SPF-LF 1's official history is closely tied to the small group who first occupied it.

Inspired by retro-sim space exploration games, Commander Anderson's (a pseudonym understood to be a tribute to a 2D movie) fantasy of a life of exploration and trading became a reality when a school trip to a local fuel-rich star suffered a unexpected 'accident', resulting in the 'loss' of Anderson and a tight-knit crew of retro-sim obsessed friends.

The group successfully discovered and claimed systems by adopting a technology that became known as 'Retro-Combat' (RC). In RC, ships, planets and stations are rendered on small square screens as simple juddery wireframes and all other visuals are removed (bar 'star dust' to illustrate direction of movement). This simplification of complex reality enabled the RC 'players' to focus solely on their objective, ignoring distractions and reducing adrenalin release.

Some hard-core RC players ritualised their 'game' further by adding bleeps to co-inside with (and drown out) the sounds of laser fire. Some even play tinny but catchy symphonies to pass the time when manually docking.

So successful was the RC approach in combat, mining and freighting that the small crew were able to not only hold on to, but flourish on SPF-LF 1 and go on to discover and populate other systems.

SPF-LF 1 is unspoilt, beautiful and high tech but fashions and tastes are stuck nostalgically on 'old Earth' in the last quarter of the 20th century.