Earth Orbit Stations

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E.O.S.: Earth Orbit Station

Developer(s)	Karl Buiter
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Platform(s)	Commodore 64, Apple II
Release date	1987
Genre(s)	Construction and management simulation game
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Media	Floppy disk
Input methods	Keyboard

E.O.S.: Earth Orbit Stations was a space station management simulation developed by Karl Buiter and produced by Joe Ybarra for Electronic Arts in 1987 for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Apple Macintosh. The game focused on both the material and economic challenges of building a permanent, fully functioning space station in geocentric orbit.

The game was set in 1996, and the player was given various selected scenarios to fulfill, from mundane tasks such as setting up a simple space station to developing and supplying a specified amount of high-grade, zero G pharmaceuticals to being the first to contact alien life. The game also was a cut-throat strategy game in multiplayer, as players competed over finite resources and resource management.

A review in Computer Gaming World had mixed feelings about the game. While the single-player portion was praised, the review felt the game had too high a learning curve to be really suitable for multiplayer. The user interface was particularly bothersome, described as "a textbook case of how not to design a window/menu/graphics interface." The documentation was similarly described as poorly organized and cryptic.^[1]