MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a 1990 space science fiction role-playing video game based on the Traveller series and was produced by Game Designers' Workshop licensee Paragon Software for Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS operating environments. The game is set within the Official Traveller Universe and features character creation and other aspects of game mechanics compatible with prior Traveller products. The player controls up to five ex-military adventurers whose objective is to save their civilization, the Imperium, from a conspiracy instigated by the Zhodani, a rival spacefaring race, and aided by the actions of a traitor named Konrad Kiefer. Gameplay features real-time planetary and space exploration, combat, trading, and interaction with various non-player characters in eight solar systems containing twenty-eight visitable planets.

Development presented Paragon with technical challenges because this game, distributed on floppy disks for computers hosting as little as 512 KB RAM, simulates the detailed game mechanics of the Traveller tabletop role-playing games within a sizable game world. To meet the difficulties posed by these hardware limitations, Paragon chose to excise or simplify some elements familiar to players of earlier Traveller games. Reception upon the release of the game was very mixed. Some reviewers rated it highly and praised its playability and depth of gameplay. Others reviewed the game less favorably; substantial criticism was directed towards its handling of ground combat. Computer Gaming World listed it as the fourth worst game of all time in its November 1996 issue. A sequel, MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients, was published in 1991; a second sequel was planned but never released.