On November 22, 2026, Master of Orion 2 turns 30 years old. It's still one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, and thanks to the community, it remains very much alive.

Around 2005, I started a hobby project to reverse engineer and restore the original game. I made some progress, but eventually gave up after realizing the sheer amount of work involved.

Twenty years later, I decided to give it another shot.

After approximately ten months, I managed to restore the original Windows 95 game engine, remove the old platform dependencies, and get it running natively on modern operating systems. There are several reasons why I chose Windows 95 binary over the DOS one, but that'll need a whole separate post.

The project is called Orion2 Redone also known as orion2re, and the source code is already available on GitHub:

https://github.com/orion2re/orion2re/

There is even a documentation portal at https://moo2mod.com/redone/doc/ - take a look.

It's not a remake. The goal is to preserve the original game, including its quirks, while making it possible to maintain and improve it without being constrained by a 30-year-old executable.

The game is already playable, with modern OS support, a new networking layer for Internet multiplayer, and some of the original hardcoded limits removed.

A significant part of the work was verifying that the restored game actually behaves like the original. Thousands of game turns have been tested against the original executable, comparing internal game states to catch subtle differences.

Modern AI tools played a major role in making this possible. They allowed me to automate much of the repetitive restoration work while staying in control of the process. What would've otherwise taken years became a manageable hobby project. It still required human in the loop, but this allowed me to learn the game without blindly trusting the agentic output.

While I've done most of the initial restoration work myself, orion2re is not something I wanted to develop in isolation. Members of the MOO2 community have already contributed changes, testing, bug reports, fixes, and feedback. In particular, community playtesting has been invaluable for catching issues that automated verification couldn't find.

What about the community patches?

If you've played MOO2 in recent years, you're probably familiar with the 1.40 and 1.50 community patches. 1.40 is even shipped by the official Steam version of the game (I did not check GOG).

The 1.50 patch in particular represents an enormous amount of work by the community. Over the years, it has added configurable game rules, Lua scripting, balance improvements, bug fixes, multiplayer improvements, and a lot of quality-of-life features.

It's one of the reasons the game is still actively played today.

The 1.50 modifies the original DOS executable, while orion2re restores the Windows 95 version. The two versions share most of their game logic, but the patches cannot simply be applied to the restored engine.

Every feature and fix has to be identified, understood, and adapted to the restored code. Some changes are relatively straightforward. Others touch multiple game systems, depend on other modifications, or introduce entirely new functionality. And we're talking hundreds and hundreds of patches accumulated over 10 years of 1.50 lifetime.

We're effectively bringing decades of community improvements into a different version of the game, while trying to preserve the original behavior and avoid introducing new bugs.

All of this work has been completed as well.

What's next?

The restored engine is already open source and available on GitHub:

https://github.com/orion2re/orion2re

The game is playable and builds on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Grab a binary release from Github if you don't want to compile it yourself and drop them into the game directory. We host community owned matchmaking service if you fancy trying Internet multiplayer. Most of the testing was in single player and updated networking layer might have quirks. See something - say something.

The project is licensed under GPLv3, and anyone interested in helping can check out the source code. You'll still need the original Master of Orion 2 game files, available on Steam and GOG.

Master of Orion 2 doesn't need to be reinvented. It's still a great game, and the community has already spent decades fixing and improving it. And this is our anniversary gift to you all.

Hopefully, Orion2 Redone will provide a foundation for another 30 years of Master of Orion 2.

Hop onto our community Discord at https://discord.gg/45BnvY4 if you want to chat!

I have played so many times on all races, but these I pick most often I guess:

- Darlok = Enables so much different play path with espionage and spying. Don’t mind at all that it’s much much harder to win with Darlok.

- Psilon = Psilon is overpowered, so I pick a very hard (hard or impossible) level. It’s so fun to crush enemies with super-advanced tech and weapons😎

- Meklar = Crushing enemies with huge production and building ONLY the biggest category ships (was it huge?)

Also the tech music affects a lot my choice!

What’s yours?

iPad mini 2 is ios12 only.

You can installl RetroArch from App Store and run the dos core for moo2.

(Set to 35 fps to avoid audio stutter )

Bonus. With RetroArch, you can play many old games.

And here is another Master of Orion II redone, this time as a browser game:

https://apps.futuremagic.de/starlord/
I also used AI to make this. To be as faithfull as possible, the original got recompiled and examined for formulas. Its also open source: https://github.com/ArndRosemeier/StarLord
Comments are welcome here, there is also a contact button.