About 30 years ago, I started playing Pheonix and Galaxians. I couldn't get the hang of Defender but Crusader was pretty good (Crusader was Defender but with a joystick instead of buttons). Space invaders was so boring and I could clock it with just one 10p coin. Then I fell in love with Battlezone.
Around then I got a home 'computer' and played Jet Set Willy, Chaos and some other game you fly around the moons surface shooting things. Great stuff but suddenly arrived a game that ate my life. It was called 'Elite'.
You traded around a huge galaxy and when you'd had enough in there, you'd buy hyper drives and jump to the next one. I think there were eight galaxys but hundreds of planets in each one.
You could up-grade your 'Cobra MKIII' trade ship with loads of different goodies and it was a great fighter as well. Shield batts and nanobots, system coolers for gas giant/sun skimming for H-fuel. Cargo scoops for piracy and if that wasn't enough, the THARGOIDS (or Thargons...). Nasty alien flying saucers which were really tough and spewed out smaller copies of themselves with guns. If you killed the mother ship, all the baby ships went lifeless and you sucked them up to sell as something like alien organisms....
All that reimnds me of another game...anywho.
I moved on as my computer did through the years from a ZX81, ZX Spectrum and Atari ST to a PC. The first game I got on my PC was a little known title called Command and Conquer. It stayed as my favorite RTS game until Total Annhilation arrived. In between was Baldurs Gate and it's many expansions and then Fallout 1 and later 2. At this point I started playing multiplayer with a group friends. Quake was the start up for this but we moved on to Unreal, Half Life, Battlefield and the heart attack waiting to happen, AVP II.
Still play the multiplayers but not so often. I've was overtaken by my son who was less than ten at the time :$
Now, besides Freelancer, I play Total War and a few other RTS games, non of which are pre 2000 games.
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