Favourite Space Sim?

[Daltone]

Forget Colony Wars, forget Rogue Squadron - I am talking about real Space Sims. I am talking about the kind of game that requires that you use a joystick at the same time as hitting sixteen different keys on your keyboard. The kind of game that comes with a completely impenetrable instruction manual that is three inches thick. The kind they don't make any more.

I spent hours with Tie Fighter and various incarnations of Wing Commander. I loved Freespace (and have recently rediscovered it through Diaspora). I even enjoyed Star Trek - Star Fleet Academy. What are your favourite Space Sims? Have you ever played any which have been overlooked by the general public? Whilst not technically a space sim, I thoroughly enjoyed HardWar though not many people seem to have heard of it.

[BydoEmpire]

Doesn't fall under your definition of a real space sim, but Wing Commander 1 & 2 were the two I played most. More action-oriented, though, not really simmy.

And Star Raiders.

[Neb6]

One word that sounds like two:

Homeworld.

[Lictalon]

For my Apple IIc - the Halley Project.

[Jorpho]

I got tons of fun out of the old EGA Trek. I don't understand why there hasn't been some sort of update to that over the years.

[Soviet Conscript]

Elite, on my Amiga. I also liked star glider II alot as a kid, also on Amiga.

[Tanooki]

Wow EGA Trek, never thought I'd see that again and completely forgot about it.

I can't add much, I'd throw my vote to Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga and equally so the X-Wing Collector Box (XW and Tie Fighter games with all addons with real 3D visuals for Win9X and I've patched it to work with Win7 64bit.)

[icbrkr]

Starflight on the Amiga/Genesis. It even came with a mini-novel that gave you the background of the game.

[tom]

For my Apple IIc - the Halley Project.

Wow, I loved that game on my A8, played it over several month to the end. Loved the packing too.
Starflight and Sentinel Worlds 1 on C64 both from EA and Space Rogue from Origin also on C64, many months of fun with those three.

[Yago]

Another thumbs up for Starflight. I loved playing that on my old Radio Shack Tandy 1000TX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight