I grew up on space combat sims. X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Privateer, StarLancer, Freelancer, Freespace, etc. owned my time in middle school and high school. I went through at least 4 or 5 joysticks, often enough that after the second one in middle school my parents stopped buying them for me in an effort to teach me to be more gentle on my stuff. It seemed like the space combat genre was unstoppable in the 90s... but then it just dried up. Games like Darkstar One were mediocre at best, and I found the space combat in MMO's like EVE online and Star Wars: Galaxies to be a poor substitute for my joystick cravings. I'll still reinstall X-Wing Alliance, Freespace 2, and StarLancer every once in a while to get a fix, but I'd love a modern, joystick-using space combat sim to scratch that old itch.

So along comes Chris Roberts, the dude behind the Wing Commander, Privateer, Freelancer, and Strike Commander series back in the 90's/early 00's. He's putting together a new game. Star Citizen is set to be the spiritual successor to all of his previous games, with a large open galaxy trading/combat sim as the primary setting and a sub-game a la Wing Commander (called Squadron 42) as a stand-alone campaign within. It looks awesome.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/51135962?title=0&byline=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen The catch is that he's trying to raise $2 million via crowdfunding to prove to financial backers that there's enough interest in a PC game to justify the development costs. He's up to $846,XXX as I write this. I pledged $60, as this sounds like the game of my dreams and it's easily worth that to me. If you have any interest in this type of game, take a look and see if it's worth something to you.

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/
http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/

 

I used to play those games back in the day. Only way I'd play now is if I won the lottery and quit my job. Let's hope that happens, and I'll make a donation