Hey all!

Having finally found myself a decent joystick (they're hard to find these days), I finally got round to purchasing some of GOGs awesome space sims. Freespace 1 + 2, Independence War 1 + 2, all of them awesome games. It's always been one of my favourite genres.

That got me to thinking... what are your favourite space sims, and which would you like to see on GOG?

My favourite space sims would have to be the X-Wing series (TIE Fighter being the best by far), Wing Commander series (Loved IV, and also a big fan of Prophecy), Tachyon: The Fringe (PLEASE GET THIS GOG!!!) and of course my recent purchases, the Freespace and Independence War series.

Having a great time playing through them with my new Logitech Extreme 3D Pro...not a bad joystick for AU$40.

How about you? Any space sim gems that you can think of? What joystick do you have your fondest memories of?

For sheer time played it would be Elite and Frontier. There was also a C64 game I was fond of called PSI-5 Trading Company which wasn't a real sim but more a Star Trek style bridge simulator. X-Wing, TIE Fighter and Wing Commander go without saying. More of a shmup but I also enjoyed the Colony Wars games.

You've already pretty much listed my favorites: Freespace series (including the fan-made Blue Planet campaigns, especially the second one War in Heaven) and the X-wing/Tie Fighter series. I've only started the Independence War series but I am enjoying it and the Newtonian physics engine. Starfleet Academy was fun though I wouldn't put in the same class. Unfortunately never played Klingon Academy. I always wanted to try Bridge Commander (also by Lawrence Holland) but never got the chance. I hear it was good.

I have the same Logitech joystick - I agree: it's a good solid stick, especially for the price. I remember back in the day, Gravis used to make good joysticks. After our first Gravis joystick, we upgraded to a Gravis Firebird which was one of the first programmable joysticks which you could create joystick sets for and it had program recognition to load the joystick set. Good times ... playing flight and space sims on it ...

Colony Wars was boss.

Elite and its kin I don't really consider to be space sims in the same way as X-Wing and Freespace.

Favorite is definitely TIE Fighter by a large margin, followed by Freespace 1&2. I've been meaning to pick up Independence War and try that out, but so far other games keep taking priority. One of these days...

Like others here, my longtime favorites that I still play every so often include Freespace 2 (usually with Freespace Open installed) and Independence War 2.

A couple more recent space sims I really like include X3: Terran Conflict and Evochron Mercenary. If you like space sims then I would recommend at least giving them a try. They're both pretty much Elite-style open ended games emphasis on different things. X3 is slower paced and more more about on fleet building, station building, and trading. Evochron is more about piloting your own ship and has flying physics and combat similar to Independence War 2.

I fly a Thrustmaster T.16000m joystick (a really good joystick for the price) and Freetrack head-tracking in some space sims for camera control.

OMG! You just made me remember, I have had X3 on my Steam account for ages and never got round to playing it cause I didn't have a joystick. So many classics to catch up on.

Never played Colony Wars, but always meant to purchase it. Will try track down a copy.

How about Starlancer? I kinda liked the whole World War II in space thing, and the way it tied into Freelancer (also a boss game, just doesn't require a joystick - but is a prick getting to run in widescreen).

Elite I never really got into (slightly before my time) but Frontier I played to death. Then again, those games are sort of in a league of their own.

It's a real shame space sims have died out, easily one of the best genres in my mind. Imagine what you could do with the graphics these days! EVE Online is quite good, although requires a big time investment (and money).

This. I think it was not WW2 setting but rather Cold War.
I also enjoyed Archmedean Dynasty - ok, I know it's underwater - but it's a 'space' sim as well :-)

I used to love Star Trek: Starfleet Command. Also, though I'm not sure if this counts, the space stages from Star Wars : Battlefront 2. They were a hell off a lot of fun. Never really played a lot of space sims but hopefully my purchase of Freespace 1 will change that...

If you are looking for a real hardcore space-flight simulator, I got only one title for you:

Orbiter 2010

Nearly perfectly realistic, totally free, hundreds of amazing addons, incredibly accurate, beautiful, the list goes on.

My fav Space Sim is "Startopia", but I think it will be quite hard to play it with a joystick ;)

I liked Freelancer a lot and I am pretty sad that there will be no Freelancer 2, at least not in the near future.

I wonder why there are only so few people interested in space games at all... Isn't it just a great genre one simply has to love? :)

I haven't played Freespace 1 & 2 but so far my favourite is X Wing Alliance

I enjoyed my time with X3 Reunion.

Terminal Velocity, is probably the most fun I've ever had playing a game like that. You can still get a copy over at 3D Realms, why it hasn't made it over here is beyond me, but it's already DRM free, consequently, it's not really that big of a deal.

Other than that the Star Wars series was pretty epic, I remember fondly playing X-Wing and Rebel Assault.