Today I bring you the best game ever to debut on Atari, be ported to PC, and then be released to the open source community. I am referring, of course, to The Ur-Quan Masters, a space exploration and combat game constructed from the source of Star Control II.
The game centers around you, the flagship captain, and your efforts to stop the Ur-Quan from (variously) enslaving or destroying all sentient life.
The game play is deceptively simple. At first you should focus on mining out nearby star systems for all of their resources. Use these resources to kit out your flagship, or build a fleet of secondary ships.
From there, however, the game gets significantly more open ended. Do you pursue allies in your fight? Or will you make enemies of all your galactic neighbors? There are plot lines ranging from fetch quests to reuniting ancient offshoots of the same race, to repopulating a race of fast-breeding rodents, and plenty of enemies and trade partners along the way.
The open source version even has an online battle system (although it seems fairly primitive from my first glance) and free battle modes to become better acquainted with space battles.
The game is playable on all three major operating systems (Windows, OSX, and mainline linux distros) and has even been ported to several hand held systems.
A few images to whet your palate:
Link tiem:
Sourceforge project page - contains download links for major OS platforms.
Wiki - Comprehensive but spoiler prone
Full port list - Android apparently has a working playable port, iOS has one in the works.
So what are you waiting for? Nostalgia awaits!