Master of Orion

Jerry Pournelle

Famous Sci-Fi novelist and long time technology columnist Jerry Pournelle frequently mention his appreciation for Master of Orion i his Chaos Manor columns. He's often stated its one of his all time favorite games.

References

When playing against the Meklars, one of the names for the leader (picked randomly from a pool in the NAMES.LBX file) is TX-1138. Likely a reference to George Lucas's movie THX-1138, which he himself has referred to in little in-jokes throughout the Star Wars movies.

Star Lords

Star Lords was a sort-of prototype game for Master of Orion. It was released as freeware in 2001.

Spaceward Ho!

Master of Orion borrows several game elements from Spaceward Ho!.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • June 1994 (Issue #119) – Strategy Game of the Year
  • April 1996 (Issue #141) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #33 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
• Game Bytes
  • 1993 - Strategy Game of the Year
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 12/1999 - #64 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
• Gaming World
  • 1993 - Premier Award Computing
• PC Gamer
  • April 2000 - #37 in the "Readers All-Time Top 50" poll
  • October 2001 - #31 in the "Top 60 Games of All Time" list (They go on to credit the game for the creation of the '4X' genre of strategy gaming ('explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate').)
  • April 2005 - #44 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
• Pelit Magazine
  • 1994 - Best PC Game
• Strategy Plus
  • 1993 - Strategy Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Entorphane, Michael Palomino, PCGamer77, Scott Monster and Technocrat