One of the most important things to know about Stars! before starting a LAN game of Stars! is Stars! is an incredibly stressful game. Extraordinarily stressful. You'll more than likely tear out your hair trying to decide just what that nasty player three is up to. If the idea of a turn-based multiplayer strategy that does that intrigues you, read on.

Stars! 2.7i is a 16-bit game written for Windows 3x. Its age shows. Still, Stars! is a hoot and half. Stars! trades spiffy graphics for classic gameplay and fancy doohickeys for player interaction. This does mean, unfortunately, that Stars! is bereft of spiffy graphics and fancy doohickeys. Those who play, however, do not seem to mind.

Stars! began as a shareware game, a crippled version of the game distributed freely on the Internet. As such, its devotees have a tremendous presence on the web and Usenet. Stars! has an official website with information from the game's authors, Jeff McBride and Jeff Johnson, and a sister site with play-by-email (PBEM) games and strategy guides. Another important players' resource is the Stars! newsgroups, rec.computer.games.stars. Finally, there are many hundreds of fan sites of varying quality.

Links are forthcoming, as soon as I can gather them.