Old games(Pre-dating 1998)

[Sapphire Wolf]

I really enjoy playing older games(besides the usual Descent). Anyways, what OLD games(Video/Computer games) do you like to play? Note this thread is for games that are released Before 1998. You can include Descent(1-2, including Vertigo Expansion) if you want to.

Here are the list of my favorite Retro games(before 1998)-
PC(the ones that have issues on winXP, I know, Descent 1 and 2 has been covered):
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenearies (got it covered, more info here
Descent 2+Vertigo Expansion (Got it covered with D2X-XL)
Descent 1(got it covered with D1x-Rebirth and/or D2X-XL)
Mechwarrior 2+ Ghost Bear's Legacy Expansion (got it covered, same with Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries)
Starwars: Dark Forces (unknown?)
Wing Commander: Privateer(might require DosBox)
MechCommander (work as is)
Mechwarrior 1 (really needs MoSlo and/or DosBox)
One Must Fall (might require DosBox)
Battletech: Crescent Hawks Revenge(Requires DosBox)(IMO, it is a bit complicated(control wise))

Console games:
Metroid (NES)
Super Metroid (SNES)
Starfox (SNES)
Super Mario Bros(1-3) (NES)
Legend of Zelda (NES)
Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (SNES)
Megaman X(1-3) (SNES)
Descent (PSX)
Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening(Gameboy)

[Duper]

Tempest
Robotron
Tailgunner
Moon Patrol ...it's music ..uh.. a little remixed.
StarWars
Battle Zone

...there are otheres, but I didn't like them that much, like Joust, defender, Asteroids ...etc

[Dakatsu]

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenearies (got it covered, more info here

YAY! Hopefully it will work for me.

For games 1998 before:
Descent I
Descent II
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries
DooM (I think its the full, but may be the demo)
Starcraft
Command and Conquer
Command and Conquer Red Alert

For 1999 Games:
Unreal Tournament
Descent 3
Quake 3

[roid]

i jsut realised... PacMan was actually created before i was born.

never thought i'd have to face a game older than me, can't believe i never realised. lol roid idiot

[Sirius]

Uh, there are a few of them. Pong is often cited as the first video game, and dates back to the 1970s; there are probably earlier ones that people wrote for mainframes and the like though.

For my part, there were a few SNES games I played that I particularly liked:

• Chrono Trigger
• Seiken Densetsu 3
• Rudora no Hihou (Treasure of the Rudras, from memory)
• Super Metroid
• Front Mission 1
• Tales of Phantasia

PC games... uh... didn't play so many of them that caught my eye. There were a few though. Hrm.

• Obviously, the Descent series.
• Terminal Velocity was cool. But it had nothing on Descent.
• Raiden/Raiden 2 were pretty good, but outlandishly difficult. That was the whole point, though, so no points lost I guess.
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows was pretty much the best-executed scrolling shooter I've seen to date. Been a while since I played it though.
• I occasionally play Warcraft 2. It's not bad, though not nearly as good as its later cousins.
• Duke Nukem - yeah, we all knew it was a bit lame, but IMHO #2 was about the best in the series. Pretty graphics, interesting gameplay, and aged better than DN3D did, in a way. Haven't played it for a while either though.
• Along the same lines of platformers - it seems a bit cheesy in some ways now, but I really loved (and still do for various reasons) Xargon. It was released when the formula was starting to get tired, but made up for it with then-detailed graphics and a cool story. For the latter reason, it's one of the games I'd like to see Epic make a sequel to; I don't think the chances of that are terribly high, though.

[Kilarin]

what OLD games(Video/Computer games) do you like to play?
...Here are the list of my favorite Retro games(before 1998)-

Old, ha! You kids don't know what OLD is!

Interactive Fiction. Infocom and the original Colossal Cave. Oh yeah! Text only and GREAT. Games where the story was the main point, instead of thrown in as an after thought. You can download some of the old classics for free now, like
Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure

The second generation of Interactive Fiction went beyond text and included primitive 2D graphics, but story was still the main point. The "Monkey Island" series is a good example of these. Sword Fights by insults, wow! Talk about creative! Good game.

THEN we have the Grandaddy of all Role Playing Games. Rouge, NetHack, and all of it's descendants. The graphics are text (although you can now play with a very simple tile based gui), your hero is represented by @, a lower case "a" is probably a giant ant, and upper case "A" is a carnivorous ape, and trust me, you want to avoid the upper case "D" dragons as much as possible, unless you can tame one and make it into a pet. Yes, you can do that. Don't let the primitive graphics fool you, NetHack has to be the most complex RPG's ever created. Touch or look at a cockatrice and you will turn to stone, but you can wear a blindfold as a defense. IF you can kill the deadly beast, pick it up and wield it as a weapon! But you better put on some gloves first. And be careful not to fall into a pit while carrying the deadly creature or it might fall on you and turn YOU into stone. The developers think of EVERYTHING. Got an interesting potion, dip your weapon into it and see what happens. Don't eat dead leprachauns, you might get teleportitis! (unless you have a ring of teleport control, then it's kinda nice!) You can download NetHack or my favorite variation, SLASHEM (It's nethack with more, uhm, nethack!) absolutely free.

Now thats some OLD games, but really GOOD games.

[Sirius]

haha

Never actually played the truly ancient ones (some C64 stuff dating back into the mid-80s, Alleycat of which I think was the oldest) but I've heard a fair amount of them. Diablo drew significantly on things first realised in Rogue, and NetHack was possibly one of the things that gave rise to MUDs in the early 90s...

[Testiculese]

Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, and Lemmings for PC. A few on the various emulators.

[TIGERassault]

Lemmings, Prince of Persia, and Risky Woods are the games I grew up with.

Actually, I still have those games and computer (PS2). Somewhere in my attic.

[Duper]

Old, ha! You kids don't know what OLD is!

lol. I was playing Pong and first Gen Atari console when I was 11. ...before PC's existed. In the strictest sense -personal computers-, not comercial mainframes.

[Kyouryuu]

I have plenty of old games, but perhaps the only ones I play with any continued regularity are the Super Mario Bros. series and Mega Man. I don't care what anyone says - Mega Man 3 is a gaming masterpiece.

[mzero]

I played duke nukem and descent on family lan, with my children, one pc windows 3.1 and the other windows 95.

[Sapphire Wolf]

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenearies (got it covered, more info here

YAY! Hopefully it will work for me.

[clanner]Did you remember to set the compatibility mode to Win95, quiaff?[/clanner]

Note:
Quiaff is one of the Clan(Battletech) words that are used at the end of rhetorical question if an affirmative answer(Aff) is expected. As for quineg(also a clan word), it is used at the end of rhetorical questions if a negative answer(Neg) is expected.

[grizz]

Old, ha! You kids don't know what OLD is!

lol. I was playing Pong and first Gen Atari console when I was 11. ...before PC's existed. In the strictest sense -personal computers-, not comercial mainframes.

Pong came out when I was a teenager. People would actually quit playing foosball to play it, it was so unique, high tech, and exciting!!!

[Duper]

and burn a nice image in your $1200 CurtusMathus TV.

[Gekko71]

Old, ha! You kids don't know what OLD is!

lol. I was playing Pong and first Gen Atari console when I was 11. ...before PC's existed. In the strictest sense -personal computers-, not comercial mainframes.

Pong came out when I was a teenager. People would actually quit playing foosball to play it, it was so unique, high tech, and exciting!!!

Ohh - you've got me going now!

I remember Pong very well - I was eight years old and it came out on it's own console that played eight games (pong, hocky, table tennis, that sh**y game where you bounced a pixel against a wall of bricks which I alwasy sucked at, and a few others I don't remember). The one we got also had a light gun that you could use for target practice shooting at a large bouncing pixel (I sucked at this - then again so did the gun!) ...this was on a B&W TV too mind you!

Then it was Space Invaders, Galaxian, Asteroids and numerous stupid vector-based games - all played on a table-top arcade machine down at our local pizza joint - HEAPS of fun!

Then Pac Man came out of course...and a few years later the "staggering" (at the time) advancement of Dragon Quest (still the longest line of 20 cent pieces I've ever seen - all from people waiting to play that game!)

And remember all those crappy Apple II, TRS 80 and Vic 20 games? (VIC 20 - a computer with 20K of RAM for F***K's sake )

I still remember coding basic games and screen savers using block pixels and spryte commands into the Amiga 128s at school ...god - compare that stuff to WoW or UT or the Quake series (or Descent for that matter!)

My favourite video game (as a kid) though was this crappy little hand-held space invaders knockoff I got when I was 9. I'd swear the thing had VALVES for crying out loud - either that or realy lousy transistors - cause it chewed though the batteries and overheated if I played for more than two hours. It didn't have pixels, it had little coloured lights that lit up underneath a piece of black plastic that had the shapes of the space invaders die-cut into it.

...oh man that stuff takes me back! Crappy technology - but huge nostalga ...and great fun!

[Sedwick]

Some favorites, by category:

Console:
F-Zero (SNES) -- LOVED playing this at my friend's house. Even decorated a bulletin board (8th grade art project) in an F-Zero theme (\"Challenge is the fuel that drives the winner\"). Got Maximum Velocity for the GBA in 2002, became nostalgic, bought a SNES so I could beat every league on Difficult, Knight in Master.

Computer:
Digger -- fun/addictive Digdug knock-off bundled with my Amstrad 8086 in '87. Got to level...10?
Alleycat -- also came with Amstrad. Recently played a game and got up to 9,999,999 points and 9 lives, level who-knows-what. Even with that progress, the kittens didn't completely fill the screen (do they at any point? Does it stop at level 256?)
SimCity -- Amstrad couldn't run this, so I actually booked time at the library to play it. My cities always burned up, like the fire department was inept or something.
DX-Ball -- did this come out before '98?

Arcade:
Paperboy -- played this every chance I got, especially after bowling. Got the PC version, which I could never copy and ran on my Amstrad in CGA in 4 colors at 4 FPS.
Roadblasters -- never could destroy the purple cars or master the cruise missile.
Assault -- TWO sticks for firing and moving a tank in different ways? Count me in! Probably the last video game machine that that Pizza Hut had.
Terminator 2 -- beat it in August of '97 on <$5. Bought it and brought it home August 29th, 2004. Need to restore original rocket launcher buttons (someone replaced them with bowling alley reset buttons. Owwie!).

[Lothar]

Kilarin lied to you.

The Nethack 'trice doesn't stone you with its gaze. It's only by touch or by hissing. (Though it may be different in SLASH'EM.)

As for other old-school fun games:
- the DooM series
- Commander Keen series
- Monster Bash
- Tetris

[Testiculese]

I can't play Doom anymore, no slide keys. Same with Wolfenstein. I don't know how I was any good at them before. Probably always fighting in reverse or something.

[Kilarin]

The Nethack 'trice doesn't stone you with its gaze. It's only by touch or by hissing. (Though it may be different in SLASH'EM.)

Nope, SLASH'EM's cockatrice works the same as Nethack as far as I can tell. I was just wrong. Sheesh, THAT'S never happened before.

BUT, thats one of the really cool things about NetHack and it's variants. They are so rich and complex that there are LOTS of details to forget!

Diablo drew significantly on things first realised in Rogue, and NetHack was possibly one of the things that gave rise to MUDs in the early 90s.

Yep, it was the grandaddy of all Computer Role Playing Games.

I was playing Pong and first Gen Atari console when I was 11. ...before PC's existed. In the strictest sense -personal computers-, not comercial mainframes.

yeah, I saw my first Personal Computer when I was in 9th grade. The school purchased a TRS-80 Model I level I. We had a grand total of... wait for it... 4K of ram!!!!!! Indeed, I learned to program in 4k of ram. It's amazing how much you can do in a tensy tinsy space if you program compactly. Wrote a primitive video game right off, of course.

Funny thing was, when I asked my teacher if we could get the computer expanded to 16K, he laughed and said he couldn't imagine that anyone would ever have any use for that much memory in a computer. His grandson is going to the same school as my kid, so I saw him at a school program a few months ago. I almost asked him if he still thought 4K should be enough ram for anyone...

[Lothar]

I can't play Doom anymore, no slide keys. Same with Wolfenstein.

Wolfenstein never had them (except for alt-arrow), but DooM and DooMII both have dedicated slide keys. You may just have to edit the config file.

[CDN_Merlin]

Speaking of TRS-80, I used to play a game called Shenannigans on it.

[Gekko71]

yeah, I saw my first Personal Computer when I was in 9th grade. The school purchased a TRS-80 Model I level I. We had a grand total of... wait for it... 4K of ram!!!!!! Indeed, I learned to program in 4k of ram. It's amazing how much you can do in a tensy tinsy space if you program compactly. Wrote a primitive video game right off, of course.

Thanks for that link Kilarin - it brought back huge memories from school. Those TRS 80 (Or "Trash 80s" as we called them) error messages still crack me up: "What?" "How?" and "Sorry!"

[AceCombat]

PC
Wolfenstien 3d
Doom
Doom II
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Duke 3D

NES

SMB3
SMB

[Kilarin]

Those TRS 80 (Or "Trash 80s" as we called them) error messages still crack me up: "What?" "How?" and "Sorry!"

Ha! Yep. I've STILL got my "Getting Started with Color Basic" manual that came with my TRS-80 Color Computer.. The first computer I ever owned. I loved that little computer. And that was a GOOD book on learning how to program!

Heck, now that I think about it, that Color Computer is still packed up in a box out in my shed somewhere. It probably still works. In a few more years the problem in booting it up would be finding a working TV set that it could hook into.

[Wishmaster]

I haven't played many of these games .... I was 7 or 8 when most of them were released.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows

One of my favorites. You can't beat \"Harold's Death Emporium: The Only Shop for the Discerning Mercenary\".

[TIGERassault]

I have plenty of old games, but perhaps the only ones I play with any continued regularity are the Super Mario Bros. series and Mega Man. I don't care what anyone says - Mega Man 3 is a gaming masterpiece.

Nah, the old MegaMan games were too hard for me.

[Dakatsu]

I haven't played many of these games .... I was 7 or 8 when most of them were released.

Talking about LAME excuse, I was four when I played my first computer game! (C&C Red Alert)

And I know why I never got Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries to work, my disc is scratched the ★■◆● up!

[Wishmaster]

I wasn't allowed to play most of these titles at that age ... too violent. Somehow that never applied to Descent so much, as long as it was my dad I asked and not my mom.

[CDN_Merlin]

All I had growing up was the old Pong, Atari console with the tank game and as a teen I had Coleco.

[AceCombat]

I have plenty of old games, but perhaps the only ones I play with any continued regularity are the Super Mario Bros. series and Mega Man. I don't care what anyone says - Mega Man 3 is a gaming masterpiece.

Nah, the old MegaMan games were too hard for me.

OMG! MegaMan3 was da shiznit! MetalMan you had to have at least 2 Energy Barrels available just to beat that mofo!

[Sedwick]

I actually have Mega Man II on 5.25\" floppies that I played on the Amstrad. In 4 colors at 1 frame a second!

[Nergen-Ak1-Defender]

Playstation:

Rollcage (I love the soundtrack on that game)
DDR Konamix
Descent
other stuff
crash bandicoot 2
oddworld: abes odyssey
cool boarders 2
demos


PC:
Descent 1 and 2 the definitive collection
Descent 3 and mercenary (a year over, so what)
Unreal Gold
half life