🚀 go-pugleaf

No real questions in this post... I just though I'd share my
experiences...

I've been playing computer games since the early eighties and I was in
middle school. I had a TI/99 and my friend had an Apple II, and as I
grew up I later moved over to IBM PCs. Some of my fonder game memories
were later (guess early 90s), playing games such as Privateer and Tie
Fighter.

Since those days, I've continued to play games, mostly going with the
popular highly-rated games, which included FPSers, Strategy (Civ), and
CRPGs. I had great fun with these games, and didn't really think about
the fact that my last joystick space-sim game was Tie Fighter.

Then a couple months ago I got DSL, and decided to try an online game.
After doing some research, I signed on to Eve - Online, thinking it
would be fun to be back in a space game.

I quickly had some realizations that this game wasn't providing the
gaming experience I was looking for. I went to an asteroid field, and
realized that there was no danger of collision. In fact there was no
danger of collision with other ships, planets or space stations
either. During flight and combat, everything was mouse click based.
Click on target. click on desired orbit range. Click on weapon to turn
it on (no aiming necessary). Click on reload. To warp somewhere, I had
to click on the object/location, then choose 'warp to' from the menu.
Beyond this, there was no control of my ship. To run away from a
losing battle, my life would depend upon how fast I could click
through some menus to get to the option to warp away. With point and
click movement, I didn't have the feeling that I was actually piloting
my own ship.

Eve Online has some good things going for it: very impressive graphics
and an active online community. I'm sure some folks really love it,
but it wasn't what I was looking for.

It got me to thinking, what kind of game do I want to play? My free
time is very valuable, how do I want to use it?

I enjoy other types of games, but I'm also a little worn out on FPSers
and CRPGs. I started thinking, where's that fun space sim, where I'm
in control of my ship? that feeling of space, the dogfights with other
spacecrafts?

Doing some research, and reading a lot of old posts in this forum, I
realized that I haven't played a joystick controlled space sim in a
long, long time. These games were very fun 10 years ago, but they
don't have the market presence that they used to have. You have to go
out of your way to find a joystick controlled space sim.

Anyway, I'm diving back into joystick space sims. Luckily, I've found
my old joystick/throttle from 10 years ago in the back of the closet,
dusted it off, and was happy to realize I could still use it by
updating it's chip (though I have to wait until the new chip
arrives!). I've downloaded a bunch of demos. It's time to start
piloting through space again!

dsr