Wing Commander ®: Privateer ™

I played that game back in the 90's with a joystick. Now, Dosbox won't recognize it, and my only options are keyboard or mouse, both of which are horrible in a dogfight. It takes hours (literally) to kill anything.

This is the go to game for space combat/dogfighting. You play as a privateer, a bounty or merchant or whateve you decide. You buy and sell goods to make money and upgrade your ship. Eventually you get the ship good enough to accept some lucrative contracts either hauling goods or shooting pirates. And finally trade that old clunker in for a brand new ship, after all you can only upgrade it so much. It has a decent story to it which begins in a bar in New Detroit. Be aware that most of the story missions are hard so have a good ship to start them. The graphics are great for its time, as are the sound effects. But it is form the early 1990s so it hasn't aged well, which cost it one star. This game far surpasses the sequel or any other game in its genre. Even 30 years later they haven't come up with a better space combat game. I highly recommend it , but beware that if you fail even one story mission you are out fo the story for good and are stuck with only the random contracts. Fortunately this was corrected in Righteous Fire, also included in this package, where it allows you to repeat a failed mission.

The graphics are not as great as I remember. (They never are - haha) The game is still the great game that made me fall in love with gaming on the pc.

I first played this on my roomate's "upgraded" 286 back in the 1990's. It has the most freedom to follow the story or not as you like. I enjoy just doing my own thing and upgrading my ship. Most games don't let you do that.

GOG's last big summer sale, I catch that Privateer is going for peanuts and say why not for a couple of bucks. Being I was a big fan of WC 3 / WC4 back in the day and enjoy simple space sims with a degree of freedom a la 'Escape Velocity' or 'Endless Sky'. This is what I get for listening to five star reviews. If you ever wondered what a Wing Commander game would feel like if the grandiose story, characters were stripped away ... this is it. You have the choice to be a galactic trader, pirate or bounty hunter, but that's fun for about five minutes and it took grinding to get into a decent ship with fighting capabilities for the latter. You can eventually pursue the one story arch found in-game, but it's hardly satisfying or all that deep. As a WC game the in-cockpit space portion of the game is both familiar and graphics sufficient, but as there isn't any depth or substance to be found beneath it, I started to get bored and then wondered what all the nostalgic fuss was about. If you want a trip down WC memory lane before FMV took over it's a flashback, but "elite classic" it is not.