The game nobody remembers but everybody wants: Project Nomad
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Project Nomad. It's hard to completely articulate how ahead of it's time this game was. Right now, we've got Star Citizen and No Man's Sky on the horizon, and Elite: Dangerous in bete release, and they're all massive amounts of buzz due to some key facets of their game mechanics. Mainly, we're talking about a sense of total freedom and diversification of specialties for your character, as well as massive exploration on every scale. Project Nomad was doing this stuff 22 years ago.
The story goes: The government finds a mysterious single-passenger spaceship buried in the arctic, and once it's repaired, you're chosen as the pilot. It's computers are programmed for a distant and unknown destination. You're strapped in with a funny inventory consisting of some car keys, some chocolate bars, and a bit of good ol' earth currency.
You end up warping to a planet called Maka Bola, where you meet your first of many alien races, a friendly guy named Brin O'Keefe (like Han Solo crossed with a Llama). Right away, the story and the immersion is amazing. But just as you're getting familiar with the people who would have you running around on various tasks to posture political and military interests, you also discover the vastness of the galaxy ... and the fact that you can go anywhere you want, even fly unknowingly into certain death.
In Project Nomad, you can:
Explore the entire galaxy.
Meet and converse with hundreds of completely unique aliens.
Trade items in an interest-based galactic bartering system.
Upgrade your ship in every way.
Send automated bots to planets and leave them, harvesting gas, ores, organic life, and even collecting information or procuring treasured relics.
Discover forgotten races and learn the secrets of the galaxy.
Take on missions of every kind, some of which aren't even formally given to you at any point.
Take on any race as an enemy.
Follow the epic storyline to defeat the terrible race of intergalactic robots known as the Korak, destory the master control robot and become the hero!
THIS GAME! ... needs a reboot.
EDIT: I made a mistake of not mentioning Elite: Dangerous as a great example of the future of this type of game. I've since gotten completely addicted to it, but the fact remains that for pure lore and roleplaying quality in a space sim, Project: Nomad is STILL the one to beat.
EDIT 2: I've since learned from sharing this article with folks that there's a lot I don't know about the space sim genre of that era. Apparently, this game was originally in development as a compliment to Disney's Space Mountain, but then got scrapped and re-purposed to compete with the Elite series of games, which actually pioneered freeroam space exploration up to a whole decade before this game's release. Looks like I've got some more retro gaming to do!
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2s3cus/the_game_nobody_remembers_but_everybody_wants/
