Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this video, Federation Of Free Traders, released in 1989 for the Atari ST by Gremlin Graphics.
Description taken from the game's manual:
Just after the end of the twentieth century, research into fusion power accidentally led to the discovery of the Lambert faster-than-light drive, and colonisation of the universe began. Soaring unemployment, chronic pollution, and rising crime on Terra led to vast numbers of emigrants leaving for the stars in the hope of a better life. This general drift to the stars was turned into a flood when the governments of several countries found that financing one way trips to the stars was an excellent way to solve their over population problems.
The new colonies relied very heavily on Terra for all the items they could not produce themselves, and the Colonial Transport Service was inaugurated to carry the vast amounts of cargo between the colonies (and to carry the payment for the aforementioned cargo back to Terra). Originally the convoys of freighters were completely unprotected and piracy unheard of, but colonising a new planet is a hard life and as some of the colonists began to get tired of scraping a living on an alien world, they turned to crime. The unprotected freighters began to mysteriously disappear on routine missions. Space piracy was born. Scout ships, originally used to survey potential colony planets, were hastily converted to police ships and used to escort the freight convoys. Terra was now paying the price for its rapid colonisation programme; the area the newly formed space cops had to police was vast and hence the space fleet had to be vast, and hugely expensive. The expense was so great that it soon became impossible for Terra to cover the costs of the space cops and freighters and planetary bankruptcy looked a certainty. In a last desperate attempt to prevent a collapse of the Terran economy, Terra severed all ties with the colonies. The space cops were disbanded, their ships sold off, and Terra gradually recovered, but the colonies were desperate. Any object sold from Terra soon had a value on the colonies so great that private citizens began to take the risk and fly unprotected to the colonies. And for a time the colonies scraped by on the cargo from these free traders, although the pirates still took their share of any unwary traveller. The most successful of the free traders became very rich and began to hire pilots to take the risks for them. In 2079 Simon MacPherson, one of the richest free traders on Terra, flew his heavily armoured spacecraft to the pirate base of the most notorious pirate in the galaxy - Laserbaiter! MacPherson persuaded Laserbaiter to join him and fly protection for his convoy of free traders. So successful was he at the job, that soon free traders from all over the galaxy tagged on to his convoys for the protection he provided. As the size of the convoys grew, Laserbaiter had to employ extra pilots to guard them and this led to the birth of the Federation of Free Traders.
Federation of Free Traders (FOFT) is an Elite-like space simulation game developed by Paul Blythe featuring fast enough 3D graphics and good chiptunes. The game includes over 8 million planets to visit, a real shipboard computer with its own basic-like language, navigation systems, communication system that lets you talk with other ships, trading and fighting missions.
The game has 2 big issues: the first is that you can't engage warp drive if there's something on the radar and there's always something that appears at the last moment. The second issue is that you don't have the sensation of movemtn; the only thing that you can see when moving is the 3-digit speed meter.
Here you'll find intro and little gameplay. It's a hard game to learn and I had problem understaning what to do and how to do things for my blind run.
All footage taken from original hardware machines and upscaled to 1080P.
Let me know what do you think about the video in the comments below but, most important, Enjoy!!!
If you liked the video, please consider giving a thumbs up and maybe also subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
In this video, Federation Of Free Traders, released in 1989 for the Atari ST by Gremlin Graphics.
Description taken from the game's manual:
Just after the end of the twentieth century, research into fusion power accidentally led to the discovery of the Lambert faster-than-light drive, and colonisation of the universe began. Soaring unemployment, chronic pollution, and rising crime on Terra led to vast numbers of emigrants leaving for the stars in the hope of a better life. This general drift to the stars was turned into a flood when the governments of several countries found that financing one way trips to the stars was an excellent way to solve their over population problems.
The new colonies relied very heavily on Terra for all the items they could not produce themselves, and the Colonial Transport Service was inaugurated to carry the vast amounts of cargo between the colonies (and to carry the payment for the aforementioned cargo back to Terra). Originally the convoys of freighters were completely unprotected and piracy unheard of, but colonising a new planet is a hard life and as some of the colonists began to get tired of scraping a living on an alien world, they turned to crime. The unprotected freighters began to mysteriously disappear on routine missions. Space piracy was born. Scout ships, originally used to survey potential colony planets, were hastily converted to police ships and used to escort the freight convoys. Terra was now paying the price for its rapid colonisation programme; the area the newly formed space cops had to police was vast and hence the space fleet had to be vast, and hugely expensive. The expense was so great that it soon became impossible for Terra to cover the costs of the space cops and freighters and planetary bankruptcy looked a certainty. In a last desperate attempt to prevent a collapse of the Terran economy, Terra severed all ties with the colonies. The space cops were disbanded, their ships sold off, and Terra gradually recovered, but the colonies were desperate. Any object sold from Terra soon had a value on the colonies so great that private citizens began to take the risk and fly unprotected to the colonies. And for a time the colonies scraped by on the cargo from these free traders, although the pirates still took their share of any unwary traveller. The most successful of the free traders became very rich and began to hire pilots to take the risks for them. In 2079 Simon MacPherson, one of the richest free traders on Terra, flew his heavily armoured spacecraft to the pirate base of the most notorious pirate in the galaxy - Laserbaiter! MacPherson persuaded Laserbaiter to join him and fly protection for his convoy of free traders. So successful was he at the job, that soon free traders from all over the galaxy tagged on to his convoys for the protection he provided. As the size of the convoys grew, Laserbaiter had to employ extra pilots to guard them and this led to the birth of the Federation of Free Traders.
Federation of Free Traders (FOFT) is an Elite-like space simulation game developed by Paul Blythe featuring fast enough 3D graphics and good chiptunes. The game includes over 8 million planets to visit, a real shipboard computer with its own basic-like language, navigation systems, communication system that lets you talk with other ships, trading and fighting missions.
The game has 2 big issues: the first is that you can't engage warp drive if there's something on the radar and there's always something that appears at the last moment. The second issue is that you don't have the sensation of movemtn; the only thing that you can see when moving is the 3-digit speed meter.
Here you'll find intro and little gameplay. It's a hard game to learn and I had problem understaning what to do and how to do things for my blind run.
All footage taken from original hardware machines and upscaled to 1080P.
Let me know what do you think about the video in the comments below but, most important, Enjoy!!!
If you liked the video, please consider giving a thumbs up and maybe also subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
