Never had a pc as a kid, though I always wanted one, so my space sim experaince is rather limted.
Played Colony Wars back in the day, oh and wing commander on the snes. As far a I remeber there just wasnt much space sim type games on the consoles that I had as a child.
Now I'm grown up (or at least I tell myself that) I came upon freespace completly by mistake, had suscrbied to Gametap and they have freespace 1 and 2 on their game list. Tried them and liked what I saw, googled freespace (Ok, I admit I was looking to pirate a copy of it) and came upon this forum.
Oh, and I'm 26, feel like an old man compared to all the young'ns here.