxima Centauri orbits about the common center of mass of the system with a period of more than 250,000 years, so that in about 125,000 years it will be more distant than A and B. Alpha Centauri C, a red dwarf, is also called Proxima Centauri because it is the closest star to the earth (other than the sun), at a distance of 4.28 light-years components A and B are currently 4.34 light-years away. It forms a binary system with the somewhat smaller, less bright, and more orange Alpha Centauri B. Click the link for more information. (G2 V) as the sun and of about the same size and mass. Pickering began the first extensive attempt to classify the stars spectroscopically. In astronomy, a classification of the stars by their spectrum and luminosity. Alpha Centauri A is the brightest component it is a yellow main-sequence star of the same spectral class spectral class, Alpha Centauri is actually a triple-star system, the components being designated A, B, and C. Click the link for more information. is −0.26. A.D.), all visible with the unaided eye, were ranked on a brightness scale such that the brightest stars were of 1st magnitude and the dimmest stars In astronomy, measure of the brightness of a star or other celestial object. Click the link for more information. and 3d-brightest star in the sky also known as Rigil Kent or Rigil Kentaurus 1992 position R.A. It also contains Centaurus A, a radio galaxy, as well as a globular star cluster visible to the naked eye. It is known especially for its bright stars Alpha Centauri and Hadar. , southern constellation located N and E of Crux, the Southern Cross.
Alpha Centauri (ăl`fə sĕntôr`ē), brightest star in the constellation Centaurus Centaurus