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Games Entertainment

What Game Do You Love? 350

Posted by Zonk from the platonically-please dept.
It's that time of year again, when a person's fancy turns to new games. It's still nice to think of old flames, though, and eToyChest wonders about games you've loved. From the article: "In 1992 I was spending time getting my gaming legs on a then-aging 486 PC. It was loud, ugly, and far from state-of-the-art. But it could still run games off the shelf, and when a friend of mine brought over what he was calling the "best role-playing game he had played since Ultima V", I knew I had to check it out. What began that afternoon stands out as one of the most important events in my life as a game, for as I installed each of the two high density diskettes comprising Sir-Tech's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, I somehow knew that I was in for a treat. What followed were two years of swords, sorcery, and the slaying of many humanoid rats." So what game do you still remember fondly, even if you haven't played for quite a while?
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What Game Do You Love? More

What Game Do You Love?

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  • Half-Life 1 + 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tedgyz ( 515156 ) * on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:47PM (#14717769) Homepage
    Half-Life blew me away
    Half-Life 2 blew me away again

    Other worthy mentions
    M.U.L.E.
    Diablo
    Quake 1/2/3/4

    • Re:Half-Life 1 + 2 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tibike77 ( 611880 )
      Do you consider that an "oldie" ? It almost even requires hardware acceleration :P
      Half-Life, that's like... yesterday, not "good old times" :)

      Damn, I thought you'd say "Wolfenstein" or, at least, maybe "Doom"...

  • Classics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by B00yah ( 213676 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:50PM (#14717795) Homepage
    I still go back once a year and play Legend of Zelda all the way through. Earthbound and MarioRPG get at least once every two years. I still play Mario 3 pretty often. The classics will live on...

    As for modern games:
    Diablo2 and d2:LOD
    KoL [loathing2.com]
    and now, WoW
    • The ultimate classic is Nethack - I've been playing for years and keep coming back for more punishment. Still haven't ascended yet, and frankly, I don't know what will be left to achieve in life if I ever make it...
    • Yeah. Everyone seems to be hyping up these new rpg console games which take 70hrs of continuous walking around to complete, but I'm more excited about a snes controller + pc adapter from ebay for use with znes. Also, Sega has released the Sonic games on playstation on a single disc - can't wait to play the games I could never afford when I was younger.

  • obviously... (Score:3)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:51PM (#14717799) Journal
    Its the legend of zelda: occarina of time and Majora's mask

    I recently completed Occarina of time again and its as good today as it was all those years ago. Easily the best games I've ever played and truely defining moments in me growing up.
  • Nethack is another great classic. DAoC was the first MMO I got into and really enjoyed. Original Quake is still my all time favorite FPS. The Need For Speed series has always been a source of joy for me. And now I'm keeping my eyes on The Chronicle http://www.mmocenter.com/v2/ [mmocenter.com] from Rapid Reality.

    -Rick

  • FFII (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SpaceAdmiral ( 869318 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:52PM (#14717811) Homepage
    FFII for SNES (really FFIV). I was really sad when Tellah died. And I orgasmed when I found out that you got to go to the moon.

  • TIE Fighter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by XenoRyet ( 824514 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:52PM (#14717816)
    I must have played TIE Fighter for hundreds of hours, all on the crappiest of two button joysticks.

    This was of course back in the day when LucasArts made good games. If only that was still true.

    • I salute you, my felow TIE Fighter player.

    • Re:TIE Fighter (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tibike77 ( 611880 ) <tibikegamezNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:02PM (#14717964) Journal
      For X-Wing, you just *HAD* to have a joystick.
      However, I spent most of my high-school afternoons playing TIE Fighter with a mouse. It actually plays quite fine, even if it's not a Wing-Commander-like mouse control, and you end up with muscle fever after a few hours ;)

      Speaking of which, mmmmm, the Wing Commander series.... those were also nice.
      And with the mouse "displacement from center" steering method, you just don't need a joystick at all.
      Heck, I find it more enjoyable than actually having a joystick.
    • Ah, yes... I'll second that one. TIE Fighter was awesome, but I prefered the original X-Wing:

      I remember the frustration of trying to complete one mission where you had to protect a transport that was carrying some priceless cargo or something until it could jump into hyperspace. This poor thing was floating defenseless in space as wave after wave of TIE fighters came after it. You furiously dogfight, trying to draw them away, but one would always get through. It made you want to rip your hair out.

      But I kept
  • The games that I love over the years include

    Simcity, Original/2000
    Descent, All Versions
    Wolfenstein
    Zelda, all versions
    Mario, All versions
    Mario Party All Versions
    Animal Crossing
    Chibi-Robo

    Those are the ones I can name off the top of my head.

  • Games that stick out in my memory... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Da3vid ( 926771 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:54PM (#14717842)
    The games that I remember the most are the first Doom and the first Warcraft. Those were just both amazing to me at the time. I've always had a special place in my heart for Super Mario 3, but who doesn't? I went Genesis over SNES, and I had a lot of fun playing Sonic 2, but I also had tons of fun playing the first Mario Kart at my friend's house. And then, there was the hours of Goldeneye fun on the 64. Oh, and Baldur's Gate 2:, Shadows of Amn on the PC was fantastic... I was captivated by that game. All of the other rpgs in that genre are just me being nostalgic about that game. Later, there was KOTOR, which I loved... I guess those are the highlights of my gaming life. I'm currently enamoured with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. A farming rpg sounds stupid but I got it as a gift and it is terribly addicting. You either have to be embrace its time-consuming wonder or avoid it like the plague, there is no middle ground...

    -Da3vid-
  • Without a doubt. TAZ for Atari 2600. Kept me playing for 13 years on and off until I finally beat it. See, in the game manual it told you what the food item was for each level except that last one, it was a question mark. 13 years to finally see it with my own eyes, and I wasn't actually let down as with so many other games. Check it out in ROM form and with the Stella Emulator for a real treat.

    My runners up would be: Warlords, Combat, Katamari Damacy, and Donkey Konga.

  • Doom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NorbrookC ( 674063 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @01:55PM (#14717848) Journal

    Doom was the first game that really blew me away, and I still have a copy of it that I play from time to time. What made it even better was that there were a host of different maps for it, so even when you got to the point of being bored with the original, there was always something new. It's nice to see that there's still ongoing development for it.

  • Eye of the Beholder 2 (Westwood) - this was my favorite :) - the first-person environment really drew you into the game. Just remembering the intro, the medieval world, the storm approaching and the drop of water falling in a small pond on the street of Waterdeep...

    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (LucasArts - this one included a copy of Henry Jones' diary :) )
    LucasArts' Classic Adventures: Monkey Island, Loom
    Leyend of Kyrandia (Westwood)
    Flashback: Quest for Identity (Delphine)
    Lemmi
    • Yes, EOB2 is definite the best of the trilogy. I still prefer Lands of Lore, though that might be because it's actually the first game of that type I've ever played. I remember when it's 20MB install seemed awfully huge on a 110MB hard drive...

      By the way, most, if not all, of the VGA DOS games you mentioned can be played using the DOSBox emulator [sourceforge.net]. With a decent computer and proper scaling (hq2x from a DOSBox patch does wonders for games that don't have a lot of scrolling) the games keep all their game
  • 1. Shadowrun, Sega Genesis. This game had a good storyline and more "player freedom" than most of the games I'd played at this point (I was eight or nine when it came out, I think). I really liked the world it was set in, and a bit of searching around to find out more about it brought me to the Gibson cyberpunk novels it was based on. The first cartridge I played it on had a bad battery in it, sadly, so I had to leave my system on for incredible lengths of time to finish it, but I did.

    2. Shining Force, Gene
  • The dynasty warriors series.

    I've put ~200 hours each into the 3 DW games and later Samurai Warriors. Wading into a crowd of enemies and slashing until you get tired will never become boring.

    Now, if only they combined it with Diablo/Champions' limitless equipment system, then I'd simply quit my job and wait for the Man to repossess everything out from under me.
  • No, not that stupid "news" site, the game.

  • Dungeon Master (Score:5, Interesting)

    by markh1967 ( 315861 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:00PM (#14717926)
    Dungeon Master" [wikipedia.org] on the Atari ST was the best game of its time. It was a very early ST game and was a real eye-opener for anyone used to 8-bit computers. It probably sold almost as many STs as Doom did for PCs. The use of the mouse was perfect and I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.
    • I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.

      I only played DM very recently... but I did like the runes system. Heh one of the things I remember was making my barbarian learn magic by lending him some MP and making him try to "create water" many times.

  • Sim/Civ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Monkey ( 795756 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:00PM (#14717928)
    Sim City 2000. 3000 was lame because it required too much micro managment. Anything that Sid did with the Civ saga. I still play my old dos Civilizations from time to time.

  • Being nostalgic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aliens ( 90441 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:01PM (#14717937) Homepage Journal
    Doom 2 co-op by in large my favorite game of all time. X-Wing and TIE fighter.

    Metroid (NES)
    Dragon Warrior (NES)
    JetFighter
    Rogue
    GoldenEye (N64)
    Tetris64 (N64)
    Tony Hawk 2(DC)
    Warcraft II
    Command & Conquer
    FFIII (SNES)

  • Bard's Tale (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JustJon ( 731538 )
    The original Bard's Tale trilogy was a personal favorite. I can't tell you how many times I played thru each of them on my old Apple IIE.

    And of course, by extention, I played quite alot of Wasteland.
  • The entire Total War Series. Shogun TW, Medieval TW, and Rome TW.

  • Here's some (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eideewt ( 603267 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:02PM (#14717970)
    These are the main ones:
    Fallout
    Quake 1
    Privateer
    All three Descent games
    Commander Keen
    All three Thief games
    Mechwarrior 2
    Tyrian

    I hate making lists like this since I always know I've forgotten lots of great games.
    • Someone remembers Tyrian! I wish I would've bought that game back in the day--I was stuck with that tiny little demo that I can't get running these days. Of course, not having a credit card or bank account would've made it hard to order.

      Man, I miss the Foodship 9.
  • Command and Conquer blew me away with what you could do on a 486/66. Same thing with Dark Forces.

  • Civilisation ... and other Turn-Based Games (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rewinn ( 647614 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:07PM (#14718029) Homepage
    ... I'm a turn-based gamer. Reaction-time games are just not as compelling for me. That promise of "just one more turn" just leads me on ... there's no accounting for taste, I suppose. Civ 2 had a lot of improvements but the basic concepts were in Civ 1. I found Civ 3 to be boring ... Similarly, Heroes of Might And Magic 1 was wonderful; I skipped 2; HoMM 3 was an improvement in every way but still basically the same concept; HoMM 4 wasn't worth the upgrade, to me at least. Perhaps there's some basic "fun" concept at the core of any game that you can mess with, and you HAVE to mess with if your income depends on continued sales, but messing with doesn't necessarily mean improvement.
  • Super Tecmo Bowl
    Phantasy Star(any on the genesis)
    Total Annihilation

    The football game was just darn fun(I want to be the Chiefs, go JJ Birden!). Phantasy Star had great stories, and great game play. I have yet to find a better RTS than Total Annihilation.
  • Two franchises I'm surprised I haven't seen on the list so far:

    1. Street Fighter II - Did anyone *not* care about this game in 1992 or whenever that was?

    2. Bomberman - Maybe the multiplayer Bomberman phenomenon wasn't as widespread as i had thought.
  • Pong.

    Everything else is just a rip-off.
  • Thanks to DosBox, I am free to play nearly every game I've ever purchased, and so I can simply list games that are currently installed on my computer as those that I truly love: * Civilization * Colonizaton * Heroes of Might and Magic II * Master of Magic * Settlers 2 * UFO: Enemy Unknown * Warlords
  • Angband (I have to delete this from machines I use or I'd never get any work done)
    Star Control 2 (Recently reborn! I'm getting addicted to this all over again!)
    Loom (Can't find my old copy, probably couldn't run it on modern OSes anyway)
    Fallout (I keep coming back to this! And the sequel wasn't bad, either.)
    System Shock 2 ("Why do you serve the machine mother?")
    Thief (Oh man, this series has consumed more of my hours than any other, period.)
  • I know this is slashdot and it's Valentine's day today but believe it or not, some of us actually love people more than games.

    That said,... after my wife goes to sleep I can be found playing Civ 3 or Enemy Territory. :)

    • Rah Rah!
      Enemy Territory!

      I could dig out some old games that I loved on old systems, but I keep marveling at ET's power to draw me back.
      Strong FPS, good team mechanics.. and it is freaking free...
      What a deal... (lets see WOW at 50 bucks plus 13/month vs. Free)
      Sure I have paid for plenty of games since ET came out, but I keep coming back.
  • The few that I've pulled off the top of my head:
    • Robotron
    • Fallout (and its spiritual predecessor, Wasteland)
    • Autoduel
    • Gunstar Heroes
    • Quake
  • After playing Master of Orion (1) a lot in my "early" PC days, I think MoO2 was the most "craved for" game ever since I found out they were actually making it.

    To THIS day, it remains a game I (would) still play at any given time, given the right (i.e. skilled) opponents... sadly, the only problem is "time"... for an engaging and "serious" game, you either have to hot-seat an entire weekend (that sucks badly, trust me), or get it on "on IPX" (bleah, disconnects and load from saves galore). Either way, it's a
    • Thinking about it a bit more, I come to think you could actually pull it off quite nicely, and even get in some decent subscriber base. Heck, I would even give away all IP rights to this for a "lifetime account" on that game :)

      Imagine this:

      - keep ship design akin to MoO2 (ship sizes, stats, system and weapon fittings, firing arcs, etc) as it was the most rewarding (player-wise) design style ; OPTIONALLY, have each "design" require researching and/or prototyping before actual manufacture can begin ; EVE-Onli
  • I'm still running a very active fan community [magicball.net].
    A with a little luck we can expect the start of a sequel soon (3rd in the series; after 10 years).

  • No Games For Me!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:17PM (#14718158)
    Uh uh. Computers were for work. Spreadsheets, databases, programming. Well, OK, word processing for the character sheets for the home-brew dice-and-pencil RPG we played. Consoles? Fuggeditaboutit. Kid stuff, right?

    Until my buddy asked me to advise him on the purchase of a new PC. When I asked him what he was looking to use it for, he named all the regular Office stuff, and then added, "And of course, games. I want to be able to play games."

    So I studied up on graphics cards -- in the computer magazine articles I had always skipped prior to then -- and made my recommendations. When his box arrived, naturally he invited me over to configure it, for a few beers. In the course of my new research, I learned that the "Game of the Year" in everybody's graphics categories was something called "Mechwarrior II," so on my way over I picked up a copy for him to christen the new box with. He had a state-of-the-art graphics card and monitor, so I wanted to see what a state-of-the-art game looked like running on it.

    When the opening cinema played, "I Am Jade Falcon," and that unbelievable by anybody's musical standards score hit, our jaws hit the ground and we did this kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-Watching-NIN-Video take to each other. It was nothing like anything we old dice-throwers had expected in the least.

    So, um, yeah, about 400 BattleTech miniatures, countless PC games, and several dozen console games later, I guess I'd have to say that "MechWarrior II" was the most memorable, if not the most, influential, in my experience.
  • That one took the cake for me. I loved all the pre-online Ultimas up to VII, VI in particular in part because everyone I knew was also playing it, the storyline and world and music all meshed perfectly with me (I'd been playing the series since Alkabeth)... But Martian Dreams... which didn't get nearly as much attention as it deserved... was IMO the best ending of any computer game I've ever played... Other ones that I reminisce over still... Battlemech (battletech clone for amiga) Archon (old atari/et
    • For me it was Ultima VI. In fact, I've just started playing it again. It was the first game for the PC that I actually kept playing for a long time. Oh the memories it brings back. I used to goto my cousin's house just to play it, which to this day is the only game I've left my house for the sole reason of playing the game (outside of sports obviousely)

  • Wasteland (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Phaxn ( 946939 )
    This was one of the best Futuristic RPG's of it's time. (Fallout 1+2 were very well done also)
    • Any idea where to find a copy these days? Even better yet, a playable copy that doesn't come on 5.25" disks? I would think that if someone had the time, you could recreate the whole thing via a java applet, but I would love to get my hands on a version.
  • No question...fun game AND you could make your own levels. Sweet!

  • I originally had a Commodore 64, but the first actual PC game I can remember playing and being addicted by was Castle of the Winds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds [wikipedia.org]

    I received both games with my first IBM PS/2. It was the first game, after Solitare that I ever played on windows. I probably spent upwards of 100 hours playing through both games, and even have it loaded on my laptop right now.

    Both games are now freeware and can be downloaded leagaly. (Drop the author, Rick Saada http://www.e [exmsft.com]
  • Let's see...

    Dune 2
    Quake [1-2]
    Doom [1-2]
    Descent [1-2]
    Total Annihilation

    I still fondly remember LAN parties where the trash talk was as fast and furious as the game action, possibly more so. TA with four players and bots for each, with select mods installed is insane.
  • The original Dungeon Keeper was my famvourite game for months until I could whip them heroes with no problems. Then, the rather boring expansions came out (boring maps with "traps" of 10th level heroes) and then the terrible DKII.

    I miss that game, it was great fun to play and, while it wasn't the most original design, and had the best sound effects and voice work.

    *goes to see if the disk is somewhere around*
  • Minish Cap, hands down! Seriously it was by far the best 1 player game I have played in the past 10 years. Minimal story but that doesn't matter. There were plenty of extras, and above all the game was simple to master and actually fun!
  • If the world is invaded by aliens, we will be safe, thanks to my hundreds of hours spent training for that very scenario.
    • How I would love to play that game again.

      Is there not a market for essentially the exact same games with updated graphics and subtle tweaks?

      Isn't that what's driven the success of World of Warcraft? They didn't do anything new. They just polished it to the point of doing it better than anyone before them.

      Anyway, I have got to get me some of that turn-based goodness again. Wasn't there some effort to ressurect the X-com world?

  • Anyone remember Zeliard [wikipedia.org]?

    I had a fond memory of it when I was playing it about 15 years ago, and only until recently I recalled its name "Zeliard", and promptly found and downloaded it from Underdogs.

    The music still makes me warm and fuzzy but the graphic is a bit disappointing now.
  • Quirkiest RPG ever.
  • Back in the BBS days, my friends and I would spent our days playing LORD. While I don't recall much of the game itself, I do remember spending more time than my parents liked in front of the computer playing it and tying up the phoneline. Not sure if it was my favorite game of all time, but there is something to be said for the (mostly) text-gaming experience.

    Ah, here is the original FAQ for it:
    http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/bbsdoor/file/legen d_of_the_red_dragon.txt [gamefaqs.com]

  • Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters (Score:3, Informative)

    by lobotomir ( 882610 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:35PM (#14718392)
    Star Control 2 is one heck of a game. Exquisite sense of humor, great story about galaxy-wide genocide, ancient technology, and what not. Part 3 sucked, though. The "Melee" part of the game is also fun. It is being resurrected for contemporary Windows and Linux systems at http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net].
  • Cel-Animated (Not Shaded! actual animation!) and Rotoscope animated adventure games of the Era! They don't make 'em like that anymore! I'd trade a whole hell of a lot for a new Cel animated adventure game. On another note, if Tell-tale games actually manages to ship the new Sam and Max, I'll have to build a PC just to play it, and I will too. I switched to Macs as a result of the dearth of PC games that I liked, my gaming needs being better served by my Nintendo Gamecube, and the upcoming Revolution.
  • Diablo 1. I still play it when I need some uncomplicated fun.
  • I remember getting my hands of an alpha copy of Warcraft II back in the AOL days. I had just found out about some chatroom called "warez" and was attempting to get every piece of free software imaginable forwarded to me; good ole AOL. Anyhow, the alpha version was pretty bare bones and it contained some resources that were changed but it peaked my interest. About four months later I was in an EB and I saw it for sale; I purchased the game and there went my social life for the next nine months.

    But to be f
  • On the consoles, the game I remember most fondly is NHL'94 on the SNES. My friends and I spend many hours playing that game, the cheesy goals, the fact that five people could play at once, NHL'94 had so much replay value. Super Bomberman also got a lot of play time, and I probably saved myself many quarters playing Street Fighter II on the SNES instead of in the arcades. For the PC, the two that stick out as most memorable are Half Life and StarCraft. Myself and my gaming friends still load those games
  • I never miss a chance to mention my Propeller Arena Fan Site [gametribute.com]. For those who don't know, Propeller Arena is a 3D aerial deathmatch shooter. It was going to be Sega's last major title for the Dreamcast; it was cancelled, but later - hoorah! - leaked to the net. It's a bit simple, the online mode doesn't work, but it's a lot of fun and replay value nonetheless! If you want to play it (trust me, it kicks ass), try this torrent [torrentspy.com].

  • A few of my favorites: (Score:4, Informative)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:45PM (#14718487) Journal
    Rise of the Triad - best quirky mutliplayer experience
    Duke Nukem 3D - best multiplayer FPS (out of the box)
    Total Annihilation - best RTS. Ever. Well, until Supreme Commander comes out.
    Full Throttle - The last great adventure game.
    Half-Life - best single-player FPS.
    Spider Solitaire - best waste of time.
    Civilization II - best improvement upon a great game
    Medieval: Total War - best Braveheart simulator.
    X-Wing - Most entertaining space sim
    Babylon 5: I've Found Her - most realistic space (combat) sim
    X-COM: UFO Defense - most addictive game, best turn-based combat

    Honorable mention: Civilization, Master of Orion, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Half-Life 2, Unreal, Far Cry, X-COM: Apocalypse, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Yar's Revenge, Adventure, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander series, Jane's flight sims, Falcon 3.0 and 4.0, Sid Meier's Pirates, Homeworld, Homeworld 2, a few dozen others I can't think of at the time.
  • Does anyone remember a bug-plagued little Windows 3.11 game called Inner Space? I loved that game, even though it was a little repetitive and rather frustrating to keep running.

    Others:
    Fallout 2
    Deus Ex
    FF9 (Freya owns you)
    Quake
    Half-Life
    Morrowind!

    Man, I love Morrowind. Take all the crazy crap USERS have made for the game and add it to the already huge and lore-rich world Bethsoft made. Wonderful. How can you not like a game that has a bunch of _moogles_ as a fan plugin?

    There're just too many to
  • - Ultima V
    This was a game with depth, with true player freedom, and with a perfect sense of there being something cool always around the next corner.

    - Out of this World
    From the very first scene in this all-assembler gem, the atmosphere was the focus. The game mechanics, graphics, sound, were all good, but the integration and eerie presence was superb.

    - Star Control II
    An open universe, moddable ship, super fun arcade combat, and the best writing, hands down, of any game I've ever played.

    - Wing Commander
    This
  • At the time it was THE best Mac game, hands down, and even today it still has a strong claim to that position. It's the reason Mac users seemed distinctly unimpressed by Doom.

  • Marathon! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by adavies42 ( 746183 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:57PM (#14718596)
    Come on guys, doesn't anyone remember Leela, Durandal, and that crazy bastard Tycho? And all is not lost if you don't happen to have an old Performa sitting around--come join us at source.bungie.org [bungie.org] and work on Aleph One, the open source version, now available for Linux, Windows, and just about anything else you can think of! (Some nut even has it working on Irix!)
  • Some of these I can't play any more as I no longer own the game or the hardware or both, but I have fond memories of all. I've limited myself to titles released before Jan 1 2000 in order to stay with the "oldies" theme:

    TRS-80 Outhouse
    TRS-80 Defender
    TRS-80 Blasteroids (a freeware game I wrote in BASIC)
    TRS-80 Escape From Death Star (another I wrote)
    TRS-80 Night of the Living Dead (yet another I wrote)
    Amiga Turrican
    Amiga Frontier Elite II
    Amiga F/A-18 Interceptor
    Amiga F-16 Combat Pilot
    Amiga Blood Money
    Amiga L
  • Phantasy Star (All 4 of the originals, yes even number 3)
    Total Annihilation
    Virtua Fighter 2

    And I'm more then sure there are a few others...
  • There's nothing quite like sitting in front of a teletype and waiting f-o-r-e-v-e-r until your lasers cooled down enough so you could put in the final laser shot and pair of missles into the opponent you'd been sparring with for the past 15 minutes.

    *GILDOR*/UN=H7LT263
  • I spent COUNTLESS hours playing Sierra's Space Quest Series, Kings Quest Series, even Leisure Suit Larry 1. I also enjoyed Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist as well as Willy Beamish from Sierra's sister company, Dynamix. Also can't forget Diablo/Diablo II and the Wing Commander series.

    Those were the days....
  • Man, to list all of these games...

    Elite (C= 64)
    Elite Frontier (Amiga)
    Tempest The Theif Series (PC)
    Alice (PC)
    Medal Of Honor multiplayer (PC)
    Halflife 1,2 and Counter Strike (PC)

    There's always something out there good but this is a short list of the really pivotal games.

  • Island of, then Legends of Kesmai (Score:3, Insightful)

    by camusflage ( 65105 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:35PM (#14718952)
    My first MUD-like game was Island of Kesmai. At the ridiculous per-hour charges of compuserve, this grew into an expensive habit. After I found Gamestorm's Legends of Kesmai, they had me hooked for $9.95 per month from the time I found it until the time they pulled the plug, after selling out to EA to give them the Aries engine. I never had, nor have since, found a community quite like Kesmai.

  • SGI Flight Simulator. (dog) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stephen Samuel ( 106962 ) <samuel AT bcgreen DOT com> on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:35PM (#14718956) Homepage Journal
    Way back in the mid-late 80's The SGI flight simulater was hot. Granted -- the cheapest machine that could run it was about $20K, but I worked at a biochemistry lab, and had run (thick) Ethernet cables across 2 floors and down 6 flights of stairs, so we had 6 machines on the same subnet all capable of joining in a dogfight (often it would be one lab against the other).

    1024x768 in 24bit color (8 for the low-end Personal Irises) made these machines the cat's meow back then.

    The worst bug on the sim was that that the guy who did the aerodynamics equations didn't know how to handle stalls, so he just turned it into a uncontrollable spin. This made landing without crashing really difficult. The correct way to land (as I understand it) is get above the runway and go into a controlled stall. (spin - splat!). Unfortunately, a decent (touch) landing was the only way to refill your missiles, so you had to learn how to do hot touch landings (often while under fire).

    I wasted hours on that game!

    The early version of dog also had a watcher program that gave you an AWACS type view of a dogfight. I don't know why they got rid of it. (perhaps the military convinced them that it might give 'the enemy' some ideas -- the cold war was still on back then).

  • My favs. (Score:3, Informative)

    by AceCaseOR ( 594637 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:55PM (#14719116) Homepage Journal

    Worms 2 & Armageddon: I'm suprised no-one has suggested this one already. I got into playing Worms 2 about 9 years ago, when I was in either 7th or 8th grade (I forget which), and bought Worms: Armageddon when I was in High School. They're absoutly wonderful games, and if it wasn't for pricks on WormNet (and no way to have admins ban the fuckers), I'd play Armageddon online more often.

    NetHack: NetCrack more like. Killing Grid Bugs has never been more fun (unless you read that Scroll of Punishment. Oh, and I always avoid the Gnomish Mines, they still give me nightmares, damn gnomes).

    Gabriel Knight 1 & 2: Two of the greatest adventure games ever. Period. (Alas, I have not found a copy of #3 yet.

    Extreme Warfare Revenge: The greatest booking sim ever, and has none of the atrocious copy-protection crap that was put in Total Extreme Warfare.

    Civilization Series + Alpha Centauri and Colonization: Must... play... just one more turn!

    Starfleet Command: I was always a fan of Star Fleet Battles, and this game did not disappoint in the least.

    Fallout 1 & 2: Two of the greatest PC RPGs ever.

    Smackdown vs. Raw 2006: Possibly the best console wrestling game outside of...

    Fire Pro Series: Which is the best console wrestling series. Ever.

    And that's all I can think of for now. I'll probably come up with more later.

  • Falcon 3.0 and SimCity 2000 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El_Smack ( 267329 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @06:12PM (#14720340)
    And, oddly enough, both for the same reasons: planning. Falcon 3 had a mission planning mode where you would set waypoints, speeds, weapon loads, etc. for you and up to 8 of your wingmen. I would spend 2 hours setting up the mission, and 20 minutes or less flying it. I never could land on hi-fidelity mode. Crashed just about every time.
    Same with SC2K, what I liked was getting the freeway onramps to look right. Or I'd spend $250K to deepen a river so I could get a suspension bridge on it. The reverse interest money cheat made sure I wasn't constrained by cost.
    It wasn't really the way the games were meant to be played, but I loved them for it.

  • Star Control II (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Myself ( 57572 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @06:19PM (#14720390) Journal
    (This is an exact repost of something I wrote back in January [slashdot.org].)

    When I found out the music in SC2 was MOD files, I found a ripper on my local BBS and promptly extracted the music. That was in June of 1994, and the files have followed me from drive to drive, filesystem to filesystem, with their timestamps intact. I still love listening to that music, having burned bits of it to CD for the car, and all of it still enjoying a place in my Winamp playlst.

    Occasionally when a discussion of game storylines crops up, I'll pitch in a few kind paragraphs for Star Control 2. The conversation archives on The Pages of Now and Forever still relate the same compelling story, and I still remember my horror when I initially learned of the Kohr-Ah's plight. The most convincing villain is one you feel sympathy for, and they had that going, for sure.

    A few weeks ago, I downloaded the most recent build of The Ur-Quan Masters. The first build I tried a year or so ago wouldn't start up, but this version ran flawlessly. The music was perfect, the graphics were just as I remembered them, and the interface took a little getting used to but then felt very comfortable.

    So why did the game bore me? I played for probably half an hour, and couldn't seem to get interested. It's not that I knew the ending -- I played the game through 3 or 4 times back when it was new, and it didn't seem any less fun the second time around. I haven't been much for games in the last few years, and I'm still struggling to figure out why.

  • Tribes 2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LazyBoy ( 128384 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @06:24PM (#14720429)
    Still playing it.

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