Master of Orion

Master of Orion (MOO1) is the first in the series. It was developed by Simtex; Steve Barcia and Ken Burd designed it. The game was designed to use MS-DOS and was published by MicroProse in 1993. Most reviews by critics and players were very favorable.

The game begins with a single colonized homeworld, a colony ship, and two scout ships that can be used to explore nearby stars. As the game progresses, new worlds are discovered, other races encountered, worlds colonized and wars fought. Despite their different backgrounds and homeworlds, all races possess legends of the Orions, a master race that once controlled the galaxy, and their protected homeworld containing powerful secrets and technology. The homeworld is found in the Orion star system and is defended by a powerful robotic starship, the Guardian.

Copy Protection
This game is copy protected, requiring the player to look up content found in one of the manuals. This copy protection appears after a random number of turns, and will drop the player to the main menu if failed.

There are reports of said protection appearing in the Steam version. If it appears, it accepts any answer instead of the correct one, even though the reference card is found in the main directory.