Feel free to share anything about Privateer (1993) here!

I have played another, newer, Privateer by EA, which owns Origin but gave the game that name probably to try to sell a bit more. It is fun, until you find it haves a game-stopping bug when you are ambushed, and have to be ambushed to continue playing and advance to the next place, and when a friend bought it (he had the same problem recently with another game by the way) there wasn't a patch for the problem.

Privateer: The Darkening? One of the worst disappointments I ever had. Virtually unplayable, I kept dying early on again and again, because unlike in the first part, the game immediately starts in the 'danger zone'. Also, once I got over this phase with lots of luck (read: restore saved game until a run gets through without meeting any pirates/whatever), I got to a point when I actually got quite good at fighting other ships. Only that suddenly, I found myself in an unending battle in which I killed something like 100 ships, but more kept coming, so I couldn't even run away. Horrible.

I mixed names, I looked and the game was Freelancer, aparently originally designed by the same who designed Privateer. I couldn't play much because the bug, but even thought it looked fun you couldn't travel freely, to unlock passages to other places you had to finish some missions.

Wasn't that one released by Microsoft?

Yes now that I look for it. The copy I played is of a friend and by now it's nearly forgotten by me, so I mixed up things.

By the way, I stronly advise everyone to check out the remakes in the related links. Both are built on top of the free Vegastrike engine, so they have lots of things in common. 'Privateer Gemini Gold' aims at being an exact remake (with improved graphics), 'Privateer Remake' (ironically) adds lots of new things to the game, like the ability to fly pretty much every ship and an additional campaign. They're both available for Linux, MacOS and Windows.

Wing Commander: Privateer is one of the best games I have ever played! It's just so much fun to play, and it sucks you right in.