Wow, Stars! I loved this game so much as a child. Back then, after upgrading from shareware I had to wait for a floppy disk to arrive in the mail.
I played a lot of it back in the day... makes me nostalgic to play again. But this emulator requires Intel and I have ARM Macs.
Probably these days it wouldn't be hard to vibe up a modern equivalent especially with the MCP the author talks about.
However, I believe the first shareware version I had was 1.x (distributed via CD that was packed full of shareware) which was significantly different. I remember mining fuel, which tracks with the above link.
Stars! was one of my very first video game purchases. I remember mailing a money order, and recieving a copy in the mail - I didn't have internet at the time. I'm not sure I even knew the internet existed then, although I would soon after if not.