I played the crap out of this game on my PC sometime between 1989 and 1992 and now I can't remember the name of it...I'm hoping somebody can clue me in.
Basically, you flew from planet to planet, exploring them and finding new plants, animals, and minerals. You could scan a planet (a la Star Trek) to determine its atmosphere, etc. and then decide whether or not to land and explore in your rover. I don't remember much beyond the fact that it seemed to have bajillions of planets and loads of different kinds of things you could find. It had decent graphics (for the time...better than CGA...maybe VGA?). Any ideas?
Feel free to post your own hazy memory of a classic computer game as a comment below.
It sounds just a little like Titan Empire which I remember was wonderful on the Apple IIe in the mid-to-late 80s. Despite the green on black vector graphics. The only other game I can think of is Master Of Orion - the original was out in 92 so it could almost fit the bill?
Hmm...thanks for the suggestions, Dave, but I don't think either of those were it.
Not to get off-track, but I still pine for Bard's Tale on my IIe. Man, did I ever waste a bunch of time playing that after school!
Frontier?
Followup to Elite, 3d vector graphics, space exploration, land on planets and do stuff?
Was it called Starflight?
Dan, you the man! Yes, it was Starflight...thanks! I found screenshots of the DOS version here and it's exactly what I remember: http://www.mobygames.com/game/starflight/screenshots
Thanks again!