I played original Colonizayiom a lot, and do play it once in a while. The game has some very old school charm (and very annoying units limit, once you get close to 256 colonists, it becomes almost unplayable, and wagon train routes are a mess - for some reason they just refuse to unload cargo sometimes).

I have tried freecol a few times and never could muster myself to do more than a few moves. It's something about the graphical style, I guess.