games

If you want to see SpacePunk that actually has some Punk in it check out the Indy warships in the 15 minute long FMV intro to 1998s Independence War/I-War

One of my favorite pieces of short-for Sci Fi even 25 years later

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij0NlMVd4Mw

This is the best quality I could find. It's an old game.

It's so fucking cool, though. It's a sim. Your ship, and every other ship because there's only two classes of warship iirc, all behave the same way. So you have to be a mean tricky SOB to win fights. You've got two particle cannons, missiles, and shields. You've got scanners. And you've got your repair teams. And that's it. That's your tool kit. Figure it out. Everything that happens in the FMV, including iirc handling FTL travel yourself, happens in game.

And the shape of the ships isn't arbitrary. Their shields and power systems are generated by a large ring, so the destroyers are flat pancakes with two wings to act as spars for the weapons, a huge cowling for shaping the engine exhaust, and a tiny command pod nailed to the front. They came up with a reason behind their spaceships so there's some in world justification for the cool ship. And they're really just an iconic look, very distinctive with their flat, aggressive profile and huge flaring engine cowling.

Did I mention it has Newtonian physics? IT HAS NEWTONIAN PHYSICS! Yeah, it's simplified, but you can fly in one direction, flip your nose around, and shoot at ships following you, or whatever other silly Newtonian Drift stuff you want to do.