Development
The game was designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Barcia's company Simtex, which had previously developed Master of Orion, published in 1993 by MicroProse. For Master of Orion II Simtex provided additional pre-defined races, the option to create custom races,and multiplayer options. The first "Orion" game's graphics had also been heavily criticized, and the second included higher-quality artwork displayed at a higher resolution.
The main contributions were: design by Steve Barcia (lead designer), programming by Ken Burd (lead programmer) and five others; art by Dave Lawell (lead artist) and eight others; music by Laura Barratt; sound by John Henke.
In June 1995, MicroProse agreed to buy Simtex, and turned it into an internal development division. The acquisition continued to be known as "Simtex Software", and the Simtex logo appears briefly before MicroProse's while MOO II is loading. MicroProse released Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares for IBM-compatible PCs in 1996, and an Apple Macintosh version was published a year later by MicroProse in partnership with MacSoft.
Read more about this topic: Master Of Orion II: Battle At Antares
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