Jumpgate is not only the best game most people don't know about, it's also got more lives than a cat.  After losing it's publisher just months after it's 2001 launch and then lsing it's developer reources to Jumpgate:Evolution, this game has trudged on and on with a minimal, but incredibly loyal, player base.  Now Netdevil has decided tosources to the give the old game a new shot in the arm by re-dedicating some limited re game.  Here's the "official" notifications from www.jossh.com:

In the summer of 2006, Scott Brown had a Plan: We were going to finally take Jumpgate and spruce it up a bit. I really liked his Plan, and I was excited to be a part of it. I gladly joined the team that was being assembled to undertake the project, though it meant I would have to stop work on what we then began to call Jumpgate "Classic".

There's more than one expression about the "best-laid plans", and I know I don't need to tell you that the Plan changed. It's now 2010, and the "spruced-up Jumpgate", Jumpgate Evolution, is still in progress today. However, for more than one reason, that project has become something very different from what in 2006 we were originally planning to make.

To me, Jumpgate always has held a huge untapped potential. Over these last few years, as I increasingly recognized that our new game was striking out on its own, and was less and less an inheritor of the legacy of the original Jumpgate, I found myself looking upon my years supporting Jumpgate Classic with increasing fondness.

For many reasons, Scott and I now agree that it is past time that the original Jumpgate receive attention again. I have been asked to resume my duties managing Jumpgate Classic, full-time.

I return to Jumpgate Classic joyfully, with the benefit of knowledge and experience gained from nearly four years on the Evolution team. My resources, though, are tightly limited, just as they were in the years before 2006. For a while at least, things will seem much as they did back then.

The powerful difference today is that there is an opportunity now to learn from and reconsider in our own turn the course that set us on the road to Evolution. Every single issue that motivated us to act in 2006 is still wholly valid, and those issues weigh heavily on the prospects for the continuing operation of Jumpgate Classic. To survive and succeed, those issues must be addressed.

More than ten years ago, I began my involvement with Jumpgate as a player and beta tester. I believe that talking to the community is helpful to the process of improving the game. As before, I will communicate publicly and regularly. As before, you will know what I am doing, and why, and as often as I can reliably tell you, when. You will have opportunities to make suggestions, and with your opinions to impact and contribute to the process of changing our game.

I'm undertaking a return to regular patches for Jumpgate, and to that end I am reactivating the Test Team. I am also resuming contact with the Events Team. Both groups will shortly need additional volunteers. I have begun taking equipment out of mothballs and getting things ready for a resumption of normal updates to the game. I intend to make a small test patch to the client within ten days.

I will start cautiously, and begin with minor adjustments and the solving of small problems. This is mostly to regain confidence that the processes and equipment still work after four years of disuse! After that, it will be time to start solving the real problems and making some serious noise.

Things have been quiet far too long, and we need to ensure a future for this game we all love.

Once again, for good or ill, there is a Plan.

If you love space-sim-type games, and if you're not hung up on cutting-edge graphics, give Jumpgate a try.  The game platform is something special,  and the current lead developer and community are passionate.  Add a 500 or 1000 players, stir and this thing can be a blast!

Well Istvan gets back in the developer's seat at Jumpgate (the REAL one) and pumps out a patch in his first ten days.   Yeah it was just a few bug fixes and minor tweaks -- but it's the first patch in THREE years for this old baby!  More to come.  SWEET!  :D

I went to their site this week and was shocked to see they've patched twice lately.  Maybe something about space games like JGE and BP and Taikodom all being out or on the way woke these guys up.

I don't know much about Taikodom, but BP and JGE are nothing like Jumpgate really (other than being in space). 

Originally posted by Ambrosius

I don't know much about Taikodom, but BP and JGE are nothing like Jumpgate really (other than being in space). 

 Ok so what makes JG so special then?  What are its highlights?  How is it different from JGE and BP?  Thanks.

Interesting. I've been following JGE since it's "rebirth" recently and is one of the few games I'm looking forward to. For whatever reason, I never thought to give the original a shot, I'm not picky with graphics, so I'm gonna give the trial a shot. Any newbie tips? Or does anyone care to join me on the trial? I don't know a thing about the game, and for me that can often be a good thing(sometimes knowing too much prior to playing a game can...spoil it, I guess?).

Originally posted by Borluc

Originally posted by Ambrosius

I don't know much about Taikodom, but BP and JGE are nothing like Jumpgate really (other than being in space). 

 Ok so what makes JG so special then?  What are its highlights?  How is it different from JGE and BP?  Thanks.

Well the BP is completely instance-based, and JGE, last I saw it, had really nerfed a lot of the things that made Jumpgate a challenge to play.

It's definitely worth spending during the free trial period if you like space sims.  I think the flight engine is the best (by far) out there.  Right now the econ is kind of stagnant because there's not enough consumption, but as more people start to trickle back, that should change.