subspace

It's unlikely you've ever heard of this game, and that's a massive loss for you. Subspace was a top-down space combat game published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in the late 90s. Gameplay was pretty similar to Star Control II HyperMelee in this regard, but Subspace was groundbreaking as it really introduced the concept of an MMO - Massively Multiplayer Online game - into the mainstream. Think of it like multi-player Asteroids on speed.