Since 2003, one of the most popular MMO games has been EVE Online. Its appeal is easy to see. The game provides players with a huge galaxy of planets, moons, space stations and other locations to explore in a far-future setting with plenty of opportunity for combat, commerce and the pursuit of new upgrades to their ships. In the space flight simulator genre, another important game came out in the same year, though it has been relegated to increasing obscurity thanks to frequent delays and business woes that kept it from being as revolutionary as it should have been. That game is Digital Anvil's Freelancer.

Freelancer was the dream project of a designer named Chris Roberts, the mind behind the most impressive space sim franchise of the 1990's, Wing Commander. Roberts and his team at Digital Anvil began production of Freelancer as early as 1997 with a target release date of no later than first quarter 2000. The initial tech demonstrations were promising. Freelancer was supposed to be a massive space sim with hundreds of worlds, complex squad-based combat maneuvers and a much-touted dynamic commerce system.

Especially at the time, a project of this magnitude was a huge undertaking, both in man hours and in financing. Digital Anvil simply didn't have enough of either to do what they planned for Freelancer. Early in 2000, the company began negotiating a buy-out with Microsoft that was eventually by the end of the year. Chris Roberts stepped down as CEO of Digital Anvil and put all of his energy into acting as a creative consultant for Freelancer. When it became clear that the game would never even come close to reaching its deadline, Microsoft ordered a number of scale-backs that resulted in the game we have today. Gone was the advanced maneuvering, gone was the dynamic economy, gone were the dialogue trees.

Though Freelancer is far from the game Chris Roberts envisioned back in 1997 and it was more or less dated from the time of its release, it's still an incredibly engrossing, entertaining experience. The game world is still gigantic, lending a sense of danger and adventure to exploring the far corners of the star map. It's thrilling to fly through nebulae and hunt for space pirates in cluttered asteroid clusters. Most of the star systems are fairly unique and the long travel times actually make the game feel like it takes place within astronomical magnitudes. One of Freelancer's strongest elements is its streamlined interface. Rather than the traditional radar system, the HUD is a non-intrusive dynamic readout that classifies objects within view based on distance, friendliness and name. There's a bit of a learning curve for the keyboard shortcuts, but once that's overcome there's an incredible smoothness to regulating all of a ship's systems.

There's a lot to like about Freelancer and though it wasn't able to become the game it was originally supposed to be, the seeds of that initial ambition are clear in the final product. It's easy to see the influence of its ideas, if not its execution, in more modern space flight simulators.