Shareware computer game where you play a starfighter pilot

Question

For those who were born after the mid 90's, shareware games were games that the first chapter you got for free or real cheap and, if your curiosity was piqued, you bought the rest later.

In this game you play a human mercenary starfighter pilot in a distant, fictitious solar system you travelled around fighting enemy spaceships on missions. The perspective of the game was a sort-of "bird's eye" view, as if you looked straight down.

There were some encounters were you had spoken dialogue with pilots of other ships- the first encounter in the game you had was with an alien pilot from another system who was rather smug- saying that the player's craft alone was no match for it in combat but "30 or more" like it might be a threat.

In a crude cinematic at the beginning of the game there was writing that said the humans of this system were distant relatives of people on Earth but I never got far enough to figure out how.

Some of the other games that came with this were made by a company called Apogee, so it's possible this game was made by them as well.

Answer 1

I think you're talking about...

Solar Winds By Epic MegaGames

You're a mercenary in it, flying a fighter spaceship in a kind of top-down view. There's a smug bastard who thinks he's better than you. And the intro talks about humans from a solar system in a distant galaxy being distant relatives of us.

And even though it isn't Apogee, Epic Megagames was a huge part of that same era of games. Also, that game was awesome.

Here's a YouTube video.