Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Legacy

Legacy

After the release of the expansion, multimedia producer Michael Ely wrote a trilogy of novels based on the game. Illustrator Rafael Kayanan also wrote a graphic novel entitled Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms.

While not a direct sequel of Civilization II, Alpha Centauri is considered a spiritual successor because it shares the same general principles and was made by many of the original developers. There have been no sequels beyond SMAX, something that writer Greg Tito attributed to Reynolds leaving Firaxis in 2000 to form Big Huge Games. SMAX producer and lead designer Timothy Train also left Firaxis with Reynolds.

Many of the features introduced in SMAC were carried over into subsequent Civilization titles. For example, each civilization's characteristics in Civilization III are reminiscent of faction bonuses and penalties, the government system in Civilization IV closely resembles Alpha Centauri's, and Civilization V includes new win conditions: the completion of the 'Utopia project', which is reminiscent of the Ascent to Transcendence secret project, and a 'Science Victory', where the player has to assemble the 'Alpha Centauri Spacecraft' in order to win.

Upon its release, Civilization III was compared negatively to Alpha Centauri, while Edge magazine noted that Alpha Centauri remained "highly regarded" in 2006. Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Alpha Centauri, a sourcebook for the GURPS role-playing game set in the Alpha Centauri universe. On May 7, 2010, Brendan Casey released an unofficial patch, which fixes bugs in Alpha Centauri. His project began in February 2009 at Apolyton's Alpha Centauri site and moved in June 2009 to the Civilization Gaming Network, where he plans to continue developing further patch versions. Sold-Out Software also re-released the game.