Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack

The musical notes "alien lifeform detected" still grace my memory. Stunning game.

The "good ending" for Microprose's Civilization is making the species interstellar. So this is a "proper" sequel in every aspect, though with some continuity changes. The gameplay remains utterly gripping from the start. The original unexpanded game already delivers, making the choice between Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire a matter of taste. It's clearly a quality title, and the occasional single screen stories ground the events so that the level of immersion is unthinkable for this type of action. Yet they can be safely ignored, the cold facts or numbers are separate.

This is one of the classic strategy games. Unfortunately, this download doesn't have the option to play in a window, so on a modern widescreen computer you get a chunky-looking, streeeeetched version of the game that makes it almost unplayable.

No turn based strategy game has been as good as SMAC

The game is extremely picky about your hardware, and if you are unlucky enough to not have the right mixture of hardware, the game will error out while loading. My system: Intel dual core 1.6 ghz integrated intel graphics 945 2 GB RAM Win XP Not an amazing system, but more than enough to run this game. If you've got a similar system, think carefully before purchasing!