We created the UNIVERSE game in 1972. We licensed it to Parker Brothers in 1976, who paid us $7,000 (I think) and made  Encounter Parker Bothers game of interstellar conquest . But then almost immediately cancelled the contract because the marketing department said: "Space doesn't sell." So it's 2018 42 years later, the 42nd year since the first "paid for" version of Cosmic Encounter came into being. And yes we wanted to grab onto 42, because Cosmic Encounter is as good an answer to everything that I can think of.  And since the announcement fell on May 25th Towel Day, we also had CE fans give the Cosmic aliens an assist in celebrating Cosmic Encounter Towel day.  You can see more at cosmicencounter.com ads we recap our last three days at the Museum of Science Fiction's Escape Velocity 2018 con. As to the actual number of Cosmic Encounter versions - if you count different covers and different languages as different versions along with different physical changes or content adjustments there are about 20.