Favourite 80s Home Computer Games?

[Venusian Broon]

Oh yes, and it played The Blue Danube when you docked. Sometimes the music almost drowned out the horrible scraping noise as you dragged your craft along the docking bay walls.

It was also available for the Spectrum 48k, though, so I don't know why you didn't have it.

I was probably put off the game by years of smarmy rich kids telling me my spectrum was cheap junk

 

[BAYLOR]

Venture

 

[Betok_Haney]

I remember walking past a Radio Shack in a mall when I was young, seeing The Sands of Egypt on a TRS-80. They let you play around with it, and I would play and play and play while my mom shopped. That was all it took to hook me into computer gaming for the next 40+ years.

I got a C64 as my first home computer, and fell in love with the blue screen. I remember these games dominating my time:

The Cosmic Balance - which was a LOT like Star Fleet Battles, a table top game my friends and I played a lot at the time
Test Drive
Impossible Mission
Spy Hunter
Pool of Radiance
The Bard's Tale
The Wargame Construction Set
Lemmings
Summer Games - I would always play the Soviet Union, lol
Zork
Temple of Apshai
Hacker
Airborne Ranger
Leader Board Golf
Raid on Bungling Bay

 

[AlexH]

Elite is another classic I didn't play. It is mentioned in that song I mentioned in the Clive Sinclair thread.

Another game I've remembered enjoying is Pro Powerboat Simulator. Codemasters had a lot of success with these 'simulator' games.

Feud is another I loved. You played a sorcerer fighting his evil twin. It inspired a short story in more recent years.

 

[HareBrain]

Jeez, I just remembered dungeon-crawler Telengard. So that's what happened to 1983. Anyone else?

"The Gnoll steals your armour."

 

[Foxbat]

What I remember about Elite was how hard it was docking until you managed to save up for a docking computer. I think I had it on the Atari ST. Another one that I enjoyed was Midwinter. Very rudimentary 3D landscapes but with good gameplay.

 

[HareBrain]

Ooh, how did I forget Lords of Midnight?

Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?

 

[paranoid marvin]

Blimey, no one's mentioned Elite?

Other favourites (C64) were Paradroid, Iridium, Twin Kingdom Valley, Tir Na Nog. There was also a half-decent WW2 strategy game called Theatre: Europe that occupied many happy/frustrating hours.

Quazatron was the Speccy version of Paradroid, this time played isometrically rather than top down. Both games were great in their own ways.

Yes, Theatre Europe was a brilliant little war game (as long as you turned off the crappy shoot 'em up bits that came with the C64 version). If I recall correctly, NATO could only 'win' if they held off the Warsaw Pact offensive for 30 turns. One quite unique thing was that to use nuclear weapons, you needed a password. To get it you had to dial a telephone number that came in the game packaging, and when you dialled a pre-recorded voice message gave you the password.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Ooh, how did I forget Lords of Midnight?

Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?

Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. How I wanted to get into those games, but I never could. I had friends who had strategies and drawn out maps of locations of friends/enemies and items. But for some reason it never clicked with me.

 

[HareBrain]

Yes, Theatre Europe was a brilliant little war game (as long as you turned off the crappy shoot 'em up bits that came with the C64 version).

That last bit rang no bells with me, and I now realise I got the wrong name. I meant Crusade in Europe (a hex-mapped division-level strategy playing from D-Day to Berlin). I don't know where I got Theatre Europe from, as I don't even remember hearing of it, but if it was popular I guess I must have done.

Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. How I wanted to get into those games, but I never could.

Funnily enough I loved LoM but never took to DD. I think it was just too big in scope.

 

[Foxbat]

Ooh, how did I forget Lords of Midnight?

Still available (currently for free) on GOG

The Lords of Midnight

Mike Singleton's '84 classic Adventure Strategy game, brought to and updated for Windows.

www.gog.com

Mike Singleton was the brain behind both this and Midwinter. I wonder what he would have produced nowadays?

 

[HareBrain]

Still available (currently for free) on GOG

I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered Paradroid and Iridium. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.

 

[CupofJoe]

I think my interest in computer games peaked at the original Prince of Persia and SimCity. There was a brief flirtation with the first Wing Commander, but few things could beat a giant monster trampling through my perfect society or doing a somersault to avoid a flying sword.

 

[Foxbat]

I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered Paradroid and Iridium. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.

You’re probably right. I bought Lords Of Midnight a while back for a couple of quid and I’ve hardly looked at it. I think things like puzzle games stand the test of time better than others (e.g. Pipemania and D/Generation).

After a quick search, I found D/Generation HD on Steam. I’m tempted but I don’t do Steam. It gets fairly mixed reviews so maybe better left looking at it through the soft filter of nostalgia.

D/Generation HD on Steam

A virus has escaped at Genoq HQ in London, and Derrida, the lead scientist at Genoq, has asked you to help save the day. Travel up through the Genoq skyscraper rescuing the stranded employees and putting an end to the escaped virus.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pyan]

Blimey, no one's mentioned Elite?

Yes! Got up to Deadly on the Spectrum version.

Ooh, how did I forget Lords of Midnight?

Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?

Another favourite.

It is night, and Luxor is very invigorated. The Ice Fear is very mild. Luxor is very bold. He has with him the Moon Ring...

I can remember Crash magazine printing out the whole map for the Lands of Midnight, which I carefully cut out and stuck on a piece of cardboard.

 

[Vladd67]

 

[J Riff]

i only remember..'Nightstalker' on Intellivision. And The Qix, at the arcades.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I think my interest in computer games peaked at the original Prince of Persia and SimCity. There was a brief flirtation with the first Wing Commander, but few things could beat a giant monster trampling through my perfect society or doing a somersault to avoid a flying sword.

PoP's graphics looked pretty awful when on the page of a magazine, but you had to see them in motion to appreciate the beautiful fluidity of the movement (rotoscoping I think they called it).

Wing Commander was a good game , but required a beast of a PC to get working properly. I think that was the game that kicked start the drive for PC owners to have to continually upgrade graphics, processors and even sound cards to keep up with the latest releases.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Yes! Got up to Deadly on the Spectrum version.



Another favourite.

It is night, and Luxor is very invigorated. The Ice Fear is very mild. Luxor is very bold. He has with him the Moon Ring...

I can remember Crash magazine printing out the whole map for the Lands of Midnight, which I carefully cut out and stuck on a piece of cardboard.

I assume it must have been one of Oli Frey's? If I remember rightly I think that the game claimed to have something like 100,000 different screens, something astonishing for the time? Not that there was a great deal of difference in the locations, but still enough to make the claim stand.

At the time it seemed like the closest we'd get to a proper Lord of the Rings adventure, which is why it disappointed me that I just couldn't get into it.

 

[AlexH]

I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered Paradroid and Iridium. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.

I have less patience these days if part of a game seems unfairly hard. I like a challenging game if it doesn't seem unfair (Full Metal Furies being a recent new example I've played, which coincidentally is retro-inspired).

I have less patience these days for bad design, which sometimes makes things 'unfairly hard'. A lot of older games suffer with bad design compared to games today, but that's often because the medium has progressed. Some games were ahead of their time. I mentioned a few old games in my opening post that I enjoy to this day, and one I'd never played before (They Stole a Million, a strategy game).

Games seem less playable using a joystick to me too, perhaps because I got used to a controller pad. Playing using keys is still fun.

Retro games and pixel art is huge at the moment. I think that's largely due to nostalgia but also because designers have learnt from the past, so the games of today tend not to have the flaws of those that inspired them. The 16-bit era was the best for me in that many of the best games (e.g. Super Mario World, Sonic 2, Super Probotector/Contra III, Terranigma, Donkey Kong Country 2) are as playable as the best games today.

Downwell is the best new example of 8-bit-style graphics I've played:

It's outstanding, and the trailer doesn't do it justice. Also difficult, but not unfairly so. And it gives you the option to play vertically if you can rotate your TV/monitor.