I remember back then, that was one of hte first games I remember needing a CD to install, and the CD held the soundtrack, but, once you installed it you could put any CD you wanted and it would play as the soundtrack! :p Which kinda goes against the discovery aspect of game, but I still had tons of fun.
I particularly liked Pirates! and Colonization, An interesting thing about my playing of Colonization and Civilization is that I never played a game on a random world. I remember a handful of those games, but I didn't really start playing till a little later, and the generation of games I had were more like: Pirates! gold, Colonization(highly underrated), Civilization I and II, Amazon trail(also pretty underrated), Descent, Populous, Master of Orion I and II
