As far as I can tell it was never popular.
:(
It came out in 1989 and was ported to every game system and microcomputer that was released in america and Japan for like the next 3 generations of hardware. It sold over 4 million copies. Its the game that gave peter molyneux a blank check to make whatever game he wanted for like three decades.
All these games will be lost in time... Like tears in rain...
so oilbrained that you included "no fuel to run the oiltankers" as a downside to not producing oil