I tend to stay away from "electronic" games, and I know it would be considered to "light" by most of the posters in this group, but one space-themed game that everyone I've ever played it with always seems to enjoy is Omega Virus. The luck to strategy ratio is pretty high, but it has some interesting things going for it. The components are pretty good. The instructions are a comic book. It has a large, thick, well-drawn board that folds up as various sectors start shutting down. Each player gets a nice astronaut with a back pack where you can attach the various components you need to destroy the virus. Each player might also get probes that they can send around looking for stuff or stealing stuff from other players. The electronic centerpiece is well made, easy to control, and easy to understand. It's a competitive and cooperative game that scales well from two to three players. The main goal is to be the one that defeats the virus, but the way it's set up people generally cooperate if time is running out so that at least someone will defeat the virus. This is accomplished psychologically by having the virus taunt the players by mocking them and calling them things like "human scum". There's a guaranteed time limit which is nice if someone feels like playing a game, but they don't want to play one that might drag on. As I said, it's pretty light - a kids game, really, but I've played it several times with all adults and we all had fun. You really want to get the taunting Omega Virus and the computer is good at pumping up the energy level as time is running out by shutting down sectors, randomly destroying equipment, increasing the rate of insults, and increasing the rate of pleas for help from the space station computer that's being taken over. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 12 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com