I don’t know if anyone has played the old PS1 game StarWinder but the universes feel strangely interconnected.
On a more directly related NMS note, anyone know where to post your favorite seeds to HG?
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Not really, I’m not feeling it at all…suspended race tracks in space combined with some of the most cringe-inducing facial animations and awful voice acting without any real story that I can tell…so no, really not feeling this one:
The most No Man’s Sky-like game I know is Starbound, only on PC right now, supposed to come to consoles but the developers are far less reliable than Hello Games…where if they announce something generally means you might see it in five years…maybe…if they feel like getting to it…but the game is a truly amazing finished game with tons of mods from insanely huge ones that add hundreds of hours of gameplay and near endless content to smaller ones:
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Try Galaxy on Fire 2 on mobile, there’s a lot of ‘NMS feels’ with it.
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To me, NMS reminds me of Silmarils’ Starblade. The first video-game I installed on my childhood’s family PC. Been dreaming to play the “continuation”! And before NMS, dreams were what I had…
25 years waiting for it… Damn!
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Yeah I can see the NMS vibes there…too bad the guy recording that footage seemed to have no clue how to play the game as he was stuck walking in circles and and in the menus for most of the time lol.
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A bit how I felt! Those games really left you to your own devices… No tutorial missions, there!
For example… Ten-year-old-me never occurred to (*edit: xd look into that drawer) so I never got the breathing apparatus! 
My fighting skills were much better… if I could only display them at planets with breathable atmospheres…
Gameplay with someone who knows what they are doing:
You were a lonely space-traveler who could go to any planet of what seemed like “a crazy amount”, all different… were you would explore, trade… fight exotic aliens and collected cryptic artifacts. You were attacked by space-pirates and have your ship invaded by “parasites”, sometimes… Stuff would break and you needed to get replacements.
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I remember this one by David Braben and before that there was a wire-frame procedurally generated game that I played. Have to find footage about that…
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I played this game and when No Man’s Sky came out it reminded me of this one, only with such beautiful graphics that my dream ever playing Elite in this way became totally true 
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I tried to play this one on PS4, stopped about 5 minuts later…
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Yes it is a disappointing game, but Elite original stood at the basis of No Man’s Sky…
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No Man’s Sky 80’s style!!! Rescue on Fractulus IS ‘Old Man’s Sky’ complete with first generation Vy’keens or is that a Vogon? lol.
It’s still fun even today if Dad let’s me get to to the secret cupboard to play!
Heck it’s scary waiting for that knock on the airlock door… traveller or alien…?!
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And then remember Atari Star Raiders… 1979!!! Brilliant still.
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Jedi Starfighter by Lucas Arts for Playstation 2. Ooh freighter battles… You can just smell the Thamium burning…
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I played Starblade (1990).
If you’ve never seen SUNDOG: A Frozen Legacy (1984/85), then the idea of “replacement parts” to keep your ship running / to upgrade the ship, will seem “new” here in Starblade.
Silmarils had another game, a Fantasy one, called Targhan (1989), too.
Kinda Conan the Barbarian-like in feel, crossed with much older games “Swashbuckler (1982)” [Apple II] & “Karateka (1984)”, in the sense of side-scroller combat, but adding (OLD old) Castle Wolfenstein (1981) (NOT the id software 3D version!) screen-to-screen scene-to-scene movement…
The only other similarity which Silmarils seemed to have “borrowed” from Sundog was the use of the “shuttle”, to take down to planetary surfaces, for shopping, or prospecting (and combat).
Whilst Sundog - for its time! - was
more complex ,
You could land your ENTIRE ship at any planet’s spaceport, and THEN detach (undock!) the surface transport “pod” to explore the city, or traverse the planet’s surface to travel inter-city, before setting out on-foot to do what was necessary.
Space flight was also more involved, where intra-system inter-planetary travel tended to give you a “curved” (system map-based) flight trajectory taking into account mathematical calculations (made for you) for local gravitational influences of the local star and/or local bodies nearby; and inter-system jumping required moving to the outer edge of a system to use “jump points”, which worked effectively like wormholes.
… in Starblade, the player was given NO control of the Altta (shuttle / landing craft), as you see in the video you linked, where take-off from (or return to) the mothership, and landing / take-off at planetary surfaces plays like a cut-scene, control returning to the player only once disembarked from the shuttle.
Starblade’s closest relation to NMS is the alien flora & fauna to be found, and the wildly differing colouring in the art style, and – I’ll grant – the availability & use of an equippable “spacesuit”, providing Oxygen as necessary.
You might even note that, in “today’s” games scene, Empyrion gives you the specific ability to take off / wear your helmet, depending on atmospheric (or space vacuum, or underwater) conditions; along with “seamless” surface-to-space & space-to-surface transit (though I’m sure the “cloud layer” makes for a convenient loading & staging zone for this purpose).
Add on the fact that you can CRAFT your own VEHICLES in this game, including deciding your own custom designs / layouts(!!), and also craft (but not customise) your weapons, and it’s worth a look-in.
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I think I saw this in another thread somewhere but SpaceEngine seems kind of similar to NMS, in that there are procedurally generated planets. The spaceflight part of the game is completely different though!
Look at this!
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A lot of those oldies can be played here. I spent hours playing Space Vikings when I was a youngster.
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Anyone remember Captain Blood? Communicating to 4 alien species in their language - flying to different planets - tracking down clones/travellers. All seems very familiar
Sadly, @colvr4, I never did play that one… Maybe someday (if emulators continue…) 
OK try MORPHITE on mobile from playstore (possibly appstore too) and let me know what you think…
For me, something this close to NMS on mobile cool as
IMPORTANT NOTE: game may fail to load if you try playing out the quest/story… So just go to random systems and start exploring. Sure it needs a lot of work but with player support who knows how good it could become!