Which Classic Games Have Aged Well?

thesp writes "We're all waiting for the releases of the next great games (naming no names) which have been mentioned over and over again here on Slashdot. No doubt they will look gorgeous and even be playable on not-too-unreasonable hardware. But there are some games that have an inherent capability to expand to take advantage of higher resolutions and improved rendering as the technology progressed. Would Slashdot like to suggest other titles that, although consigned to multipacks and bargain bins, have aged well and are even more beautiful in their old age, on modern systems, than they ever could be at the time of their release?" This may be subtly different to titles with "Olympian system requirements" at time of release, a category that definitely includes Ultima IX.

Don't know if this is specifically, PC...

[Alkaiser]

But, I'm just revisiting Front Mission 3 to go through the 2nd path...that's still a damn good game.

Quake 3 Arena

[Ayanami Rei]

5 years proudly benchmarking 3D accelerators and CPUs. I'd say it's had a pretty good run.

Re:Quake 3 Arena

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yes, and being a damn good (if not the very best) deathmatch game currently available.

Actually, all of id Software's games have aged quite well. I still play all of the from time to time.

Re:Quake 3 Arena

[PaleGreen]

Quake III Arena gets better with age. I especially love the "Team Arena" variant. It ran nicely on my old system, but it's really impressive on modern hardware.

Get them both in the "Quake III Gold" edition. The best "twitch" game ever!

Re:Indeed.

[rufo]

Mmm.. Q3 DM...

Drop me a line via e-mail. I don't play as often as I used to but I still love it and am pretty good at it whenever I do happen to play it. :-)

Re:Quake 3 Arena

[sqrt(2)]

I think it's time we retire it for benchmarking, and start using Doom3.

Re:Quake 3 Arena

[Lisandro]

Quake 3 is not only as fun today as it was when it first came of, it also looks *gorgeous* and runs smoothly on almost any system you might come across today. Can't say that about most classics...

Quake 2, baby

[RevAaron]

Some people think I'm a weirdo, but at LAN parties, I still like to play Q2. It's the lowest common denominator. But at the same time, when you crank up the res and play it on a fast video card, it looks nice, as nice as Quake 3. Now, maybe people snigger at that, but I Q3 and UT are about the best my old PC or iBook will play. :P

Re:Quake 2, baby

[drinkypoo]

I personally feel that Quake 1 is a better play than Quake 2. Aside from the factor of running on less hardware, which is pretty much irrelevant today as most people's kids have already outgrown and thrown away a PC that would run Q2, it just has more and cooler mods for it. Plus, since it DOES run on less hardware, you can pretty much always play it at the maximum resolution of your monitor :)

Re:Quake 2, baby

[AKAImBatman]

It doesn't matter if it's Quake or Quake II. They're both good, as long as they can run Star Trek: The Quake Simulation [planetquake.com]! My wife and I used to spend a lot of time Deathmatching in that level. Batleths, phasers, warp core ejection, transporters, shuttle bay, sickbay, hyposprays, quad damage, personal cloak, etc. That level had EVERYTHING! :-)

Age of Empires 2

[omibus]

Still one of the best, I still play it. Often.

Actually, this was the first game I was able to get my wife to play.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[PeteyG]

Great game! Better than Civ3 in a few ways. Light hardware requirements, still looks good, incredibly good game.

Plus there's a Linux version floating around.

Re:Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[Reducer2001]

Amen to that. I recently reinstalled SMAC and SMACX. There is a patch available from Firaxis to make them more compatible with Win2k/XP. Nothing like sitting down at 6:00 PM on a Saturday evening and then getting up at 2:00 AM with a numb butt wondering what the hell happened?!

Re:Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[cephyn]

I agree. I can only hope that Civ4 incorporates the best parts of SMAC that were totally overlooked when making Civ3.

The new classics

[Syncdata]

Alpha centauri, on my p1.6, at 1280x1024 is immensely satisfying.

I'd also like to throw a vote to FreeSpace2, which I just re-installed, and my 9600 just toasts that game. With all details on, this game is still beautiful.

Other games I make a point to re-install after hardware updates are NHL2002, which will forever hold a spot in my heart, and if I can get slightly on the shady side of legality here, re-playing various N64 games via Project64, and ps1 Final Fantasys through PSXemu has been quite rewardi

Re:The new classics

[g051051]

Driver does work on XP. I've never been able to get past the qulifying mission, so I can't tell if there's a later crash bug, but it seems to work fine, and looks great as well.

Re:Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[Colazar]

Yet another ditto to this. IMO opinion, SMAC is the high point of the Civilization series.

And to add something new to the thread, for Mac players, there is a never-quite-finalized OS X version of the game floating out there that Brad Oliver (he who did the Mac port) put together. I think I tracked it down over at Macgamer.com, but a little googling and you can find it in about 5 minutes. There are only two bugs I've found with it (or that anyone else mentioned). One is that the movies associated with Wonde

Re:Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[jspoon]

I always found Alpha Centauri to be a disappointment compared to Civ2. That and I got ticked off when they released a book based off of it, seeing how the game was based off a book to begin with

I read one of them. The story was a complete rip off of the Iliad.

Half-Life 1

[Pvt_Waldo]

"Ancient" engine - still top of the charts. Has gotten better and better over the years.

Re:Half-Life 1

[CoffeeJedi]

did he say Counter Strike? no... CS is now so far removed from HL that they're no longer considered the same thing, sheesh

the original HL had a gripping intense story that kept you in suspense, intelligent AI, and an unbelievably real, yet "unreal" environment that sucked you into the world of the game

i'd almost be afraid to play if they remade Half Life with modern graphics and sounds, i practically had to sleep with the lights on while playing it the first time!

Some Old Games They Oughta Remake

[kevinmf]

Three game series' that were great back in their hey day were the Sonic the Hedgehog Series (sega / dreamcast. saturn kind of sucked), Mario (nes / snes / 64 / gc. all good ), and can't forget about Donkey Kong Country.

Whatever happened to Rare, makers of DKC? I think it'd be awesome if someone came out with a really good remake of some of these classic games. Maybe I'm wrong and the classic days of 2-D games is gone forever, but I hate to see these classic characters die off.

I'd love to see these

Re:Some Old Games They Oughta Remake

[Gothic_Walrus]

You're not quite on top of the modern gaming scene, are you? :)

Rare was bought by Microsoft [slashdot.org] about a year ago. As far as I know, the only XBox game they've released so far is Grabbed by the Ghoulies, although they've got a few more titles in development.

There is a remake of Donkey Kong Country [gamefaqs.com] for the GBA, and a version of DKC2 [gamefaqs.com] is in the works.

All three of the franchises mentioned are still going strong - there's a Donkey Kong platformer [gamefaqs.com] of sorts in the works for the GameCube, and Mario [gamefaqs.com] and Sonic [gamefaqs.com] are

Tempest

[klui]

My favorite game is still Tempest. There are some others that have come close like Test Drive: Le Mans on the Dreamcast.

Tempest, Tempest 2000, Tempest 3000

[bee]

Yay, Tempest. Don't forget Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar and Tempest 3000 on Nuon.

Re:Tempest, Tempest 2000, Tempest 3000

[klui]

I have seen Tempest 2000, but all these other variations as well as other cabinets don't have the feel of the original. It's probably due to my old age, too.

When I first saw a Tempest machine in the early 1980s, it was broken. I was intrigued by the black, uniquely wedge-shaped, unpowered cabinet. As I went home, I thought about how the game would look, given the simple controls and cool side panel graphics. I had spent a lot of money on that very same cabinet years down the road. One day, many many years

Re:Tempest, Tempest 2000, Tempest 3000

[El_Smack]

Get a 6 dollar "cap kit" from www.therealbobroberts.com, get out the soldering iron and replace them. If it's your first kit, it'll take 2 hours and then you'll be playing Tempest again, they way it should be played. Vector games on raster monitors make baby Jesus cry.

Paradroid

[necronom426]

I still think Paradroid on the C64 is a good game. When Paradroid '90 came out on the Amiga I still liked it, and if Andy made a PC version now I think I would still like it. It would probably be a third person type view nowadays.

Top three of all time:

[bobv-pillars-net]

Solitaire. Minesweeper. Tetris.

Nethack

[wandazulu]

Say what you will, I've played this game off and on for ten years and it's still lots of fun.

What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"; because all the levels are randomly generated it's always fresh and new as if playing for the first time.

Re:Nethack

[Carnildo]

And if you've got a newfangled video card, it actually has a tile-based graphical interface!

Re:Nethack

[DLWormwood]

What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"

Personally, I think most of the posters to this topic have missed the point of the original question. It's not "old games that still play well," but "games that play better on modern hardware."

That said, some client software for the various Roguelikes have employed incremental improvements over the years. My Angband client supports multiple term windows to outload display of information like monster memories and inventory; something hard to do on the original text terminals that the genre was played on. Also, I'm using a graphical tile set that gives the dungeon and monsters a basic 8-bit console game look. It beats pounding on "D's" and "P's" with my trusty Lead Filled Mace. (-; I've even seen clients providing sound effects now.

Re:Nethack

[TykeClone]

I like angband over nethack too.

Freespace 1&2

[Engradius]

Both excellent space shooters with ace intro sequences, great graphics and HUGE ships.

Re:Freespace 1&2

[Bodhammer]

The Freespace source code was released by Volition. You can read some information and links to downloads and projects here: http://fs2source.warpcore.org/

Also, there is a project that allows the FS1 game to be played with the FS2 engine, details here: http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/fsport/

FS2 is a great game!

All of the games that id released the source for

[foidulus]

People are still doing some interesting things with Doom/Doom II and Quake. Since they are open source they can adapt when new technologies come out. Plus the whole map/mod community has done a lot of interesting things with them.

'Craft all the way

[xanderwilson]

Maybe it's because they're about the only computer games I still have (or maybe they're the only ones I still have because I enjoy them over and over), but I can keep going back to Starcraft and Warcraft II when I need a gaming fix.

Even the campaign games are fun again after a year or so away from the game.

Alex.

Re:'Craft all the way

[hsoft]

I should have mentioned Starcraft in my other post...

Am I the only one to think that the story, and especially the "between-levels" dialogs are pretty cool? Especially the dialog just before the final level in the original SC. "My life for Aiur."

Re:'Craft all the way

[matt_wilts]

I agree: the only thing that stops me playing Warcraft more is the fact that I can't get it to work on an IP-based network - the networking is all IPX-based. Anyone know of a way to get around this? It's a common problem, early Delta Force releases (certainly up to Land Warrior) need IPX too.

Matt

Re:'Craft all the way

[Hallow]

There's a product called Kali [kali.net] for Windows that tunnels IPX over TCP/IP, worked pretty good years ago, and apparently still has a following.

Once upon a time I even got WarCraft II running in dosemu using Kali's DOS IPXTCP/IP stack.

Yes!!

[Bonewalker]

Starcraft and Warcraft II are the best games ever made. Half-Life is a close second.

I can still go back and play any of these and have the same amount of fun and interest. Talk about replayability...Starcraft came out in 1998!

Chrono Trigger

[bretharder]

Still awesome.
Thank God for emulators!

Re:Chrono Trigger

[szyzyg]

And the Final Fantasy Chronicles release with some extra cutscenes is worth picking up if you can find it.

Re:Chrono Trigger

[lightspawn]

And the Final Fantasy Chronicles release with some extra cutscenes is worth picking up if you can find it.

But the horrible load times on the Playstation version makes it almost unplayable for those of us who remember the SNES version. The original game has aged better than the remake.

Re:Chrono Trigger

[ElForesto]

Some crazy fans are doing a 3D remake [opcoder.com] of the game.

Me personally

[NanoGator]

I'm still playing "make sound work in KDE"!

Still on the hard drive...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

and still played:

• Total Annihilation with Core Contingency
• Starcraft with Brood Wars
• Age of Empires 2
• MS Combat Flight Sim 2
• Alpha Centauri
• Populous
• Railroad Tycoon
• Lemmings
• MAME with Xevious and Marble Madness

Re:Still on the hard drive...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I usually just use the cursor keys. My trackball works OK, but than acts very wierd after exiting MAME unless I reboot. I googled up some fanatic's page about setting up a dual trackball system, but it's obviously only for fanatics. One of the frustrations of the original standup console was that the controls weren't very precise, at least for me, but I never claimed to be very good at it, I just like the graphics and the music. Xevious, I was good at. Still am.

Those Damned Lemmings!!!

[rueger]

They simply cannot be beat, especially the special Christmas version with bouncing Santa hats....

Lemmings [geocities.com]
3D lemmings [gamespot.com]
DHTML Lemmings [193.151.73.87]

Re:Those Damned Lemmings!!!

[BigZaphod]

Oh dear LORD I loved Lemmings! I spent so many hours when I was younger trying to figure the puzzles that I dare not try to calculate it. Its so simple and hard at the same time. It just has all the right elements. I even worked on my own Lemmings clone for awhile. :-)

Re:Those Damned Lemmings!!!

[joeljkp]

Haha, yeah, I have More Lemmings, Christmas Lemmings, and 3D Lemmings laying around here somewhere. The first two are on semi-corrupted 3.5" floppies, though.

Out of this World and others

[tsm_sf]

Out of this World [the-underdogs.org] still knocks my socks off.

For classic Ultima3-5 style play, you can't beat the Avernum trilogy [avernum.com]. Coherent plotline(I'm looking at you, British), cool quests, gigantic world to explore. All done with an interface that will have you cursing your emulated dos box.

Btw, the Home of the Underdogs [the-underdogs.org] has all the old games.

Classic Coin Ops

[vasqzr]

Ms. PacMan, Dig Dug, Galaga, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Centipede.

A lot of the old Coin-ops were bad, and the sequels of good ones (Super Pacman, Dig Dug 2, etc) were pretty bad too. But a few of them never get old. I can't help but play a classic when I find one at a bar or restaraunt. As long as it's not a hacked version, or someone decided to set the DIP switches to things I don't care for...

Let's not forget Tetris. Puzzle games never get old.

A lot of RTS games

[Judg3]

I think most RTS games have aged very well and have become more fun to play.

I have loaded on my laptop and still play:
StarCraft
Command and Conquer 2
Caesar 2
Civilization
System Shock 2(I think system shock has aged very well)

Plus a lot of others that I keep around. Low resources, so it plays on most anything (On my old laptop I used to play C&C2 a lot on the hour and forty-five minute train ride to work, and the battery would get down to half - and that's with using the CD as well).

Ultima 7 / 7.5

[Randolpho]

I just finished replaying both Ultima 7 and Ultima 7.5 on my much more modern machine, thanks to Exult [sourceforge.net].

I'd say the Ultima series has aged very well. I had a blast replaying the game, and I was more immersed than I've been in a long time.

As for immersion... I'd have to give kudos to the Civ series... I still replay Civ II all the time, but Civ III has me so hooked my wife is ready to divorce me.

The Oldies but Goodies

[prezkennedy.org]

I personally like several older games... but oftentimes don't have the time to play them anymore since work and school have taken over most of my time.

- Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire is still one of my all time favorites
- Total Annihilation with Core Contingency and Battle Tactics has a reserved place on my hard drive. Finding this game is a bit difficult, and the Commander's Pack can go for $70 bucks or more!
- SimCity 2000 is my obligatory SimCity love
- Transport Tycoon Deluxe enhanced with the unofficia

TIME PILOT!

[mrwiz]

Time pilot has to be one of the best shooters out there. Easy to learn, strangely addictive, with great control. It's MAME's killer app baby!!!

Slappin' the Imps

[dvicci]

Dungeon Keeper II ('99 - Bullfrog). The graphics have really stood the test of time, in part, if not in full, b/c they didn't try to go realistic. The game-play is fun (and actually quite funny), though there are some compatibility issues. I can still hear the sound the little imps made when you slapped them around... to say nothing of the Dark Mistress. It doesn't require epic level hardware to run, either. I've heard Startopia is a good member of the DK/DKII tradition, though I've never played it.

Ba

Re:Slappin' the Imps

[Omestes]

Get the direct 3D patch for DK2... It is sweet!

System Shock !!!

[LordPixie]

I saw only *one* other poster mention System Shock, and that was the sequel. (Which was one of the best games ever created) The original was released the same year as DoomII and the original Marathon. The gameplay is similar to Marathon, but IMO a bit more in depth. What's more, the game was re-released with wonderful voice logs, which really really really add to the atmosphere.

Those of you with questionable morals might check out The Underdogs download [the-underdogs.org] to play it yourself.


--LordPixie

amen!

[MarcoAtWork]

the first system shock is heads and shoulders above the second, esp. with the voice logs (excellent voice acting). I've tried system shock 2 a few times but every single time I gave up bored a few levels in, nowhere near as immersive (or creepy) as the first.

Total Annihilation is another game that aged really well, I'd like to try SMAC but nobody seems to sell the Linux version anymore and the win32 one seems out of print as well :(

Re:System Shock !!!

[Flyboy Connor]

It's one of my favorite games of all time, but unfortunately it hasn't aged well, since it seems impossible get it to run on a Windows machine. Now where is the Exult version of System Shock?

I always wished...

[Chris Pimlott]

I always wished that someone would do a 3D-accelerated re-make of Betrayal at Krondor [the-underdogs.org], a really nice but unappreciated RPG game that Sierra put out in 1993. It's got some primitive 320x200 software rendered 3d graphics, which could look a lot nicer on modern hardware.

A great game regardless. It's based on the writings of Raymond Feist, who was highly involved in the game design, so it's a got a very rich game world and storyline. Aside from the main story you can just travel around and explore, lots of non-essential side quests and fun things to do. And it was released for free by Sierra awhile ago, so you don't have to feel guilty about downloading it :)

My picks

[travail_jgd]

Unreal Tournament -- It runs on what's now "low end" PCs, and has a better "feel" that UT 2003 (IMHO). Single player with bots just as enjoyable as multiplayer. And there's tons of maps and mods out there.

Civ 2 -- I had my girlfriend addicted to it. With the low hardware requirements, it'll run well under VMWare. Multiplayer support isn't great compared to modern games, but it's adequate.

Planescape:Torment -- I got it out of the bargain bin years after it had been released. Even after playing Baldur's Gat

Re:My picks

[joeljkp]

I second UT. Plays on Linux, and still as enjoyable as day 1.

Redneck rampage

[hal2814]

I dusted Redneck Rampage off the other day. I forgot how fun it was. I can even play at full resolution now. Lester T Hobbes was the funniest boss character I've ever seen in a game. I couldn't beat him the first time around becasue I was too busy laughing at his "I am the law, Lester T Hobbes!" and "Don't shoot at me while I'm loading my guns!" Now if I can only find my cuss pack... "F#$% you and the horse you rode in on!"

I'm also still very happy playing my favorite FPS, Rise of the Triad. Non-FPS

Jumbo Deluxe Forgotten Classics List With Power

[MilenCent]

Here I am trying to avoid blabbing off about old video and computer games, trying my best not to look like a total geek, and then Slashdot goes and posts a story that there's no way in hell I can avoid replying to, practically begging me to waste half an hour talking about all the great, old, forgotten games that litter our flea markets and clog up eBay search results.

Aren't the answers to this one obvious by now? Let's get this over with as quickly as possible. I'll just hit the highlights, honest. I'll even leave out the obvious answers (Zeldas, Metroids, Marios and Sonics)

Rampart
The emulated version in Midway Arcade Treasures is best if you don't have an actual arcade machine. The SNES version, while different in lots of ways, is also great, as is the PC version (available on Home of the Underdogs).

M.U.L.E.
How many times have I talked my fool mouth off about this thing? It's just the best multiplayer computer game of all time, period. If you have enough mojo you can even play it, with four players, full-speed on an unmodded Dreamcast... or an Atari 800, if anyone remembers that far back.

Nethack and Rogue
I'm not trying to karma-whore I swear, despite the fact that almost any Nethack-related story is sure to make Slashdot's front page. These days Nethack seems to not qualify for "forgotten" status as much as previously. But lately I've come to a new level of appreciation for Rogue, which continues to surprise me with how much fun I have playing it, after almost twenty years, despite its tremendous difficulty. I finally had my first "winner" game last week! Rogue is starting to edge out Nethack in my estimation.

Some quickies (in case you're at a flea market and want to separate the chaff from the wheat, remember folks downloading ROMs is evil and wrong. Evil and wrong! You don't want to be evil and wrong... do you?):
Overlooked NES games: The Adventures of Lolo I-III, Air Fortress, Blaster Master, Bomberman II, Cobra Triangle, Goonies, The Guardian Legend, Rare's pinball emulations: High Speed and Pinbot, Life Force, R.C. Pro Am, Solar Jetman, Solomon's Key, Wizards & Warriors (the first one, not the sequels) and last, but NOT least by any means, ZANAC.

Overlooked SNES: ActRaiser, EarthBound, King Arthur's World, Kirby Superstar, Kirby's Dream Course, Spindizzy Worlds, Ogre Battle (yes, I consider it overlooked), Q*Bert 3 (awesome music, arguably better than the arcade game), and Uniracers.

Overlooked Genesis: Flicky, General Chaos, Herzog Zwei, Kid Chameleon, King's Bounty (woefully under appreciated), Junction, Starflight (the game's much more accessable on the Genesis than PC), the Thunderforce series, ToeJam & Earl (!), Todd's Adventures in Slime World (better on the Lynx with eight players, but honestly, who knows either people all with Lynxes and copies of the same game these days?), Zany Golf and Zoom (both these last ones originally for the Amiga).

Re:Jumbo Deluxe Forgotten Classics List With Power

[cmowire]

From my nobody-knows-about-it list:* EOS -- Before SimCity came out, there was EOS. Your job, as a player, is to shape the space program to build space stations, colonies, moon bases, etc. (Apple II series is all I've ever heard of it being for)
* Neuromancer -- Back when they were going to make a movie for Neuromancer (but before Gibson realized that one shouldn't sell movie rights to a pair of cabana boys) they made a tie-in game. Doesn't really feel like the book and is, in a real sense, a little too fu

Re:Jumbo Deluxe Forgotten Classics List With Power

[Omestes]

Oh yeah, QIX, I think I wasted most of my youth sitting in front of my C64 cussing at the damn squiggly thing. Simple, yet confounding. You know if there are any ports/clones of this floating around?

Tradewars, definately! Don't forget LoRD, though. One of my local BBSs had EVERY module for LoRD, it was happy days.

And of course MULE, the other game that kept me chained to the C64, refusing to upgrade to a real PC, until I learned that it was on the NES. The NES version always seemed to lack something

Elite

[pyrotic]

Elite [clara.net]is the grandaddy of them all. It's a 3D 1st person space flight sim/trading game where you can go from pirate to slave trader to bounty hunter to rock miner and back. There are 8 galaxies, each with several hundered solar systems to explore. The sheer variety of ships and missions is amazing - from destroying stolen military ships, to capturing Thargoid alien attack craft, saving refugees from supernovas, evading police, docking with space stations, clearing asteroid belts, skimming suns for fuel, mal

Shocking!

[TheSwink]

...that no one's mentioned X-com!

X-com: UFO Defense

Every game designer (and gamer, for that matter) worth his salt should know and love it. An old blab on it:

X-com is essentially a simulation that asks a simple question, a perfect question to build a game around: what would the practicalities of defending the Earth from alien invasion be? The beauty is that it's not trying to build a game around a story, a fundamentally linear endeavor, but that it uses invasion only as a metaphor for a deeply engaging simulation. Every part of the game is relevant to every other part, and all of them are self-canonizing. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

X-com is comprised of three parts, each one of which could have been a game in and of itself: research/base management/building, UFO incursion management (receiving funds from each country based on how well you protect it), and the excellent 3rd person tactical combat (in fact, 'Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate' is an entire game based on the X-com combat system.) The genius of X-com is that all three of these systems are keenly interrelated. You must shoot down UFOs in order to have access to technology to research at your bases, which then provides you better means to shoot down UFOs and better weapons for dealing with alien landings, and so forth. Both of these systems, the base and the salvage/ground assault, require large amounts of money to maintain and operate, which is provided primarily by funds allocated by the various countries of the world. If you allow UFOs to go unchecked and unchallenged in a country, that country will pull funding.

So you have this gardening aspect; you have to choose where to plant X-com bases, find the most 'fertile' soil (the countries that provide the most income) and if your base grows you can reap the fruit. Then you try to choose the next most fertile place for your next base, or you can use the game's graphs of alien activity to try and find an area that is overgrown with weeds (aliens), and till it and make it grow. If you leave an area untended, the weeds will invade other parts of your garden and you'll be overgrown and lose.

Another exemplary aspect of X-com is the character system. The characters, by being visually generic and using randomly generated names, present themselves as blank emotional canvases to the player. Much like The Sims, to play the game is to wield the brush; the character's actions in the game become their personality and therefore are far more powerful than any preconceived story could be. The game is the story. I still recall with great sadness the moment when Shigeo Akira, my most seasoned veteran commander, was gunned-down from behind by a lowly Sectoid soldier. In my opinion, there's no higher aim than the kind of emotional involvement I've had with some of my X-Com soldiers.

I'd heartily recommend X-Com to anyone, especially game designers. It's one of the greatest games ever created. I still can't believe they managed to make so many seemingly complex and disparate parts sing together in such perfect harmony. I'm floored by it each time I play.

Swink

Re:Shocking!

[Xentax]

I agree, X-Com1 rocked. I'll concede that the original release didn't age well *technically* - try to get it running on XP - but the "Gold" release alleviated that.

As far as the gameplay and replayability itself, XCOM is my hands-down favorite.

I play UFO:AM instead, sometimes, because the geoscape mode is much prettier and the paused realtime is a great compromise between turn-based and realtime (sort of like Baldur's Gate). It's more fun in some ways, less in others (like, you can't design your bases, or

Re:Shocking!

[idontgno]

Man, you must have wasted more hours saving the world from alien invasion than I did. The game truly does rock, and I still play it sometimes today. (On an older system; newer hardware makes a hash of the graphics, not to mention timing loops for animation.)

Yes, it is easy to get emotionally invested in a successful soldier or team, but you learn to suck it up when your desperate bid to rescue Rio De Janeiro turns into your first brutal lesson about Chrysalids. (Damn Chrysalids.) 100% team kill, almost ever

Xcom on modern hardware...

[TheSwink]

To get Xcom running on modern hardware: http://www.xcomufo.com/x1faq.html/ [xcomufo.com]

Delta Force

[mmortal03]

I remember the original Delta Force game from NovaLogic to be extremely sluggish on the current hardware of it's day; iirc, it's engine wasn't fully 3D accelerated. I'd like to know how it would manage on the latest and greatest hardware today.

I'm sure there are other games similar to this that were resource hogs during their day that would be interesting to hear about how they fare on hardware now.

Robotron

[bee]

For my money, there's no more intense game out there to this day than Robotron. And, I have real joysticks for my PSX so I can play Robotron for real! (Thumbpads do not cut it.)

Master of Orion ][

[BanzaiBill]

Master of Orion 2 is absolutely one of the best games of all time. The playability is awesome, and it still looks OK, even after 8 years. It came out in 1996, I think. It wouldn't play under Win2K, but I kept a dual boot of 98 around just for MOO2.

Happily, it plays GREAT under XP. Killer game. I mean, you can blow up planets! Still on the HDD after all these years. You can still pick up a copy in the bargain bins for about $10-15.

Don't confuse MOO2 with Master of Orion 3! WORST Sequel EVER! MOO3 was so bad I deleted the cracked version off of my drive! Free is too much for that one.

Obligatory Galciv reference...

[Dehumanizer]

... when someone mentions MOO3. Have you seen Galactic Civilizations [galciv.com]? :)

my votes go to...

[bechthros]

From the new school:
Simcity 4
Civ 3
Mechwarrior 4
Sims whatever

but the best video game ever was by far.... JUMPMAN.

The original Adventure

[ipb]

I just recently introduced my 10 year old niece to the old original Adventure game. Now every time I visit I have to set my laptop up to let her play.

No graphics, no action, just plain brain stimulating text.

I'd forgotton how much fun it was to play

"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

Deus Ex

[veritron]

Deus Ex's system requirements were unreasonable when the game came out, but the GOTY edition on just about any modern hardware runs great - same with Morrowind, that game on highest settings can still tax a pretty strong computer.

Serious Sam and Serious Sam II don't seem to have aged at all, and run spectacularly well on modern hardware.

Your creatures are under attack!

[Omestes]

Total Annihilation is the timeless game. I've been playing it once a month since it came out. Graphics rival any RTS up until WarcraftIII or C&C:G, game play beats both since there is no resouce whoring.

Quake 3 amazed me when I got a modern graphics card, it was VERY pretty. Same for the original UT, though, with a decent modern system it pulls a good FPS, and is still very fun (without the weapon nerfs!).

Of course Civ2, which I think is superiour to Civ3, is still VERY playable.

And of course Fa

Re:Your creatures are under attack!

[hackus]

I have to agree about Total Annihilation. I love all the mods for that game.

Dungeon Keeper 2. What can I say I love to whip'em on down there in the torcher chamber...

Oh, and I love the Disco Inferno when someone hits the Jackpot or your creatures are just plain happy.

-gc

MDK2

[stungod]

This is one that didn't get enough attention when it was released ~5 years ago. It was really beautiful back then on my old P3-750 and an original 32MB Radeon. I found it in a bargain bin the other day re-released with the original MDK for $5.00.

If you're looking for a goregeous 3d platformer that will scream on today's mainstream hardware, you can't do much better. It's all OpenGL, so it's probably an easier one to get running in Linux (although I can't vouch for that myself), has a good storyline, inc

Thief 1 and 2

[g_adams27]

I only got around to playing Thief 1 and 2 a few months ago - never really thought much about them, but saw them both for about $7/each on the used shelf at EBGames and decided to give them a shot.

I had figured they would be fairly dumb sneaking-type games - rob this house, now rob this larger house with a few guards, now rob this mansion with more alert guards, etc. You know - a dumb shooter turned into a dumb stealth game.

Man was I ever wrong! Thief 1 and 2 have some of the best storylines I have e

The board game Risk

[BortQ]

The board game Risk has survived in both original and computerized forms. It's still as much fun as it was back in the day (assuming you have some good people to play with). Of course, I am a little biased, I like Risk so much that I created a videogame version of it. See my sig for details.

Age of Empires

[magic]

Or rather, Age of Kings/Conquerors Expansion is a 2D DirectX 5 game that still plays better than any other RTS, including the recent 3D RTS games. I dabbled with Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, etc. and went back to Age of Kings.

Half-Life is still one of the greatest games ever made, and the mods on that ancient are competitive with everything short of Far Cry and Doom III.

-m

Myth 2

[Colazar]

This belongs in the list of games that is still fun to play, *and* in the list of games that scaled well. It worked fine on old hardware, but looks much better on the new stuff.

It's mainly the graphics, but...

[Sarcastic Assassin]

Solitaire.

LucasArts adventures

[Flyboy Connor]

Several LucasArts adventures have aged very well: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3 (I don't mention Grim Fandango because it is too recent to say it has "aged" - but it is a brilliant game). Of course, the reason they have aged well is that nowadays the rare adventures that get produced generally suck.

Total Annihilation fits perfectly your description

[Anonymous Coward]

TA has gotten better with age, with its numerous extensions (Core contingency, Battle tactics) and 3rd party units (TAUCP, UTASP, Uberhack for instance), artificial intelligences, tools like the mutator and the replayer, etc.

It still looks pretty cool on large resolutions (1280x1024 for example), and the battles with thousands of units are even more exciting than ever.
This game makes perfect use of your proc cycles. It's a pleasure to see.

And it's the best RTS ever.

It's the inferface, stupid!

[Rayonic]

For me, the biggest thing that "ages" a game isn't the graphics or the gameplay, but rather how you control the game. A lot of old games have interfaces that are unwieldly or awkward, and directly interfere with your enjoyment of the game.

Since I can't think of any extreme examples at the moment, let's take System Shock for an example. Still a playable and highly enjoyable game (I played it for the first time last year), but you can't say that the interface is intuitive by modern standards. I mean, one

Morrowind

[InThane]

There are many other titles I would suggest that have already been covered by others - so I won't rehash them. Instead, I'll make one offering:

Morrowind.

If you have an ATI-based 3d accelerator that supports TruForm, and you download the Morrowind FPS optimizer - http://morrowind.nm.ru/Morrowind%20FPS%20Optimizer / - it looks absolutely gorgeous. Add in any of the other mods out there, and you've got a smooth, beautiful, gargantuan RPG.

I'm enjoying excellent view distances on my 9800 pro/Athlon 2500+/512mb RAM. Works like a dream.

Enchanter...

[Big Sean O]

It was 1984 and one of the guys in the dorm had a Radio Shack TRS-80. He bought the first game in the second Zork Trilogy: Enchanter.

That game taught me how to type (granted the words I learned were useless: "Frotz", "Gnusto", and "Rezrov").

Those Infocom text adventures hold up great (the H2G2 game is close to being as good as the book).

Asteroids (BTW: other posts not classic!)

[potus98]

Asteroids in the original arcade table-top version [arcadeclassics.co.uk] with pizza greased glass and Big-Gulp [7-eleven.com] rings.

BTW: Most previous posts are NOT classic games! Quake 3, Chrono Trigger, anything-64!?!? COME ON PEOPLE! Sure, "classic" is a subjective term, but can't we at least agree that classic games refer to pre-90's games!?!

Some good examples would be Megaman, Tetris, or Metroid (not Super-Metroid). If these other titles start showing up as so-called "classics" then that means I'm getting old and that just can't be! Who cares about fancy-schmancy 64-bit graphics and sound!? My 8-bit NES still kicks ass with all the latest titles. That 3-D crap is a fad and it will never look smooth!

StarCon2

[Relic of the Future]

Star Control 2. If you've played it, you know, if not, the open source re-make [sourceforge.net] is making good progress. A shame that #3 was so bad.

StarCraft

[jonwil]

I am VERY surprised that Blizzard isnt doing a Starcraft 2 on the Warcraft III engine...

Not just nostalgia -- what games RUN WELL today?

[2Flower]

Did anybody RTFA/P?

The poster was asking what games which were choppy or nasty on yesterday's hardware stand the test of time on modern hardware. You can reference Tempest or Asteroids or Chrono Trigger all you want but these games don't scale upward. They're locked on static hardware.

A lot of games of yesteryear claimed that they were designed with tomorrow's hardware in mind, that their highest quality settings with unachievable on then-modern computers. Well, have they hit that peak? For instance, I remember Shiny braggging about the millions of polys in Messiah characters, how it'd scale up. Does it?

We're going to be asking this same question once machines that are capable of running Doom 3 in "ultra" mode become commonplace.

Super Mario Kart

[rikkus-x]

The original Super Mario Kart, please. I bought a SNES recently, for playing Mario Kart and nothing else. Well worth 20 quid on eBay.

Galaga.

[Rimbo]

Still sucking away quarters in laundromats worldwide.

Re:Great games

[joeljkp]

Though remember, it's still illegal to download 'em. I asked Activision about Mech1, they confirmed it. "Saving it for a possible future compendium" they said.