Galactic Frontiers

Galactic Frontiers
Developer: Human Media Publisher: SoftStream International Platform: Mac OS Classic Released in US: 1991 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has anti-piracy features.

It was the era of the warlord, when someone with a safe home planet, adequate military resources and some military skill, together with a certain ruthlessness and an eye for the main chance, could hurl their battle-standard across the Stars to bring half a hundred galaxies to bow at their feet...

Working Title

Galactic Frontiers almost shared a title with its distant antecedent in the interstellar 4X genre, the 1974 board game Stellar Conquest. The earlier name can be seen in version 1.0's owner resource: Stellar Conquest v1.0. Version 1.0.2 amends this string to Galactic Frontiers™, but the game's Mac OS creator code remains sCNQ.

Resource Names

The dialog box that says "Sorry, but Galactic Frontiers requires System 5.0 or later to run" has an ALRT resource called "system>4.1" and a DITL resource called "Note requires 6.0.4". System requirements must have fluctuated during development.

The "Game Over" box has the internal title of "DeadDuck".

Avast!

An ALRT called "shucks" and a DITL called "Illegal version" make up this message to pirates:

By version 1.0.2, the warning had been upgraded to a threat.

It was probably an empty threat, though. A Mac of that era didn't have a software-readable serial number.