Update 1/27/2016

(Hi everyone from Google)

Good news!
It's been a long time, but a couple people were kind enough to direct me to this link (Thanks /u/Nekolo and /u/5emi!) where you can download Dark Orbit. In the description of the video is a link to a working copy of the game along with another link to the JVM required to get it working.

Now I'm aware it looks iffy, but I ran a couple virus scans on it and it seems fine. Do your own scans to be safe. But I can confirm it works, and I've played a few minutes of it. It's exactly the game I remember. So I advise some caution, but it seems on the up-and-up. PM me if you have issues. I'm told the WebDriverSilentInstall.exe can trip antivirus, though I've had no problems with it.

I wouldn't mind a more fleshed-out sequel, maybe this'll spark some interest.

Original Post

Some details:

The game came out in 2001, as I said. There is another completely different game with the same name, but more recently developed. That new game is a 2D space MMO and not the game I'm looking for. However, the Dark Orbit I know was a sort of 3D top down shooter that took place planetside, with you controlling a mining vessel. Here are a couple screenshots.

Now, I have searched, and Googled, and tried for hours to find any copy of this game. But I've turned up nothing except for these small facts:

• The game was developed by Wild Tangent. You may know them for their game distribution platform that had adware on it.

• Wild Tangent has "discontinued" the game, which I've determined to mean that they have somehow prevented people from even using a valid registration key, should they have the trial version.

• In my own testing of said trial, it seems that it needs some Web Driver something-or-other which isn't compatible with Win 7.

• Finally, I could find no torrents of the full version of the game. Searched for a while and just couldn't find anything.

So you can see that I've put a good amount of effort into this, but don't want to give up and put that effort to waste. So any help you can offer me in finding a full copy would be wonderful. I don't know what /r/gaming's policy on filesharing is, but WildTangent clearly has no interest in ever making this available, so I believe I'm somewhat justified in looking for any available copy.

Thanks again, your help is appreciated!