Harel55 wrote:
I really liked the old zelda games, in fact Majora's Mask was the first game I ever played (I couldn't even read and had to have my sister translate).

I have no idea what my first game was... it was either Lego Loco or one of the green army men games on the N64. Maybe even Super Mario 64, now that I think about it...

Nats that's a good question! Retro gaming, for me, is about playing games where the graphics couldn't be what you lean on for immersion and quality--instead story and gameplay were the driving mechanics that kept you coming back. While, modern gaming isn't vacant of these qualities, retro-gaming has a certain charm. Publishers also were less concerned because gaming was less commercial, and more of a niche market, thus creativity flourished. There was no ESRB rating to hit, no 'broader audience' that publishers pushed devs towards. Another factor is that every game is a collective artform ---coders, programers, graphic artists, concept artists, story writers, ect---and it is to simply valuing the art behind their creation, like one would value the substance in older films. The final drawing quality, is that these games were essentially part of my childhood and/or development into a human being, even if in a small way. As InflamesWeTrust stated, it takes you back. I guess I just love games, and the developers who create them lol.



Star Control + Total Annihilation good stuff!



Lords of Magic! I have that one too! I'd say the closest thing would be the Heroes of Might and Magic Series!



Another honorable mention that I don't really think of as an old game, makes me feel old when I see it on good old games, Neverwinter Nights. Wonderful soundtrack, so wonderful infact that the second used a great deal of it lol. I played that game into the ground. So much good content put out by the community, and some really great RP servers. So much fun had there.



Anarchy Online is another golden oldie. Still go back to it occasionally. Luckily, it hasn't been shelved yet. Haven't played anything in an mmo quite like my beloved Fixer; Runspeed buffs, burst damage, roots, and heal over time. Perfect guerrilla fighter!



I'd also like to mention City of Heroes, which unfortunately is closing down. Losing a good game is paramount to losing a friend. While most games never die, City is an mmo, and servers are going with it. RIP CoX.. My best to your wonderful community.

Rudest wrote:
Nats that's a good question! Retro gaming, for me, is about playing games where the graphics couldn't be what you lean on for immersion and quality--instead story and gameplay were the driving mechanics that kept you coming back. While, modern gaming isn't vacant of these qualities, retro-gaming has a certain charm. Publishers also were less concerned because gaming was less commercial, and more of a niche market, thus creativity flourished. There was no ESRB rating to hit, no 'broader audience' that publishers pushed devs towards.

Whereas this is true I do think most games have always come out with cutting edge graphics. When you look back at Wing Commander or X-Wing they were designed to make the best use of the available space and technology of the standard computers of that time. In fact I remember when Strike Commander came out no one could play it properly on their computers because it was ahead of its time which is why I didn't buy that one. So I think the graphics have always been everything that the devs could make of them Its just with modern games the graphics are so much more detailed that they take up considerably more time to produce which is why often in modern games the gameplay, immersion and story suffer.



You can see this even with ES - the devs have produced a slick interface and graphics but again immersion and gameplay has suffered because of the amount of time that has gone into other things. This is the reason why they need to release an expansion pack - to fill in the missing parts of the game they couldnt work on before.



And even the massive franchises like the Total War games never seem to get it completely right - in fact every game seems to come out very similarly to the last but with updated graphics and a new theme that is all that is new. Why they still haven't permanently employed that Darth mod bloke to produce a decent game for them, AI wise, I will never understand.



So I cans ee why retro gaming exists. I just wish I could see past the aged graphics myself but I cannot. And to be honest although the gameplay in the old games is usually very good there are usually other things wrong with them - for example old flight sims suffer terribly with the fidelity of the flight models - their planes feel like you are flying on rails compared to new sims. And with old strategy games the intelligence of the AI is usually very bad.



Honestly I cannot think of any very old computer game that I played like mad when I was younger that I would go back to again now. Even Falcon 4 with its new graphics package and high definition terrain etc which looks like a new game now - still has the old mechanics under the hood. I havent tried that because I played it to death years ago and could possibly face playing it again. I know its AI weaknesses, I know its shortcomings. I live for new experiences I always have. I never go back!

To each their own natz! As I've mentioned before---Everybody is entitled to play the way they want. You and I are no exception! <3

From time to time i go back to an oldie game. The ones that i remembered to have played recently are Jagged Alliance 2 (one of my favorites), Alpha Centauri and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Lately i am trying to set up a multiplayer game of Neverwinter Nights 1 just need to get some more time

Sometimes, I'm really sickened by all those new cutting-edge technology games, who are in certain cases crap when it comes to gameplay. Or balancing. Or the integrity of the game code... That's why i always keep a handful of oldies installed: Dungeon Keeper 2, Imperium Galactica II, Theme Hospital (<3 ), Civ 2, Settlers 2, Homeworld (1&2), System Shock 2.



Some of you, who are younger, maybe don't know a couple of these series yet. Give them a try, they're all unique in some way in our little universe!

TaCCCo wrote:
Some of you, who are younger, maybe don't know a couple of these series yet. Give them a try, they're all unique in some way in our little universe!

Another problem with old games is that it's hard to find them unless you want to order them online from eBay or something, and for some reason I'm basically paranoid about ordering things to be shipped to my door. Steam has put some good oldie games up once in a while, but it's not nearly enough. Some devs have put up their old games as freeware (like the original Command and Conquer games) but not all. Games like Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, one of the best games of my life, are simply impossible to download, unless you trust torrents, which I don't.

That said, is there any way I can digitally purchase Master of Orion 2?

Fenrakk101 wrote:


That said, is there any way I can digitally purchase Master of Orion 2?

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_orion_1_2

For anyone, who wants to play some Theme Hospital and can't get their game working or only have access to the demo:



http://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/



It even has got Android-Support (and Linux and Mac).



And else: FreeCiv

nats wrote:
I will never understand retro gamers. Whats that all about?

For me retro gaming harks back to a period in gaming history when the landscape was pretty much an independent one. The technology was a burgeoning one and at the time it wasn’t able to produce photo-realistic representation of its subject matter thus it relied on story and game-play, and left your imagination to fill in the gaps.



Today my favourite games are almost all independently developed because as far as I can see only the indie devs do a ‘good enough’ job with the technology and mostly hold on to the old ethic of: game-play first. The PC is also the perfect platform for such developers, and e-distro tools like Steam give indie devs a route into the market like no other. The AAA developers have enormous customer bases to keep happy thus the games that they churn out may look super-sharp but they’re very often dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Indie devs take a concept and try to make the very most of it; however, the AAA devs tend to take a good concept and do the bare minimum with it (then milk it with day 1 DLC that should have been in the game to begin with – EA, I’m looking at you here).

Rudest wrote:
Another honorable mention that I don't really think of as an old game, makes me feel old when I see it on good old games, Neverwinter Nights. Wonderful soundtrack, so wonderful infact that the second used a great deal of it lol. I played that game into the ground. So much good content put out by the community, and some really great RP servers. So much fun had there.

NWN1 and NWN2 are still going with regard to being persistent world RP servers. I still play in one. In a way this is retro gaming of a kind in that it's clinging on to an old approach that is no longer receiving support from a developer.

That is interesting defekt. Perhaps I'll hit an rp server up, I really do miss the good times I had!

I really liked the old zelda games, in fact Majora's Mask was the first game I ever played (I couldn't even read and had to have my sister translate).

InFlamesWeTrust wrote:
heck I still miss being able to play YuGiOh cards because no one plays it any more.

http://www.duelingnetwork.com/

send me a PM if you want to play!

InFlamesWeTrust wrote:
Oh and just for the record Igncom CoD sucks and has brought down my favourite modern gen shooter game gears to a casual pile of poo. Just saying, devs are casualising their games to try and get at the CoD market and it annoys me.

To be honest, CoD doesn't suck. It's not the worst game ever or anything. The problem is that, with one-year intervals in the series, with two different developers, with little to no updating of the game engine, the game has really started to suffer. People have a very good point when they say they're releasing the same game every year - and that game hasn't exactly aged very well. I'm half-convinced people only like it because they're impatient and they don't want to wait years for a sequel, and they are seriously afraid of a game never having a sequel. Most of the people who I know that play agree that Black Ops was better than MW3, and that World at War was better than Black Ops. When the old games are better, why are the new games still making record sales? The game is no longer an attempt to make good games. I get a feeling Treyarch is at least trying, weakly, but in general the games are just lazy and rushed and they're not an attempt to change the game at all, they're just trying to cash in on a profitable franchise.

That said, I have to be fair: I'm permanently suspicious of CoD games, but at least the new one at least sounds like they're trying to add something new. Which is admirable, at this point.

The one game that has pride of place on every PC & Laptop I've owned for the last 7 years - Birthright: The Gorgons Alliance.



First game I ever played? Sonic on a Sega Megadrive

[QUOTEusername=Rudest;92052

BlackIsleStudios:

(Baldur'sGate,Planescape,Fallout,IcewindDale)

ItwouldhavetakenfartolongtolisteverygamebyBlackIsleIlove.Ifiguredthiswouldbefarmoresimple.ThisdeveloperwasthePre-EABiowareoftheirtime.Only,thatwouldbeanunderstatement,asIbelieveevenPre-EABiowarepalesincomparison.Everythingthisstudiotouchedwasgold.RPGsandimmaculatelyseductiveenthrallingstorytellingthatwouldforeverleaveanimpressiononme.Imissthisdedicationtostorytellingingaming.Ireallydo.Icangoonforeveronatangentaboutthesegames,butIwon't.AllIwillsayisthatIhighly---highly---recommendthem.YoucanbetyourlifethatoneormoreofthesegamesarealwaysonmycurrentPC.Ifyouhaven'texpereincedtheoriginalFalloutseriesorBaldur'sGatethenyou'renogamer."Boo!GofortheeyesBoo!"MostoftheseguysworkforObsidianthesedays.BrainFargohimselfiswithInExile.[/QUOTE]



Fully agree with you, BG2 is one of my all time favorite! In case you missed it, a remake of BG1 is coming soon, just google baldur's gate enhanced edition



Other game that I always go back to:

Star control 2

Shining Force 2

Phantasy Star 4





Honorable mention to Dune 2 and Xenosaga episode 1

Excellent titles there Ragdamar. I loved me some Shining Force II, but I loved turned based in general--reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics and the lesser known Tactics Ogre series.



Regarding the Dune Series, I loved Westwood's House Ordos, even though they aren't in the books they still fit so supremely into the setting.

Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor, Startopia, Simcity 4, Deus Ex and a bunch more. My NAS is almost filled up to the 2TB limit with backups of my old games that have either been lost to the strain of time, or which are about to.



These days I backup all of my games just in case of a nuclear war - I know for a fact I want to replay them in a few years time

Oh, I forgot how much I loved Heroes of Might and Magic III, best game ever. It's such a shame that the Heroes of Might and Magic series removed the original castles and replaced them in all games after III, but it's not like they could have made any improvements.

Since every thing up to PS2 i know run on an emulater on my desktop my list is a little harder to pick. But i have a few that will all ways stand out.



1. The legend of dragoon

2. Neverwinter

3. Baldur's Gate

4. Tales of series

5. Just about any thing Squaresoft made before becoming enix.



As you can see i favor RPGs.



First game that i remember was the duck hunting game on NES.



My pick for underrated is: Nexus the Jupiter Incident. I highly recommend it its on steam now i think. It was released in 04 and its graphics still beat some games today. The tactical game play is top notch as well and you cant beat the black sun engine.

Tales series is pretty fantastic. Mmm Deus Ex.



Oh and Harrel! You might want to check out Heroes of Might and Magic 6. It's a flawed game and it's start was deplorable-- but recent updates/patches have made it rather enjoyable--they added those town screens back into the game!

defekt wrote:
For me retro gaming harks back to a period in gaming history when the landscape was pretty much an independent one. The technology was a burgeoning one and at the time it wasn’t able to produce photo-realistic representation of its subject matter thus it relied on story and game-play, and left your imagination to fill in the gaps.



Today my favourite games are almost all independently developed because as far as I can see only the indie devs do a ‘good enough’ job with the technology and mostly hold on to the old ethic of: game-play first. The PC is also the perfect platform for such developers, and e-distro tools like Steam give indie devs a route into the market like no other. The AAA developers have enormous customer bases to keep happy thus the games that they churn out may look super-sharp but they’re very often dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Indie devs take a concept and try to make the very most of it; however, the AAA devs tend to take a good concept and do the bare minimum with it (then milk it with day 1 DLC that should have been in the game to begin with – EA, I’m looking at you here).

There's also the fact that some old games are unique. So if you want to play such kind of games... you have nothing "new" to play with.

For instance there's no game like King of Dragon Pass. And that's a shame.

VieuxChat wrote:
There's also the fact that some old games are unique. So if you want to play such kind of games... you have nothing "new" to play with.

For instance there's no game like King of Dragon Pass. And that's a shame.

They did re-release it tho.



"An updated version of the game was released for iOS on September 8, 2011. (This version was updated for iPad on September 6, 2012.) The original Windows version was re-released by GOG.com on August 28, 2012."



From wiki

VieuxChat wrote:
For instance there's no game like King of Dragon Pass. And that's a shame.

I beg to differ - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga



lol

Just to update my own self here, lately I've been absorbed in the old GameBoy Color game MagiNation. Don't know why, or how, but I found my old GBC with the game in it, and my downtime between classes has been so much more enjoyable now.



Now I just wonder if my old GBA with Final Fantasy 4 or 6 is still around...

Stronghold. (the very first one!)

Most of my old GBA games like YuGiOh the Sacred Cards, Pokemon Emerald and Golden Sun.

CNC Tiberian Dawn.



No matter how much people complain how the series changed they are almost always talking about CNC TibSun to CNC 3, I feel the change from the original to TibSun completely changed the setting and removed a lot of the settings from the original, it just felt too different in my opinion.

One thing that never seemed to change was Joe Kucan/Kane lol. Guy doesn't age! Vanilla CNC also had one of the best sound tracks ever. We have Frank Klepacki to thank for that! Act on Instinct is probably still my favorite.



I loved the Brotherhood of Nod. I'm sad that I won't be playing another game featuring them.

Same here!

Mainly some of my old Gameboy games. Golden Sun, Fire Emblem...Ahh, such great games.

System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and some of the pokemon games, and I guess Mass Effect 1 if you consider that an old game.

Original War. That game was criminally underrated.

Insolentius wrote:
Original War. That game was criminally underrated.

Hostile Waters fits that category, good game play and fantastic story.



If you looking for something to watch there is a silent LP of it from start to finish (Silent as in no commentary) and allows you to watch the whole story.

HI friends my name is ven cruise and Mario is that game for ever because it remembered me my chilhood days..................

Tetris on my gameboy color.



Ascendancy on my iPAD.



Sid Meier's Pirates on my pc.

The only really old game I still manage to find agreeable to play after all these years is... Dune 2. Such a classic!

What are some older you games you enjoy that you just can't have a PC without installing? Even if it's just a once every six month fling?



Master of Orion 2:

This one comes up in a lot of my posts now that I think about it. I think it's because Endless Space reminds me a great deal of it, as different as they may be. Hands down has to be my favorite 4x/civ game of all time. It just has so many different layers that come into play when you're playing, makes it truly feel like no game ever goes the same way twice. Several years of playing and I'm still squeezing fun out of it on average at least a weekly basis if not more. Espionage, diplomacy, custom factions, interesting and radically game changing faction traits. Just all around great game. It's held up for me after all these years! Many people claim this game is the yard stick measured up against 4x space civs. I'm inclined to agree.



Black Isle Studios:

(Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Fallout, Icewind Dale)

It would have taken far to long to list every game by Black Isle I love. I figured this would be far more simple. This developer was the Pre-EA Bioware of their time. Only, that would be an understatement, as I believe even Pre-EA Bioware pales in comparison. Everything this studio touched was gold. RPGs and immaculately seductive enthralling storytelling that would forever leave an impression on me. I miss this dedication to storytelling in gaming. I really do. I can go on forever on a tangent about these games, but I won't. All I will say is that I highly ---highly--- recommend them. You can bet your life that one or more of these games are always on my current PC. If you haven't expereinced the original Fallout series or Baldur's Gate then you're no gamer. "Boo! Go for the eyes Boo!" Most of these guys work for Obsidian these days. Brain Fargo himself is with InExile.



Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura:

Troika only ever put out handful of games (Most notably this one and VtM: Bloodlines).. But damn, were those games great. I particularly enjoyed this one. It was your typical fantasy setting with a very fun twist. Orgres, Orcs, Dwarves, Humans, Elves---and 1700s Victorian influenced steam punk. We're talking flying machines, zeppelins, clockwork tech, ect. You designed your character with magic or tech in mind on the principle that one cancels out the other. Magic bends reality. Tech harnesses reality. Neither can work together. Being a crafting nut in RPGs, this one was great. You could literally enter town, rummage through the trash bins, and build explosives and weapons in preparation for your next big undertaking. Furthermore, it has great replay value---Selecting different dialogue options, playing towards a certain moral alignment, playing a stupid character(changes your dialogue, quite funny), playing magic, playing tech, playing skill based? I still load it up every now and then. The soundtrack was also very pretty. The man theme, being this bleak and yet hopeful violin music.



Cid Mier's Alpha Centuari:

This one never got a sequel, which is sad. I hardly ever find myself playing the traditional earth-based Civilization Series. Something about being on earth is off-putting to me. The scale is to small perhaps. Or maybe I can't wrap my head around the Aztecs winning WW2. Or maybe I'm just a scifi nut? For me, Alpha Centauri was the awnser. You are the survivors of a human expedition to Alpha Centuari---presumably, the rocket launched under the victory condition in the Civilization series--Someone assassinates the captain and those with a following develop into several different factions that function differently (Your typical Sceince, Industry, Military, Population, ect based factions.).. You're often at odds not only with each other, but with the planet. Fun tiimes!



Starcraft/Broodwar:

And well... You all know this one! No need for commentary!



What are some of yours?

Fire Emblem, Dune 2, Pirates, Stronghold---all fantastic games!

Is Command and Conquer: Generals an old game?



I've also been playing Star Wars: Empire at War since it came out... although again, not sure if that's as "old" as we're talking about.



But Diablo 2 is old, right? I still hop into that once in a while (less often after my account got deleted and i lost my full vampire necro set)

By my count, yes.

No really old games - I enjoy my eye candy as well as good gameplay so I tend to only play modern games. But I do play Hearts of Iron 2 from time to time and recently got Arsenal of Democracy to see if it improves things. However I havent tried that yet as Ive been playing ES and Shogun 2 recently.



Other than that the only other oldish game is Falcon 4 which I dip into now and again but I played it to death years ago so I dont really pick it up much these days.



I have tried the odd really old games I used to play like Lords of Midnight and Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum gaming sites but I just cannot get into them now. Even though I loved all those old games I cant face playing them again. Probably because with the best games I played them to death when I bought them, and the slightly not so good games I didnt play a great deal then anyway. And either way, the graphics and resolutions of old games are so terrible comparedt o recent games that they make me cringe. They looked so great in those days though! I mean even quite modern games like Rome Total War and Medieval 2 look terrible now! You dont notice the degree of improvement in gaming until you look back at games like that, even ones that are only a few years old.



I will never understand retro gamers. Whats that all about?

You usually don't compare them to modern examples, and just enjoy them for what they are and were.



Personally I quite enjoy the worse graphical games as they often emphasized actual game play overlooks that only needed to be functional instead of actually good.



Nothing like seeing a characters face form the 90's!

nats wrote:
I will never understand retro gamers. Whats that all about?

I think because it's easier to appreciate an 8-Bit sprite rather than a brand-new 3D model whose hair clips a bit.

Plus, in older games, developers had to spend less time on graphics than in new games. I mean, Banjo Tooie (sequel to Banjo Kazooie) came out two years after the first game. How long was the wait time on Diablo 3?

I also think developers of old cared a bit more about their games than current-gen developers. The amount of time and effort put into Super Metroid almost definitely exceeds the amount of effort put into Metroid: Other M. It's another reason indie gaming has recently begun so popular: indie devs seem way more passionate about their games than publishers. Just compare Endless Space to the annoying frequency of new Call of Duty games.

It's a lot easier to be passionate about a game made by a developer who was passionate about it. Unless you're a non-thinker, like many CoD fans I've spoken to.

Fenrakk101 wrote:
I think because it's easier to appreciate an 8-Bit sprite rather than a brand-new 3D model whose hair clips a bit.

Plus, in older games, developers had to spend less time on graphics than in new games. I mean, Banjo Tooie (sequel to Banjo Kazooie) came out two years after the first game. How long was the wait time on Diablo 3?

I also think developers of old cared a bit more about their games than current-gen developers. The amount of time and effort put into Super Metroid almost definitely exceeds the amount of effort put into Metroid: Other M. It's another reason indie gaming has recently begun so popular: indie devs seem way more passionate about their games than publishers. Just compare Endless Space to the annoying frequency of new Call of Duty games.

It's a lot easier to be passionate about a game made by a developer who was passionate about it. Unless you're a non-thinker, like many CoD fans I've spoken to.

I would disagree on the comparison, while the fans may be questionable the COD series is a highly profitable multplayer shooter and is one of the most successful to date, its just smart business they would make more, it just more profit from what people want and with Blops2 (Black Ops 2) actually starting to majorly change the series we can kinda conclude the developers care about their game, after all it plays really well when you do it casually with some friends and looks cool.



Just because it is successful doesn't mean its a total cash cow, innovation still lives in the series and i can see it surviving for another decade or so before sales drop.

Igncom1 wrote:
I would disagree on the comparison, while the fans may be questionable the COD series is a highly profitable multplayer shooter and is one of the most successful to date, its just smart business they would make more, it just more profit from what people want and with Blops2 (Black Ops 2) actually starting to majorly change the series we can kinda conclude the developers care about their game, after all it plays really well when you do it casually with some friends and looks cool.



Just because it is successful doesn't mean its a total cash cow, innovation still lives in the series and i can see it surviving for another decade or so before sales drop.

I'm not saying it's not profitable. In fact, that's the exact problem: In today's gaming industry, profits are more important than the games themselves. Publishers don't care if their game is memorable or is still being played ten years from now, they only care about how much money they can stuff in their pocket after its release.



CoD may be profitable, but the games aren't exactly graceful. There are insane balance issues, multiplayer issues, etc. The kind of issues that don't exist in Halo, at least, not to nearly the same incredible extent.

Wah! I forgot about it, but it's still installed on my laptop somewhere: Lords of Magic! oO'

God knows that game was good. Mightily good! If anything like this exists somewhere, please people, I beg you to tell me!

Star Control series...



Decent Series...



FreeSpace Series...



Total Annihilation Series...



and the list goes on....

nats wrote:
I will never understand retro gamers. Whats that all about?

Its all about reviving the feelings you had for a game when you were a kid. That's what its about for me, heck I still miss being able to play YuGiOh cards because no one plays it any more.

I mean you can't tell me that if you fired up the first game you obsessed over you wouldn't enjoy it? Its like a an old favourite song that you got bored of long ago and forgot it, you can play it 10 years later and it brings back all those memories.



Also shiny graphics aren't the only things a game needs to be great, I mean I'd take GBA graphics over 3DS graphics any day. (may also have something to do with the nauseating effect that 3D has on me)

Then again while re-reading your post I can tell we're talking about two different games of soldiers, I go back and play my gameboy and you're talking about computer games, which do age a lot faster IMO. Probably because they were considered graphical marvels in their day whereas with the GBA you never had that, it was just about the game.



Oh and just for the record Igncom CoD sucks and has brought down my favourite modern gen shooter game gears to a casual pile of poo. Just saying, devs are casualising their games to try and get at the CoD market and it annoys me.