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Video Games

By Alan - May 10, 2011

I used to have an imagination. I could dream up interesting worlds and go on exciting adventures without huffing enough glue to kill an elephant. Unfortunately years of working in a cubicle, surrounded by people who are genetically closer to cardboard than primates  has reduced my once vivid imagination to day dreaming about eating a doughnut without getting heartburn. Clearly I need the stuff of my youth to kick start this Swiss cheese brain again. I need the space simulator games of the 1990s.

It was during these formative years when I created some of my fondest gaming memories. Space simulators helped realize my childhood dreams of flying a star ship at warp speed, exploring new worlds, and acting out my twisted psychopathic fantasies about exterminating alien life forms. These were happy times for me and the few remaining neighborhood cats.

There were so many good games back then it was almost impossible to keep up. Then suddenly at the turn of the century the great flood of space simulator games dried up faster than your wife after you shouted the wrong name mid-orgasm. Let’s take a quick trip down Memory Lane (keep going past PriestTouchedMe Boulveard) and revisit the greatest space simulators of our youth.

10.) Freelancer (2003)

Announced in 1999 by Chris Roberts, the genius designer behind the Wing Commander series, this game took too long to produce and ended up delivering only a fraction of what it was supposed to be. That being said, what we were left playing in 2003 was still the closest thing this decade has seen to an exciting plot-driven sci-fi space sim. Freelancer wasn’t the best game ever made, but it made a valiant attempt at bringing back the genre. It’s interesting jump gate system made  the universe feel larger than the clump of undigested red meat lodged in your colon.

9.) Escape Velocity (1996)

A game based on traveling to work, buying/selling goods and spending many unemployed hours desperately looking for work. If Escape Velocity had also included taking out massive student loans or parents that were disappointed in you then they could have renamed it Escape Reality. The only thing that hindered Escape Velocity’s success was the fact that it was stuck on Macintosh computers, which is like being the most beautiful woman locked in the basement of an insane kidnapper. That being said, Ambrosia Software deserves a shout out for creating this gem that kept me indoors long enough to make my skin look like Gollum’s.

8.) Independence War (1998)

Compelling story, exciting gameplay and the ability to command an entire warship?! Sounds fun. Independence War was also known for its physics system, which relied on Newtonian physics and gave the game a more realistic feeling. You commanded an entire ship and finally you felt like you had power. The feeling of course was quickly lost when moments after you stopped playing your big brother would pin you down and fart on your chest.

7.) Wing Commander (1990)

This game was one of the first amazing space sim games available that wasn’t an ancient, dust covered Asteroids machine. You could earn medals, win promotions and become a decorated war hero all from the comfort of your Spiderman feety pajamas. The only kid at my school who didn’t talk about this game was the bully whose father beat him like it was a hobby. But while that kid was busy trying to hide his bruises by torturing others on the playground, I was busy talking obsessively about Wing Commander.

6.) Homeworld (1999)

How do you get remembered? You can be the first person in your group to bang a shemale and accidentally let it slip while hanging out with your drunk buddies one night. Or you make a game like Homeworld. Homeworld was a mixture of strategy and space simulation that resulted in a perfect blend of nerdiness. Throw in some B.O. and rufilin and you’ve got yourself what I’d like to call the ‘gamer’s cocktail’. Relic is still around producing great games thanks in part to the success of the Homeworld series.

5.) X3 Reunion (2005)

Supposedly the decline of the space simulation series can be linked to the rise of the FPS and RTS. But that’s like saying people stopped doing it doggy style once we figured out missionary style. And judging by the number of bite marks in America’s pillows I think we can safely say people prefer to compound the goodness. X3 brought back the trading and economic system from games like Escape Velocity. The amazing graphics and deep story (that compounds on this game’s predecessors) also help to make it memorable. The big problem was that it lacked any multiplayer component. Considering the age it was released in, the lack of multiplayer made the game feel emptier than your ball sac after your weekly trip to the sperm bank.

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Ignorant Geek Wisdom

• Look, Captain Crunch is my favorite cereal. If you served me a giant bowl of the stuff I’d be ecstatic. If you then pulled your wiener out and dipped the tip of your dink in one little tiny spot you would ruin the whole bowl for me.

  -Alan

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