Favourite old games.

Tecdavid

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The industry may have moved forward leaps and bounds in the last few years, what with spectacular graphics, online play, vaster worlds, and so forth, but that doesn't stop us holding certain games from yesteryear close to our hearts, right?
Anyone have any favourite games from way back when they still enjoy playing today, or would like to play again? :)
 
From the spectrum - Bored of the Rings, Cookie and House that Jack Built (there are a ton of others but the 48K finally died last year and we had to put them on the PC).
oop I can't remember I think it was a Amiga ? They had a Trolls game, the orignal Canon Fodder and the first Worms (we have them on other platforms now)
SNES: Micromachines
PS1: Suikoden, Breath of Fire III, Tomb Raider, the very first Grand Theft Auto, Alundra
PC: Sim City, Grim Fandango,

There are others,
 
I was just thinking about old games today (trying to think of Christmas presents, gah).

Made me remember the Sega Megadrive games. Golden Axe and Streets of Rage! Used to love those games. I think I recently tried playing them again and they were really difficult! Lack of millions of buttons to press meant that the difficultly of actually killing stuff by pressing one button was considerably higher!

One game that I can play endlessly is Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Honestly, I will never get bored of that game and have played it more times than I can count. Brilliant game. Except for that damn' Water Temple, of course. Oh, and Hey, listen! Hey, listen! Hey, listen! No! Can't you tell I'm trying to ignore you?!

I still play pokemon all the time, but I admit I am moving with the times and get the new ones when they come out. So I'm playing White at the moment, and the games really are amazing. But I have Red somewhere, and that will always be remembered fondly!

Speaking of the Spectrum, loved Oh Mummy!

Oh, and yeah, the first Grand Theft Auto! Burning little blobby people with the flamethrower, muahaha...
 
I still play a couple of my favourite old games, namely the original Wild Arms, Breath of Fire III, and Final Fantasy VII, although there are lots that I wish I could play again. Now that I think about it, they're all ps1 RPGs, too: Suikoden I and II, Star Ocean: the Second Story, Breath of Fire IV, and Grandia. I'd like to replay Legend of Dragoon, too.

The games I'd really like to play are on the SNES, though: Illusion of Time, and Terranigma. I can still remember some of the music from them.:)

And for the Spectrum - Oh Mummy was one of my favourites, too, along with the Dizzy Egg games.:)
 
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It's my 29th anniversary of becoming a Spectrum 48K owner on the 8th - lol sad I know that or what - Cookie was my first game and I still love it. Basically a chef firing flour bags to get ingredients into a mixing bowl.
_-Cookie-Spectrum-48K-_.jpg
 
I'd like to play Lords of Midnight (C64) again, but it would probably be less good than I remember.

I'm now playing Final Fantasy IV for the first time (on PSP), and enjoying it.

I'd love to be able to play FFVII and the first Tomb Raider again, if I could go back to when they first came out and I had no prior knowledge of them. They both blew my mind at the time.
 
I'm not a big gamer, but I had to pick up the original Quake when a friend showed it to me. It was the wacky mixture of horror/middle Earth and science fiction that made me laugh, like an ogre armed with a sack of grenades and a chainsaw in a grim castle rigged with teleporters.

I made a number of "mod" levels and went completely over the top with invisible floors and teleporters and such. One level had a ring of interconnected teleporters thus forming a "cat's cradle" if one fired a rocket into the nearest one. (Hint: duck after pulling the trigger.)

But my favorite thing was depressurizing on Friday evenings with some co-workers in a Death Match. (A Death Match is several live players against each other, rather than against the computer.) I always racked up the best scores because I was reckless, having just as much fun getting "fragged" as dishing out the damage. The other guys tended to pussyfoot around and play cautiously—which brings me to a couple of my favorite anecdotes.

Quake had weapons and "power-ups" not found in later generations of the game, such as the Ring of Shadows (invisibility) and the Lightning Gun (as it said in the manual, just spray it like a garden hose). One time I saw a pair of eyes running past. I spun around quickly and fired, fragging Roman as he was trying to get behind me. I could hear him yell from his cubical across the hall, "How did you know I was there?!" Unlike many science fiction writers, the makers of Quake knew that if one's eyes were invisible, one would not be able to see. So visible eyes floating along was the one Achilles heel of the Ring of Shadows.

If one gets "fragged" (killed, blown to kibbles) in a Death Match, one "respawns" somewhere in the arena armed with the lowest of weapons (single-barreled shotgun and an axe) and no armor. As one plays, one can pick up more powerful weapons and armor. In this one arena, the quad-barreled machine gun was the penultimate weapon. A quick burst at someone wearing no armor, or first level armor, resulted in an almost instant frag. Back to square one.

So I got stuck in a loop where Roman was camping in the immediate area where the quad-gun would replenish itself with ammo. Before taking up this position, he also managed to snag himself some red (third level) armor. Even without armor, he'd be able to hold that location until we all grew tired of the self-inflicted deja vu and decided to go home for the weekend. Dave and I didn't stand a chance against that quad-gun.

Then I respawned in the flooded cellar of the castle. Right beside me was the one weapon that topped the quad-gun and showed up only rarely in this arena: the Lightning Gun. But Roman would still able to mow me down before I could take him out. Then I heard two splashes—one after the other—through the game's sound system. Roman must be chasing Dave through the moat upstairs.

According to the manual, one must never fire the Lightning Gun while standing in water. This instantly shorts out the power cells and frags anything in the water. (We're talking chunks of meat flying—the animation was actually kinda funny.) I knew that all water in an arena was "connected," even though it is not contiguous. Water is water. And both of the other players were splashing through the moat...

In an instant, I decided that if I couldn't beat Roman without a tedious and protracted battle, I'd level the playing field for all of us. I jumped into the water in front of me and pulled the trigger. As the haunches of meat exploded on the screen in front of me, I could hear Dave and Roman in their offices across the hall exclaiming loudly, "WHAT THE H*LL JUST HAPPENED?!"

From my laughing—following the thunder clap sound effect—they figured out what I had done. After that, both of them stolidly refused to set one toe in water ever again. Meanwhile I could take all the shortcuts I wanted because I wasn't afraid to play out on the edge.
 
I was just going to say that you can't beat Space Invaders, Asteroids, Breakout and Caterpillar.

However, Metryq's post has reminded me about playing Age of Empires with the cheats that allow laser canons, rocket missiles and hoards of elephants. :)

Did anyone ever play any of the Dizzy games on the C64? They were very addictive.
 
no, but I liked Age of Empires. I'm a bit low tech on games, but I quite like my ds, and am in the middle of Zelda; ocarina, which is just out on ds. Also, Shiren the wanderer, which I think was the original pokemon game, and Sid Meiers Civilization Revolution; all good. And would also have to admit to odd pacman game.
 
I was just going to say that you can't beat Space Invaders, Asteroids, Breakout and Caterpillar.

Oh, I loved those old "sprite" based arcade games. What is most amazing is how the brain can recognize so many things in the incredibly low-res graphics. (There's a topic for an entire psyche thesis.) Golden Shower's music video Video Computer System pays homage to all those old games (and The Matrix!).
 
The earliest arcade game I was thrilled to play was one called "Starships", it was even in the 1973 film Soylent Green for a few moments. Atari released the home game version in 1977.
 
And for the Spectrum - Oh Mummy was one of my favourites, too, along with the Dizzy Egg games.:)

Yes, Dizzy Egg! Although that was another stupidly difficult game. I swear there was one bit, with water maybe, that me, my brother and friends just could not work out how to get across.

However, Metryq's post has reminded me about playing Age of Empires with the cheats that allow laser canons, rocket missiles and hoards of elephants. :)

And yes, Age of Empires! I've still got Gold around here somewhere, I love games like that. Yeah, the cheats were awesome.

and am in the middle of Zelda; ocarina, which is just out on ds.

I was very, very tempted by that, seeing as how much I raved about Zelda in my previous post. But I only have a normal DS, not a 3DS. And I also talked to myself and said, well I've already got it on N64 and it's still brilliant and I think I'd prefer the N64 controls anyway. I would really like to try Zelda on the Wii, though, just so I can do all the fancy movements with the controllers.
 
I was very, very tempted by that, seeing as how much I raved about Zelda in my previous post. But I only have a normal DS, not a 3DS. And I also talked to myself and said, well I've already got it on N64 and it's still brilliant and I think I'd prefer the N64 controls anyway. I would really like to try Zelda on the Wii, though, just so I can do all the fancy movements with the controllers.

I wouldn't get too excited about it, Hoopy. It's a little clunky, I can't play it in 3d without threatening a migraine and am currently so fed up with the shadow temple I might chuck it out the window.:)
 
Yeah, I'm glad that I didn't spend money on getting a whole new 3DS for it. I prefer it on a larger screen, I think, and after playing it so much on the N64, I'd probably notice the difference even more.

The Shadow Temple is awesome! Well, it's one of the better ones. At least it's fairly linear, and the end boss is one of my favourites.

But my ultimate favourite temple, and boss, is the temple after, the dessert temple. Awesome.

Honestly, I know the game like the back of my hand, so if you ever want any help...
 
I'll bear that in mind, Hoopy. To be honest, I just need to pick it up and do some of the side quests, get some extra life, but the kids keep nicking it to ride Epona.
 
Haha, yes, that's always fun. And fishing! Well, I think it is, my friend was less than impressed when she sat there for half an hour, watching me try and coax a virtual fish to bite my line...
 
I can see that; my 6 year old's a demon at fishing. Actually at most of the game. Technically the console's theirs, but really Littest pet shop, there are limits.
 
I've never played anything that was better than UFO:Enemy Unknown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown

I'm yet to play a game more atmospheric. I can still remember the terror of encountering a chrysalid and ethereal for the first time. I still haven't recovered. The fact that you could rename your squad to your mates names was also pretty awesome.
 
There's a UFO remake in the wings: http://www.xenonauts.com/
Looks like it has promise :)

There's so many great games from the past. I think that the ones I still go back to and play today are few in number. Masters of Magic - a civilisation type game, with magic and fantastic creatures. Meridian 59 - the first graphical online mmorpg, currently free to play.

I have fond memories of way too many games to list :)
 

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