Your Favorite Old Games

[Imoen_Nightflame]

Borsook and I got into a conversation about our favorite old games. So, just tell us what your fave old games are and why.

-"The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall". This game was the Baldur's Gate of it's time. Yes, I know that BG came out about 4 years after Daggerfall, so shoot me. Daggerfall was a HUGE game for the large install being only 400MB. It was lush, fun, and ridiculously in-depth. And the music was great. The "flute, tambourine, and drum" tavern music stands out in my mind . If you've ever played, you'll know what I'm talking about.

-"Wasteland". It was "Fallout" before "Fallout" existed. It's nothing to brag about in the graphics department, but if it hadn't been for "Wasteland", "Fallout" and it's successors wouldn't exist.

-"The Eye of the Beholder" trilogy. The games got better as time went on. The graphics went from pixely sprites to polygonal sprites within 3 games. It was fun and frustrating, and the piracy checks in game sucked if you had lost your manual. But, it was the first RPG I ever beat before my big brother and dad.  And it was the first mainstream PC game that was set in Forgotten Realms.

-"Ravenloft: Stone Prophet". This was the sequel to "Strahd's Posession". SSI and DreamForge had a really unique style (shown in a Forgotten Realms setting in the game "Menzoberranzan") that I immediately fell in love with. The game was dark, scary, had great graphics for it's time, and awesome music. It was great to play with a friend or two at midnight in a dark room while sugar high on Mountain Dew. Every time one of the desert zombies would pop up out of the sand and give it's war cry, EVERYONE in the room would scream. Ah, good times.

-"Menzoberranzan". While "Stone Prophet"'s border color scheme was "beige sandstone", "Menzoberranzan"'s was "purple marble". (In SSI and DreamForge games, the main gaming screen had a border. Stone Prophet had columns of sandstone with Egyptian hiroglyphs and scarabs) Drizzt shows up in the game, and gnolls you fight are hilarious. It's fun to get Drizzt on your team, because everyone starts out lvl 7-10, while Drizzt is lvl 17. It was pretty and entertaing.

If you've played these, give a mention! So tell us, what's your favorite old games?

[Pigeon]

I didn't like Daggerfall, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I remember going from town to town, playing dress-up and attacking villagers. Oh, and when you took off your shirt, there were boobies.

I played either EotB 1 or 2, can't remember which (didn't even know it was set in FR). I sort of enjoyed it, except a few levels in I would get stuck in some weird loop and couldn't figure out how to stop going around in circles and adfslfjsdafd (I was young, mind you). I played another dungeon crawler called Dungeon Hack, which I liked because it had lots of pretty keys. I never got far in that game either but the levels were randomly generated so it didn't bother me.

My very favoritist old game is Dark Sun. I still play it sometimes today. The magic system is weird, but I find a party of half-giants just beating the crap out of things works. The graphics are pretty and gameplay is fun, but I can't remember what the story is about.  I always named party members after my family (same with EotB too).

[Imoen_Nightflame]

I think EVERYONE named characters after their family members. That's all I ever do in ID1 and 2.

[fcm]

Any old game? I really liked this stupid old game called MegaRace. It was a battle-race game. Pretty fun. Plus, the "host" would insult you, which I liked because every now and then I get a llittle masochistic.

I always loved SimLife. If I could find my old game disks, I'd probably still play. Or at least attempt to run it under DosBox emulation. Freaking Windows NT. Bastards.

[Eral]

Betrayal in Antara. Paper doll animation turn-based combat. First person view when walking. Strangely fixed animation in the cutscenes. Great characters and story. I was horrified to find a pointed reference to whores in Chapter 8 - how that was Ok for a G game i still don't know - because my young nephew was playing it, after I had assured his mum it was perfectly appropriate for a 10 year old.

King's Quest 7. Animated cartoon characters, lots of bright colours and a rubber chicken. No refernces to whores. Women as the protagonists who weren't wearing chainmail bikinis.

[CORVIS TERRIBLE MOUNTAIN GOD]

King's Quest = Roberta Williams = UNSPEAKABLE RAGE[/b]

I've never tried Betrayal at Antarra, but I have it on good authority that it's nothing more than a hollow attempt to recapture the magic of Betrayal of Krondor.

Which, for the record, is my favorite Old Game, and one of my top three favorite RPGs of all time. The original Darksun game is pretty good as well, thouh not an accurate representation of the setting by half.

[Echon]

Master of Magic. MicroProse 1993. The best turn-based fantasy strategy game ever.

-Echon

[Eral]

Umm, Corvis, she made games for girlies. The existence of a bunch of very successful computer games where no problem was solved by hitting a sprite with a sword and had no random encounters was probably an affront to lots of y-chromosome people. But us girlies loved it.

Yes, BiA was nothing more than a hollow attempt to recapture the magic of Betrayal in Krondor - but I was never able to compare because BiK only surfaced from the mist last year. And by then I couldn't remember the keyboard commands anymore. The sky was bright purple all the time too, which hurt my eyes.

[CORVIS TERRIBLE MOUNTAIN GOD]

Umm, Corvis, she made games for girlies. The existence of a bunch of very successful computer games where no problem was solved by hitting a sprite with a sword and had no random encounters was probably an affront to lots of y-chromosome people. But us girlies loved it.

My peener does not command me to kill. Perhaps it's defective? No, I have nothing against adventure games.

I just hate Roberta Williams.

[Dark Raven]

Diablo. A great game and the first one I ever played online. You could say I was an ear collector on Battlenet.

Fallout. One of the best games ever made.

[Pigeon]

But us girlies loved it.

Why, was there a baking sim? Harhar.

All I know about this Roberta Williams person is that she apparently worked on a lot of games I've never played. What's the hate for?

[Ghreyfain]

I used to play Shufflepuck Cafe on my friend's Mac.  And Gauntlet.  And then SimCity.

Tell me, how did PCs wind up beating out Macs, again?

These days I don't play Shufflepuck or Gauntlet (thought there was a decent remake I saw a while back.  Anyone hear of that?), but while I had the flu this week I played SimCity 4 Deluxe for the first time since I got it (a Christmas or two ago).  It was terrific when it first came out, and only got better as time went by.

Oh, oh, and another one I was just reminded of by this King's Quest stuff: Space Quest 3.  I played that game for a bit, got frustrated, then used a walkthrough for the rest of it.  Had great fun both playing, and finding ways to get Roger Wilco killed.  Plus swearing at The Two Guys From Andromeda.

I played King's Quest 5 for a while, and even with the hint book it wasn't all that fun.  Corvis would appear to be right, but I can't say why I didn't like it.  Not enough humour or satisfaction from solving the puzzles.  There goes Eral's sexist theory of men only enjoying games if you get to smash or kill stuff.

[Regullus]

   I had forgotten about Betrayal in Antara but I liked it. I hated Return to Krondor; unwiedly interface, stupid puzzles and forgettable story. I was very partial to the Gabriel Knight series.  I also quite liked a game that had Giger monsters in it, Dark Seed (?) I think was the title. Daggerfall I was unable to finish due to the bugginess but there was a Bethesda game called Battlespire that I liked very much.

  My sentimental favorites and my heart belongs to Doom and the Fallout series.

  I first played Doom with my husband and brother, we learned about the secret rooms, admired each other's strafing technique, nearly had a heart attack with our first CyberDemon encounter. I will never forget being loaded for bear with all weaponry, 200 health and 200 armor then the character inexplicably died, I didn't even see the CyberDemon the first five times then that first glimpse as the rockets headed my way. Good times.

  I also admired Romero for his attitude although I have never forgiven him for DaiKatana. I don't know what irritated me more, the robotic frogs, the save gems or the idiotic and suicidal sidekicks. You had to kind of admire him for the whole Ion Storm debacle but I lost interest in his career after DaiKitana. Ok, I admit it, I had the smallest of crushes on him. I'm over it.

[Borsook]

I'll aproach this differently - old games I still play to this day are: Space hulk, Panzer General, Steel Panthers, Warcraft I & II.

[Pigeon]

I played either Gauntlet 1 or 2 on the Nintendo with my brother, and damn it if there wasn't 1000 levels too many. I have to wonder if there is anyone in existence who has beaten that stupid game. It was fun, nevertheless. I saw a remake at an arcade awhile back and gave it a shot. It was fun... but I wasn't about to waste all my tokens on it.

[Dark Raven]

Tetris and Super Mario. 

[Kulyok]

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. A nice game, if not perfect.

Oh, and Nox. I love Nox.

[Meddle.]

World of Xen (or smth, memory's tricky)

Elite-Frontier-First Encounters rocks!

[Veloxyll]

FFE was the weakest elite IMO.

Elite original ftw. or possibly Frontier itself

[fcm]

I forgot about Heroes of Might and Magic II. and III.

[Meddle.]

FFE was the weakest elite IMO.

Elite original ftw. or possibly Frontier itself

cant remember either
trying to dosbox fe now, but its a big lag

[Borsook]

I forgot about Heroes of Might and Magic II. and III.

Didn't you mean King's Bounty? Homm 2/3 are not old games, aren't they? Please tell me they're not old.

[Imoen_Nightflame]

OMG WORLD OF XEEN.
I haven't played that game in AGES. I used to go find the magic mirror and cheat my little ass off.
And how did I forget "Betrayal in Antara" and "Betrayal at Krondor"?
I loved BaK because I read the book by Raymond Feist first. I loved BiA because I am a yaoi whore and I imagined that Aren and William made a good couple.
And Kaelyn was flippin hilarious.
I would always play BiA when I was hungry, because I loved reading the descriptions of the food. I was odd.
OH! And I was Ariel in my middle school's performance of "The Tempest". I sang one of the bar songs from BiA in the play. It was, IIRC:

Oh, I'll never be a sailor
And I'll never be a mage
I've never picked the minds of men
For I am not a sage
I've never been to foreign docks
But I bet they're all the same
And in all the tales the joymen tell
You'll never hear my name.

I can't believe I remembered that!

[Eral]

There goes Eral's sexist theory of men only enjoying games if you get to smash or kill stuff.

Heh heh heh. *smack* Don't get lippy, young feller.
Of course we will find loads of men here who like intelligent games. It's a We Love BG site. But how many will we find at a Call of Duty etc etc? Yeah.
Please remember it wasn't me who invented the myth - I think it's a view held by nearly bloody everybody who makes computer games, as I am reminded everytime I play a game with a female avatar with a g-string for armour. *thinks about smacking Ghrey again, just for fun, but decides to return to topic*

Mask of Eternity was a good game: very Morrowind, only with puzzles. Unfortunately, if you bought it expecting it to be like any of the previous KQ games you were surprised to find it was completely different. They should never have pretended it was the same genre - it would have done better. As it was people who hated RW didn't touch it, and old fans felt gypped. As I recall I gave up before defeating the Boss, because I got jack of trying to get through the temple mazes. Damn, they were annoying.

I had forgotten that song - good work!

[fcm]

I forgot about Heroes of Might and Magic II. and III.

Didn't you mean King's Bounty? Homm 2/3 are not old games, aren't they? Please tell me they're not old.

Ah. III was made in '99. I guess it's not that old. I still play the FIRST one. Is that old enough? Hahaha.