Ever since I was a little kid, I would play the original Master of Orion on an ancient macintosh at my grandfather's house whenever we visited. Ahh, the fond memories of building various, gargantuan death cruisers. (My young mind couldn't wrap itself around the idea of building lots of little ships, why would you want a tiny spaceship!?!) Fast forward a few years, and I hear about Master of Orion II, which quickly became my first video game purchase, and brought me the most fun I've ever, and will ever have out of ten dollars. This is a game I still load up from time to time, a game with endless replayability. And then, there's Master of Orion III. Upon hearing of it's release, I shelled out the cash to have it shipped to my home. With high hopes, I installed it on my machine. With eager anticipation, I began my first play through. My first thought was: "What happened to the alien?" This was followed by more and more unanswered questions: "What does this building do?" "Another transport? Do I really need 50?" "D-Did the computer just colonize that system all on its own?" "How do I tell it what to research?" These questions soon changed into a single, simpler question: "Why am I still "playing" this? I've never touched it since.
MOO1 was the highlight of my trips to my grandparents home. Running on an old mac, it was the source of countless hours of wasted time. Though the dos version isn't as good as the mac one (I especially liked the ability to enlarge the freaking screen), it's still well worth playing. MOO2 was the first video game I bought with my own money, it was the best 10 bucks I ever spent. It plays quite differently from MOO1, requiring more time spent each turn running your colonies, but has nearly infinite replay value thanks to its custom race and ship design options. I still play a game every few weeks. If you're gonna buy any game here, this is it.
