Retro Videogames

[AntiBeeSpray]

What are some of your favorites? What drew you into them? Do you still play them?

 

I still have my old PS2 and love a lot of the games that came out for it.

 

Some of the games I have for it:

 

Draken: The Ancients' Gates -- It's great to be able to play as a strong female character and be able to fight off evil.

 

Dark Cloud series (1 & 2) -- A pair of my favorite PS2 games, they're both fun to play.

 

Final Fantasy X -- Really like playing this game, and the battling set up isn't hard to learn.

[Jac]

I still have my PS2 as well. 

 

I play Spyro the Dragon, the Need for Speed Underground games and the Tony Hawk games. 

 

I have a Sega Megadrive (Genesis) at my parents place and I love it even more than the PS2. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Bubsy and Toejam and Earl and California Games are the best

[Dandesun]

Oh, man... based on this I go beyond retro. I remember cutting my gaming teeth on Infocom's text adventures... particularly Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I was a huge Sierra games fan. HUGE.

[AntiBeeSpray]

Oh, man... based on this I go beyond retro. I remember cutting my gaming teeth on Infocom's text adventures... particularly Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I was a huge Sierra games fan. HUGE.

Don't worry. There's no limit on retro :). We all have different takes on it. The ones I listed are just examples, ones from when I was younger.

[Dandesun]

Jane Jensen was responsible for the Gabriel Knight series (my all time fave) and I did a Kickstarter that has resulted in Moebius (which I quite like) but a 20th Anniversary re-release of Gabriel Knight which is supposed to hopefully judge support for further GK stuff. I've been play testing GK and it's been delightful to get back into that world.

 

GK3 always gets a bad rap for one truly awful puzzle that so many were like 'THIS IS EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH ADVENTURE GAMES!' At the same time, it never gets the credit for the Le Serpent Rogue puzzles which were stellar. The 3-D engine it was made with was downright primitive and did cause some problems but I still think the story was very strong and downright creepy in parts. I can forgive quite a bit when the story is good.

 

Coming upon the pile of bodies in 'The Colonel's Bequest' is still one of the creepiest moments I had in gaming... and that was with old EGA style graphics! The atmosphere of the game itself (and, come on, at the time the graphics were just fine!) made it all work.

[Hybridcookie]

I still have my Sega Megadrive, but I only have a few games left and I can't work it with my TV.

I still have my PS2 as well - I LOVED the Harry Potter games, Chamber of Secrets was my favourite. I was so happy when they put all the Sonic sega games on to one PS2 disc - even the blue sphere game (which we always called the Cabbage Patch game)

[Danny Franks]

Final Fantasy VII was the most epic of epic games, for me. The first RPG I really played, and it left a lasting impact. I can still vividly remember so much of it, and was completely caught up in the (admittedly emo) storyline, as a fifteen year old. It's the only game I played for about five or six hours straight.

 

I had a Mega Drive as a kid, and there were so many great games for it. Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage II were favourites, as was Golden Axe. Toejam and Earl was addictive, if infuriating and so painfully early 90s that I'm not sure I could bear to play it now. Gunstar Heroes was a great game, and probably one of the best to be released on the Mega Drive. Flashback wasn't far behind.

 

I absolutely adored Desert Strike and Jungle Strike, and I can still play the first level of Desert Strike in my head, now. At the time, it felt like games would never get any better than those.

 

Going back a bit further, and there's stuff like Cannon Fodder and Mega-Lo-Mania and Populous, which I played on my Atari ST. And some fantastic old point-and-click games: The Secret of Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky (best game title ever), Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max: Hit The Road.

 

TIE Fighter has to be the best Star Wars game there was, up until Knights of the Old Republic was released. And that's old enough now to be classed as retro, I guess. KOTOR is the best story I've come across in the entire Star Wars universe, including the movies.

 

Dune II, the precursor to the Command & Conquer games, has always been a favourite of mine. As were the Age of Empires games. I love real time strategy. And with that, I suppose I also have to class Medieval: Total War, and probably even Medieval 2, as retro. That's a depressing thought. Both games, and the Rome: Total War that was sandwiched by them, were incredible in every way. And one more strategy game that was really novel and unusual, Herzog Zwei, the first multiplayer strategy game I played, and had the odd take of you controlling a sort of super unit throughout, which could deploy your tanks and soldiers around the battlefield.

 

Going back to the classic SIERRA titles, does anyone remember a game called Codename: Iceman? A crazy, Bond ripoff spy game, where the entire first act revolved around finding the woman on the island resort that you're supposed to have sex with, to move the plot forward. My 12 year old brain could barely contain the gleeful wonder of being able to type 'fuck woman' into the text bar, and for my character to respond, 'what? From over here?'

 

I miss those great old games houses, now. SIERRA, Lucasarts, U.S. Gold, Ocean Software. Names from my childhood, and all gone now. Well, I guess Lucasarts is still around, but it's been a long while since they made any games of any consequence to me.

Edited September 18, 2014 by Danny Franks

[JayKay]

My household was (well, my brother and me) very into video games growing up. We started with the first Nintendo and continue(d) from there. The Carmen Sandiego games on Sega Genesis were an obsession. I remember trying to decipher clues alongside my brother and grandfather after school. Where in the World and Where in Time were awesome edutainment games that were not only fun, but made you feel like a badass for finally tracking down a brilliant criminal. Sonic the Hedgehog was huge for us, as well as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. I used to watch my brother play a lot of games and we'd combine brainpower to beat most of them, as if I was the Oracle to his Batman. I also had a weird, obsessive Galaga phase, but let's not talk about that.

 

Most of the classic Nintendo games were played at one point or another. Mario Go-Kart should not have torn my family apart, but sometimes pixels are thicker than blood. And fuck that dog from Duck Hunt for attacking my self-esteem at such a tender young age.

 

Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast remains one of my favorite games ever. Being a dockworker was my "first job" and first taste of earning my own money... to blow on squid legs to feed an orphan kitten and capsule toy vending machines. Then I got attacked by a drunk I'd underestimated in a dark alley on my way home one night, and Shenmue became more than a game. Shenmue scarred me.

 

I've been playing Final Fantasy VIII on my phone, and I don't care if the magic system is broken and the GF animations take too damn long - still my favorite Final Fantasy. Way back when the game was new and I was just getting into JRPGs, my brother couldn't beat Adel and kept killing Rinoa. I cried out of despair. And that was how we discovered the concept of level-grinding. That game got to me like no other.

 

(I kind of just want to babble about Final Fantasies now; someone please make a thread.)

[AntiBeeSpray]

Here ya go :).

 

I've been getting into the Final Fantasy series lately myself too.

[Hybridcookie]

I had a Mega Drive as a kid, and there were so many great games for it. Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage II were favourites, as was Golden Axe. Toejam and Earl was addictive, if infuriating and so painfully early 90s that I'm not sure I could bear to play it now. Gunstar Heroes was a great game, and probably one of the best to be released on the Mega Drive. Flashback wasn't far behind.

 

 

 

Gunstar Heroes was amazing. Me and my step sister used to play it every weekend when we were little, but we could never complete it together. I did manage to complete it to my own though. Golden Axe was fun, I loved the magic stuff you could throw in the air and the dragon things you could ride.

 

I don't think I ever played Streets of Rage 2, but I loved the first one. I was always Blaze, despite her not being as strong as the guys - 'cause I loved the flippy over things she did

[Danny Franks]

Gunstar Heroes was amazing. Me and my step sister used to play it every weekend when we were little, but we could never complete it together. I did manage to complete it to my own though. Golden Axe was fun, I loved the magic stuff you could throw in the air and the dragon things you could ride.

 

I don't think I ever played Streets of Rage 2, but I loved the first one. I was always Blaze, despite her not being as strong as the guys - 'cause I loved the flippy over things she did

 

Gunstar Heroes was just amazing, when you consider the amount of stuff on screen, and the way it just flowed so smoothly. The bosses were flat out weird, but still fun to fight.

 

Streets of Rage 2 was better than the first one, in my view. Longer and with better levels. And instead of Adam, who was really just the same as Axel, you had two different playable characters alongside Axel and Blaze. Skate, Adam's younger brother, who was quick and nimble, and Max, the big powerhouse guy. It felt like a more rounded game. I love the awesome techno soundtrack as well.

[ShadowDenizen]

My fondest RPG memory goes back to first the "Final Fantasy" (for ORIGINAL NES) series, and then to "Phantasy Star" for the Sega master system. (When Phantasy Star 3 came out, and you could have GENERATIONS of characters? Mind.Blown.)

 

I also love, love, LOVE the old SSI Gold-Box D+D games. (Silver Blade, Azure Bonds and Pool of Radiance.).

 

I'm also a sucker ofr any horror-based games (esp. ones with a Lovecraftian feel to them.)

 

And who can forget "EARTHBOUND" for the SNES?

Edited September 22, 2014 by ShadowDenizen

[AntiBeeSpray]

I have Earthbound on my Wii U. Nintendo finally put it out on the eshop. It's definitely different, that's for sure.

[ShadowDenizen]

Oooh! Spill!

(The Wii-U is the only modern console I haven't bought.)

[AntiBeeSpray]

Oooh! Spill!

(The Wii-U is the only modern console I haven't bought.)

It's worth getting. I've had it since last winter and it works pretty well. Doesn't run too hot. Got some other games for it too.

 

Will go and make a thread for modern console talk, so we can take it there :).

 

Here ya' go

[Abra Came]

Atari 2600--Favorite game was Warlords, because four players could all play at once.  There were many Friday nights at my mom's, with sodas, popcorn, friends and Warlords.  Later, my friend's dad had the Leisure Suit Larry games (PC) and we wasted hours snickering over those--ooh, racy!  By the time I got a PS2, my reflexes were pretty much shot and I moved away from shooters toward other types of games.  The Bard's Tale was interesting and occasionally hilarious, it became my all-time favorite PS2 game.

[Hybridcookie]

Gunstar Heroes was just amazing, when you consider the amount of stuff on screen, and the way it just flowed so smoothly. The bosses were flat out weird, but still fun to fight.

 

Streets of Rage 2 was better than the first one, in my view. Longer and with better levels. And instead of Adam, who was really just the same as Axel, you had two different playable characters alongside Axel and Blaze. Skate, Adam's younger brother, who was quick and nimble, and Max, the big powerhouse guy. It felt like a more rounded game. I love the awesome techno soundtrack as well.

 

Yeah there were some very strange bosses and bad guys - I always seemed to get 'Curry and Rice' in the Dice Palace, it was very annoying. Lightning Chaser was always the weapon I used, by far the best.

 

Thanks to the comments in this thread, I managed to find a website to play all of the old Sega games, so I bought a USB controller to play with and I finally got to play Streets of Rage 2+3. I also found the unofficial Streets of Rage remake game, which is amazing

[ShadowDenizen]

I bought the "Mega-Man Classics" set (which comples teh first 8 MM games), since it was super-cheap.
 

And I realized that my refelxes are NOT what they were 20+ years ago....  I beat most of these as a teenager, and I'm hard-pressed to get through a single-level now.

 

It kinda made me sad.

 

 

[Dandesun]

In the 90s, I had my youngest sister on my lap as we played "Mixed-Up Fairy Tales" "Pepper's Adventures in Time" "Eco-Quest (1 & 2)" and both my younger sisters would play 'The Island of Dr. Brain' with me. I do feel I was an integral reason why my youngest sister grew up to be a gamer herself... she loves MMORPGs and has gotten into FPS games as well.

 

My other sister is something of a scaredy cat (we all are actually but for one who seems as tough as she is, she's really not) and refused to watch any more of 'The Colonel's Bequest' after I went outside and the caption was something along the lines of it being dark and forbidding. She tried again with 'Phantasmagoria' and I didn't blame her one iota for walking out of watching me play. That one scared the crap out of me (again... weenie) but the thing about that one was that you had to behave like a dumb-ass character in a horror movie to even proceed in the game. We're digging around the basement of this old, creepy home that our character has bought with her husband... hey, where is that wind coming from? A hole in this bricked up wall? Let's tear it down and go in. What's this book that has rocks piled on top of it on this crazy altar?

 

My sister was like "DON'T OPEN THAT BOOK!!" I mean, I didn't want to, either... obviously something horrible was in there (spoiler: there was) but I was like "If we don't open the book the game doesn't continue." And she just goes "I don't care!" and walks out.

 

I can't blame her at all. I slugged through that game and still have nightmares about certain things that happen in it. It's the only game I've ever return. I traded it in for Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within -- which has it's own level of horror when one discovers the den in the woods but, overall, the story in far more interesting and not as grossly gory.

[Danny Franks]

The first Silent Hill game creeped me out something fierce. Well, me and all my friends at uni. We hit on the bright idea of playing it late at night, with the lights off. There is some seriously weird shit in that game, from the skinless babies with knifehands to the disturbing ghosts that just wander aimlessly in circles. Such an unsettling atmosphere to the whole game, and one not easily forgotten.

 

I'm crap with anything scary as well, because I have a very vivid imagination, and can't help but think about that sort of stuff, afterwards. Resident Evil 2 was about my limit, and even then I flaked out during Claire's storyline, when that big dude kept appearing at random, crashing through walls and sending you fleeing.

 

The original Alien vs Predator game was a masterclass in the suspense fear of the franchise movies. When playing as the marine, and you're wandering the corridors of abandoned mining facilities, and there's nothing to be seen and then... ping. Your motion sensor goes off. You still can't see anything, but you know there's something in there with you,  getting closer. Brilliant gaming experience.

[ShadowDenizen]

Truly scaring your audience? That's a REALLY hard thing to accomplish, and it gets harder every day as people (especially kids) get more and more jaded every year.  True fear-based gaming relies on more than just buckets of blood, or sudden "Boo" moments; it needs to be something more personal, and built into the thematic core of the game.

 

Personally speaking, I will, WITHOUT FAIL, take a carefully crafted surivival-horror game over any of the mass-market blockbuster games that they churn out. 

 

Try playing "Dark Corners of the Earth" and tell me you're not COMPLETELY freaked out by it!

[immortalfrieza]

Horror only really works with subtlety and atmosphere, which is something that most "horror" game developers these days just don't seem to get. It's not about making the player helpless or throwing boo scare after boo scare at them and in fact it's better if they don't because it just gets annoying rather than scary. One can be a walking arsenal and still be scared out of their mind, it's about how they play with their expectations and especially how they keep the player constantly on edge, which makes the eventual Boo! scares so much more effective.

 

Silent Hill 2 is usually brought up  as the epitome of Horror games and it deserves the title because it understands the above and implements it well, and nothing horror since has managed to scare me anywhere near as much after that, not even games in the same series.

 

 

I bought the "Mega-Man Classics" set (which comples teh first 8 MM games), since it was super-cheap.
 

And I realized that my refelxes are NOT what they were 20+ years ago....  I beat most of these as a teenager, and I'm hard-pressed to get through a single-level now.

 

It kinda made me sad.

I've beaten the entire collection, and yes, it is ridiculously difficult, but not because of anything needing skill. I find most of the NES classic games to be pretty cheap when it comes to their difficulty because they tend to require incredibly precise movement to avoid dying a lot of the time. I find that until 7 and 8 eased up on it most of the difficulty from these games comes from the very small margin of error that the games allow most of the time, such as having to jump just right or you fall into a bed of spikes, or a boss will take out half your health with one shot, that sort of thing.

 

Personally I much prefer the X series because it hits the difficulty sweet spot for me, not difficult to the point of being cheap about it nor a cakewalk either, while 7 and 8 also hit that spot. I'd also say they have a better storyline too.

Edited October 4, 2014 by immortalfrieza

[Dandesun]

 

Silent Hill 2 is usually brought up  as the epitome of Horror games and it deserves the title because it understands the above and implements it well, and nothing horror since has managed to scare me anywhere near as much after that, not even games in the same series.

 

To this day, I'm not fully able to explain WHY I bought Silent Hill 2. I played maybe five minutes tops of that game and it scared me enough that... yeah... Just that opening walk to the town... where nothing actually happens to you but you keep hearing things and you've got nothing on you and all of this. By the time I made it to the town proper with it's fog enshrouded streets and, most importantly, that smeared trail of blood in the middle of the road...

 

I just wanted to turn around and go back. I think I made it to the first encounter with a creepy ass thing and turned it the hell off.

 

On the upside, when my friends came to visit, they played so it got some further use.

 

I really did prefer the likes of Shivers to Phantasmagoria. In Shivers, you do rather stupidly agree to spend the night in a 'haunted' museum on a dare from your friends. I can't excuse that as thinking along the lines of 'Yeah, urban legend stuff. It's not really haunted.' Whereas in Phantasmagoria... I'm sorry, when someone has made that much of an effort to hide something away and keep it closed... don't open it, you stupid stupid bag of meat!

 

Phantasmagoria was all "Let's watch visions of this insane magician brutally murder his various wives! And then get raped by our husband who has been possessed by the thing we set free from that awful box thingy!" Yes, the character gets raped by her possessed husband (to be fair, they were very upfront about it when the game came out and gave the player the option to skip the scene) and there is no happy ending for this game save for your character surviving. I would say it was a very ambitious game that pushed a lot of boundaries as to what computer gaming could be but it certainly wasn't my cup of tea.

 

I found Shivers to be more interesting because even though you find out that the mansion is, in fact, haunted... you aren't the one who caused it but you are the one who can fix it. It was all done in first person view and the feeling was very tense as you were figuring out where the pieces were to trap the spirits that were attacking you and sucking out your life force. Plus, the museum itself along with the soundtrack... the two places I hated the most were the elevator because you get in and it's this light elevator music and you think you're safe (you are, actually) but then this heavy, doom-filled chord sounds that just rips any thought of safety from you... and the Man's Inhumanity to Man room because... that subject in and of itself is pretty awful and the exhibits they had showed that very well. Still, I was actively participating in fixing what was wrong as opposed to dealing with shit I had purposely set loose.

 

My absolute favorite series is Gabriel Knight, though. I love the atmosphere of each one, the storylines, the mixture of logic and supernatural, the relationships between the characters. The first one, I think, is just outstanding the way the story unfolds...  not just what's going on in New Orleans but the thread that gets pulled opening up into a much much wider spectrum. And the more you discover the more dangerous it gets. I love it whole heartedly.

[Elsydeon]

So many classics to talk about and so little time to do so.

 

My fondest RPG memory goes back to first the "Final Fantasy" (for ORIGINAL NES) series, and then to "Phantasy Star" for the Sega master system. (When Phantasy Star 3 came out, and you could have GENERATIONS of characters? Mind.Blown.)

 

PS III gets way too much hate from PS fans IMO. It is my least favorite game of the 4, the battle system is kind of clunky and takes a bit to get used to, and the characters aren't developed much, if at all, but it's not horrible. PS IV, on the other hand, is not only my favorite game of the series, it's also my all-time favorite game period. There's just so much to love about it. The only other game that came close to dethroning PS IV was Legend of Dragoon.

[JayKay]

Legend of Dragoon was awesome. The graphics beat all of the other RPGs of that era. And the fighting was more fun than regular turn-based games. Plus the twists were good, the story fleshed out and the characters were cool. Definitely a forgotten gem.

[ShadowDenizen]

Oh and "Earthbound"?'

Is the greatest SNES game, bar none. 

[Sandman87]

So just how recent can a game be and still qualify as retro here? Five years old? Ten? Twenty?

[Elsydeon]

So just how recent can a game be and still qualify as retro here? Five years old? Ten? Twenty?

 

I think any game that came out before the PS3/Wii/360 era would be considered retro.

[joelene]

I never bought a console after PS1 (except a DS, but even then I only bought Mario and Metroid games and Chrono Trigger, heh) so I keep playing my old ones over and over.

I still love Mega Man, Super Mario and Metroid on Nintendo 8-bit. Those and Ufouria I was the most obsessed with. Then on Super Nintendo I started to love RPGs. Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI. Those three series carried over to PS1 and I still play and love them. Xenogears was another favorite. Quite the mess of a story but I was so affected by it. It really moved me. I still listen to the soundtrack to this day.

Edited November 1, 2014 by joelene

[Sandman87]

I think I'll blow some minds here by mentioning the first computer game I ever played (at school): Hunt the Wumpus. On a teletype machine connected to a mainframe at one of the U.C. campuses via a phone cradle modem. "I smell a Wumpus!"

 

Yeah, our school didn't exactly have cutting edge technology, because it was all old donated stuff. Eventually the teletype paper ran out, and we figured out that we could use the rolls of paper towel from the dispensers in the bathrooms instead. Good times...good times...

[JayKay]

My favorite retro game from school was Oregon Trail. You could put in the names of your friends or your enemies, but either way it was hilarious when they died.

[ae2]

In fifth grade math class, the first person done with a quiz would get to play Oregon Trail (and get a soft pretzel!) Needless to say, I became really quick at quizzes.

 

My older brother worked at a video game store, one of those that rented video games out. (Yes, actual stores like that existed.) He would get tasked with bringing home games for testing. Or at least that's what he told me, now that I'm older, I'm not so sure :) I'm very much a classics guy - Mario, Metroid, Mega Man, Zelda, Donkey Kong. The one stand out to me that isn't so popular is Paperboy. For some reason I loved that game. I wanted to go as him for Halloween, but no one would have gotten it.

 

I played Jeopardy on the Sega until I got to the point where I knew nearly all the responses by rote. 

 

On the PS1 it was always Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. On N64 it was Mario Kart and Golden Eye. I'm really awful at new versions of these games.

 

More recently, my SO has gotten me into some more adventure games. Spyro, Banjo Tooie, Crash Bandicoot. 

[PrincessEnnui]

Paperboy was one of my mom's favorite games, along with Pitfall! She got those two games for us over the summer and the family watched and laughed and got frustrated. Oh man, I want to break out my Genesis. I just recently found my Power Rangers cartridge for it. You know, the one with the Megazords as playable characters. XD

[BizBuzz]

Oh fun!

 

I feel like such a dork, cause my retro games were mostly PC and they were things like Myst and The Summining. 

 

I had an old Xbox that finally tanked earlier this year.  I had all sorts of games for it, but one that I played over and over again was Toe Jam and Earl.  Oh yeah, and Sponge Bob.  ::giggle::

 

I did a hugely early version of Final Fantasy, it was way too much work for me (I play games to escape from having to think too hard!) so I gave it up.  I played through the first version of StarTrek TNG, that was fun. 

 

Two games that are STILL on my computer?  You will laugh.  Age of Empires and Descent <--- who didn't play this one?

 

As far as game consoles go, I only have Wii now, and that is mostly for group stuff.  And a great way for my daughter and I to get some exercise.

[ShadowDenizen]

Toe Jam and Earl.

TOEJAM & EARL!

I loved that! It was the spiritual successor to the old "ET" game!  :)

 

And add in "Battletoads"; yes, they were a low-rent clone of the TMNT, but their games were SO MUCH BETTER than the Turtles games.

 

And the other game I lvoed, loved. loved was the stand-up arcade version of the SImpsons, where you could have 4 players at the same time? TOTAL quarter muncher, but so awesome for the time!

[BizBuzz]

OMG, speaking of quarter munchers.  My arcade game of choice was always Centipede.  I was newly married in 1981, and how did I spend my new found freedom?  We would go down to the grocery store at 10pm at night to play this game.  I swear that if I had all the quarters that I wasted on that, Space Invaders, Gorf, Galaga and PacMan, I would be rich today.

[ShadowDenizen]

The WORST of the quarter-muchers was "Dragons Lair", though, no question.

At a whoppping DOLLAR a play, a game could literally last 20 seconds.

 

It was all about pattern recogntion.  And in those heady pre-Internetz days, you had to pony up the cash to play to learn the patterns. (And the "guides" onscreen always flashed a second too late to be of any use!!) 

[JayKay]

Oh wow, Toe Jam and Earl! That takes me back. And Battletoads! The giant fists! The flying vehicles! Remember when they teamed up with Double Dragon? It was so weird and so cool.

 

I downloaded the Simpsons Arcade game from XBox Live but never got to play it when it was current. I do remember playing the heck out of the Itchy & Scratchy videogame on Super Nintendo, though. A lot of fun and unsurprisingly very violent, but also cheap-hard and I still don't feel too bad for Scratchy when he gets abused because of that game's bad/unresponsive controls. He was worse than the Abominable Snowman from SkiFree.

 

Another fun but family destroying game was Spy vs. Spy on Nintendo. You had a split screen and you played as a spy setting traps in various similar rooms to kill the other spy while collecting certain items hidden in the rooms. Sometimes there were crude knife fights to the death if you ended up in the same room at the same time. And then real fights would break out in the household when the other player spent more time watching your screen to see where you set your traps than playing the game. And since the rooms looked so alike, sometimes you'd kill yourself with your own traps. But overall it was great because it was a strategy and memory game plus it made you feel like Culkin in Home Alone.

[ShadowDenizen]

Anoterh of my favorite time-killers as a kid were the gold-box SSI D+D games...

 

Azure Bonds, Pool of Radiance, and Secret of the Silver Blades.

You remember 'em, with rudimentary pre-Internetz copy-protection...   

 

And the Dragonlance set was awesome, too!

[Sandman87]

You forgot Pools of Darkness. The Forgotten Realms Gold Box games were the very first that I bought when I got my first computer. I remember how amazed I was that a combat that would have taken hours to play out with dice and a paper map could be resolved in a few minutes on a computer. Of the four I think Silver Blades was my favorite.

 

SSI also put out Adventures Unlimited, which allowed you to waste three times as much time by letting you design your own games and then play them.

[ShadowDenizen]

I didn't forget Pools of Darkness.

I choose to pretend that it didn't exist.  (Ha Ha.)

 

The SSI games didn't dumb downt heir combats either, which I liked.  You were reliant on you postiioning your characters correctly, and knowing the best spell to cast in any situation (like wehn to use "Fireball" vs "Lightning Bolt".

 

But as a longtime Realms fan,  the coolest part was interacting with the signature characters and exploring singnature places.  And to think.. This was all pre-Drizzt, if I recall correctly!!

[joelene]

Another fun but family destroying game was Spy vs. Spy on Nintendo. You had a split screen and you played as a spy setting traps in various similar rooms to kill the other spy while collecting certain items hidden in the rooms. Sometimes there were crude knife fights to the death if you ended up in the same room at the same time. And then real fights would break out in the household when the other player spent more time watching your screen to see where you set your traps than playing the game. And since the rooms looked so alike, sometimes you'd kill yourself with your own traps. But overall it was great because it was a strategy and memory game plus it made you feel like Culkin in Home Alone.

LOVED Spy vs. Spy. Should still be at my parents, I need to pull it out next time i visit.

Edited November 22, 2014 by joelene

[Elsydeon]

BattleToads is EVIL. I could never get past that accursed third level.

 

On the subject of EarthBound/Mother 3:

 

I must be the only person that is okay with Porky not dying at the end. That's the biggest complaint most people have with the ending- that you don't get to kill him. In my opinion, he got a worse fate than dying. Think about it- why did Porky do all the horrible things he did? Because he was bored. Everything started because this little twerp wanted to relieve boredom. And after all the pain he caused, he'll spend eternity locked away in a capsule, unable to escape and relieve his boredom.

[Dandesun]

After spending the last few months buying a house and moving I finally had a free day on Sunday to veg out and play games. I finished the 20th anniversary remake of Gabriel Knight and really enjoyed it. I loved the story in the first place and the tweaks they made throughout the game worked out pretty well.

 

They added a couple of puzzles and also added some creepy additions... like the strange triplets in front of the police station and the cut-scene after sneaking into Mosley's office. What's interesting is that I don't recall the triplets from the novelization of the game but I DO remember the strangeness of the police station at that point and I really like how they added that in.

 

I did NOT get max points so I look forward to playing again.

[MarkHB]

The Internet Archive (home of the Wayback Machine) is making a bunch of old MS-DOS games available for free play via an in-browser emulator.  Oregon Trail, Prince of Persia, some of the Leisure Suit Larry's.....

[scarynikki12]

IT HAS SIMFARM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Ahem, I may or may not have already wasted hours playing the games on the site.

[PrincessEnnui]

I played both The Oregon Trail and The Oregon Trail Deluxe before I had to stop, before punching my computer screen. To quote Mac from The Thing, "cheating bitch." XD Couldn't help but notice Dragon Lair, SimAnt, SimCity, and (personal fave) Golden Axe. Love dem dragons! Hell, I love all the mounts.

[Dandesun]

I see the Castle of Dr. Brain on there as well as Conquests of the Longbow (no Conquests of Camelot, though, odd)... whee! The various different Sim games... man, I remember when there seemed to be SimEverything. Various Carmen SanDiego games...  LOTS of Sierra games of old.. especially ones I've wanted to introduce my niece and nephews to.

 

Oh, this is going to be a major timesink.

[AntiBeeSpray]

I played both The Oregon Trail and The Oregon Trail Deluxe before I had to stop, before punching my computer screen. To quote Mac from The Thing, "cheating bitch." XD Couldn't help but notice Dragon Lair, SimAnt, SimCity, and (personal fave) Golden Axe. Love dem dragons! Hell, I love all the mounts.

 

Nice! I love that game :).

 

The Internet Archive (home of the Wayback Machine) is making a bunch of old MS-DOS games available for free play via an in-browser emulator.  Oregon Trail, Prince of Persia, some of the Leisure Suit Larry's.....

 

Sweet! I miss playing that old game! Nice find.

 

Just found a decent PS2 today at Goodwill along with a good PS2 controller, hoping it works ok. Just have to clean it out.

[Dandesun]

My niece and nephews (ages ranging from 8 to 4) were visiting yesterday and I finally got to introduce them to some of the retro games thanks to the Internet Archive.

 

First we played Mixed-Up Mother Goose which they LOVED. The funny thing to me is that they didn't really know all of those nursery rhymes. The oldest, my niece, knew more than the boys but they were all super interested in finding all of the missing pieces and getting them back where they belonged. "Let's look at the map!" It was so fun to listen to them give directions and suggest different routes to things. They had a ball. After that, I pulled up Mixed-Up Fairy Tales. Now, when that first came out in the early 90s, my youngest sister (well both of them really) would play the various games with me. My youngest sister cites Mixed-Up Fairy Tales as a major influence on her love of classical music. (She went on to study and sing opera in college and, since graduating, has consistently worked for various operas and symphonies... on the business side, she's not interested in performing so I'd say she's been successful there.)

 

We kept running into problems with the Fairy Tales, though. The game locked up several times so I may have to go a different route with that one. I ended up downloading Pepper's Adventures in Time and playing it through DosBox and they were loving that one, too. The youngest was more interested in playing airplane with an empty box (he's four, what do you want?) But the older two, 6 and 8, were helping each other out, reading the text aloud, using the Truth button and then asking me for help here and there. It was awesome.