Was anyone else obsessed with Terminal Velocity in the '90s? It just got an update

pcgamer.com:

I don't know how Terminal Velocity landed on my family's PC in the mid-'90s, but I know I spent too much time playing it. We didn't even have the full game, just the shareware version which only included the first chapter, and I'm pretty sure I never actually bothered to reach the end of that chapter. I just liked flying the spaceship around.

An updated version called Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition(opens in new tab) released today, and by contemporary standards, that first level I played so much of is barely a videogame: You fly around above an alien planet shooting enemy ships and tanks and buildings, collecting power-up orbs, and sometimes flying through tunnels. The flight model gives you a level of control that's close to Descent's, but you always have some forward momentum. There ain't much to it, but I still remember why I was so into it: the scale. It felt like you could fly through the first planet's mountain range forever. (The Steam page says there are «over 400,000 sq miles of terrain,» for whatever that's worth.)

I was 10 years old and 3D graphics of any kind were exciting in 1995, so that mostly explains the fascination. Playing it again, though, I pine a little for that old sense of wonder. Terminal Velocity was my first «open world» game, sort of. All I ever found in my explorations were more power plants to shoot, but back then just the sense of freedom and the possibility of observing an interesting peak or valley kept me playing, even if the whole level is probably less complex than one of Kratos' eyelashes in a modern God of War game.

Boosted Edition makes some technical improvements for modern PCs, the biggest of which is an increased view distance, which I'm not sure I like. The fogginess of the