I never played Escape Velocity, but I did get a humongous pack of shareware games back in '97. It included one of the most addictive fighting games I've ever played: One Must Fall: 2097.
I played the shareware version for several years. Eventually, I learned that it had been released in freeware, and I was happy. I downloaded it at school (I wasn't allowed free access to the internet until last summer (waste of a good cable modem!), after my Junior year. Parents = control freaks), spanned it on six floppies, and revelled in the glory of the full game.
Last year, I learned that they were making another OMF game,
OMF: Battlegrounds. It looks pretty enough to fry my computer, and I am happy.