I can instantly recall the strange beeper sound effects of some of the powerful weapons that would blast multicolored noise everywhere.

Played a lot of Scorched Earth, both single- and multi-player.

It's still easily in my top5 most played games of all time

Played A-LOT of it :)

me too! Together with Ski free and star control

Ah, Star Control II still ranks as an all-time favorite.

Star Control II lives on as "The Ur-Quan Masters":

"The project started in August 2002, when Toys For Bob released the partially ported sources of Star Control 2 3DO version to the fan community. Our goal is to port this wonderful game to current personal computers and operating systems. It is and will remain 100% free of charge, and anyone can contribute to the project and thus help make it even better. For more information, look at our info page."

https://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php

Works on most modern operating systems and even has community add-ons and remixes.