26 years later, this excellent 4X space strategy game still has plenty of firepower, and it's also now free

Starships Unlimited becomes Starships Unpriced

Another 1 for the "not news, but quality to me" pile: you tin download a escaped updated mentation of classical 4X abstraction strategy sim Starships Unlimited from creator Andrew "APEzone" Paul Ewanchyna's website. Originally released successful 1999 - an epoch of comparative intelligence calm, earlier the Broadband Blight - it's a turn-based matter with 4 ages of exertion to discover, a scope of alien factions who (in the archetypal version, anyway) each look similar gurning hoover attachments, and the imaginable of zesty tactical combat involving ships of your ain design.

There are fewer pleasures successful the games journalist's beingness richer and much poignant than the accidental to constitute astir a crippled you'd wholly forgotten you played. I didn't recognise Starship Unlimited astatine first, erstwhile I saw it connected the 4X subreddit. The madeleine-soaked-in-tea infinitesimal was a screenshot of ships successful orbit featuring firing ranges - arcs and wedges of yellow, reddish and greenish painted onto an invisible tabletop astir each craft. I adored those firing ranges arsenic a kid. I utilized to tract highly specialised fleets consisting of acutely near-sighted, 360-degree firing escort cruisers and tunnel-vision artillery vessels that couldn't triumph a dogfight against a cactus.

The escaped mentation disposable connected APEzone's tract is Starships Unlimited 3.5 - sadly, Ewanchyna doesn't look to person preserved the older versions, including the 1 I played with the (imo) precise best nozzle-faced aliens. If you're interested, you'll request to motion up with your email to entree the download page.

As ever with these projects, portion of the thrill is the weird time-traveller condescension that comes from digesting a acceptable of two-decades aged strategy requirements. 50MB of HD space? Woah, conjecture I'll person to suck it up and delete my Alan Wake 2 install. 64MB of RAM? I'd amended adjacent each applications earlier starting this game. Vintage spec expanse notwithstanding, Starship Unlimited seems to tally happily capable connected a current-gen Windows PC, similar the Dell thinkpad I'm penning this on.

Stumbling connected this has charged my torpedo tubes and suffused my phaser banks with rampant enthusiasm for games involving genuinely tactical fleet combat. Any lesser-known favourites you'd similar to share? Anything caller and unexpected, oregon aged and unfairly overlooked?