Space Bucket List

Houston, we have a problem: the 1970 rescue told with slide rules, duct tape and no music cue to spare.

Neil Armstrong to the Moon, shot from inside the helmet and told through a father who cannot talk about his daughter.

The moon landing from newly found 70mm footage and no narration.

The Apollo missions cut from NASA footage with the astronauts' voices; Brian Eno's score.

A joint Soviet-American crew flies back to Jupiter to board the abandoned Discovery and find out what HAL was hiding.

Frank Poole is recovered a thousand years after HAL threw him into space, and wakes in a ring city built around the Earth.

Heywood Floyd lands on Halley's Comet, then a hijacking puts him down on Europa, the one world humanity was warned to stay away from.

Tom Wolfe on the test pilots and the Mercury Seven.

Sagan's book of the series: the pale blue dot before the photo and the cosmic calendar.

Hawking on black holes and the beginning of time with one equation; the most unread bestseller.

A fifty-kilometre cylinder enters the solar system and a crew goes inside; Clarke's purest wonder.

Earth colonises Mars in linked stories; Bradbury's melancholy frontier.

A boy trains for a war against the buggers in a battle room; the ending is the point.

Into early access in February 2023 and left there: the studio was shut down in 2024 and the last patch landed that June.

Fly for the Rebellion in 1993, managing shields and laser power by keyboard; the sim TIE Fighter answers.

Isaac on the Sprawl, with the needle in the eye; more action, same dread.

Eight galaxies, wireframe ships and free trade; the game that invented open-ended space.

Custom races, ship design and a galaxy to argue over; the 4X the genre still copies.

Grand strategy in a galaxy of your own species; Paradox in space.

Build rockets, kill Kerbals, learn orbital mechanics by accident.

An artificial body on a space station, dice and rent; Jump Over the Age's tabletop RPG in prose.

A corporate colony in space; Obsidian's Fallout in the stars.

A thousand planets and Constellation; Bethesda in space.

Eighteen quintillion planets and the comeback from a broken launch; Hello Games.

A solar system that ends in 22 minutes and a loop to learn it; the best game about curiosity.

Talos I, mimics that look like coffee cups and the GLOO gun; Arkane's System Shock.

Dogfights against the Kilrathi and a branching campaign; Chris Roberts in 1990.

Isaac Clarke dismembers necromorphs on the USG Ishimura; the best horror shooter.