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Some Origin oldies but goodies.

Their Adventure Game of the Year is The Adventures of Fatman. Unfortunately, the link to the developer they provide doesn't tell you where to get it, only that it's been released as abandonware.
Naturally, HOTU has it, unfortunately minus the voices.

If someone managed to get the full (with voices) version, I'm sure HOTU would be grateful for a rip...

I think this DIY idea is good, though. It reminds me of The Home of the Underdags, a really nice website...

totally flaunted the rules of physics and logic and is one of the best games ever.

Stunt Car Racer

ICO is, of course, an excellent example and is probably one of the best modern exhibits of emotion in games MSNBC could have used (too bad they robbed it of that by spoiling the rather poignant ending). I like that someone mentioned KOTOR, as that probably consisted of the most cinematic emotional attachment I've ever experienced in a game (and most certainly Episode I & II).

Still, I love how these articles act as if this is something new. Likewise, the creater of Facade and Warren Spector, both of whom should have known better. In fact, as good as Deus Ex and System Shock were, all of Spector's work pales in comparison to what I experienced in Grim Fandango (and I'll save you the MSNBC treatment and not give away the ending). Facade sounds remarkably like Space Bar to me, only not in space or talking to three headed aliens, but the one-act emotional play is definitely borrowed, even if unknowingly. Of course, as always Planescape: Torment gets no love, even though it do created emotional attachments but within the context of a deceptively standard fare RPG.

More recently, interactive fiction (a fancy phrase for text adventure) has evolved to produce some amazingly emotional games as of late. After finishing the 30 minute Photopia, I sat in a daze for several minutes and then started to (I feel vulnerable here) cry. Easily the most intense emotional experience I've had playing a game, and certainly on the same level, in my opinion, as great literature.

Secondly, I think ICO represents Japan's open acceptance of emotions in games. While I rarely connect with the Japanese emotional experience as I did with ICO, this is most likely due to cultural nuances than my own fault, and there are exceptions. I hesitate to say it as it's a strong statement to use, but playing the fifth level of REZ was about as emotionally religious of an experience I think a video game could ever create. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, even Metal Gear Solid; all these are representative that while I may not necessarily "get it," the Japanese obviously do not shy away from emotion in games like Americans do. Likewise, Europeans don't seem to have a problem with emotion. The potent Beyond Good & Evil, while I have yet to finish it, is shaping up that way as well, and Prince of Persia (which might as well have been European) attempts something similar, albeit a little less concentrated. I would assert that American gameplay, in either its intentional or non-intentional attempt at open-ended gameplay (from GTA to Battlefield 1942), is generally on a steady course of avoiding emotions, or relying on violence to propogate them. Miyamoto (Mario, Zelda) has made note in multiple interviews of Americans' over-reliance on violence to create emotion. He's right. Of course, this ought not be surprising when American industry leaders like Carmack decry story in video gaming every chance they get.

Finally, as a postscript I'm not entirely sure MSNBC ought to be asking Spector anyway. Oh, yeah, I think he's a gaming god like anyone else, and that moment in System Shock 2 when you walk into the room . . . (oh wait, I'm not MSNBC). But the latest incarnation of Deus Ex was about as emotionally involving as the default Windows XP screensaver. Perhaps he'll redeem himself with Thief III?

Freespace 2 is one of those great games which makes you wonder why on earth it didn't sell better.

In fact, I believe it is one of the only mass-produced American games to sell for more than the original MSRP on eBay several years after its release. It's not uncommon for a copy of FS2 to sell for $75.

But enough on the price of the game. The game itself is sweet. Gameplay is simply awesome. The graphics are amazing -- not even taking their age into consideration.

I've only played the CD-rip version of the game which didn't include the music, cutscenes, voices, or cinematics (which I am told are some of the best parts of the game). Even still, the gameplay is excellent, the storyline is pretty cool, and it's addicting as hell. (Word to the wise: Don't start this game the week before exams!). It's a pretty unique experience being caught in the midst of two capital ships battling it out, and has yet to be duplicated in any other game.

Plus, the engine's open source! There's a working linux port and a mac port! (The mac version is still under development and doesn't have a permanent website. You have to hunt around to find it). Even cooler is that a bunch of coders ported the entire Freespace 1 campagin to the FS2 engine.

So. In short, go out and buy this game! You will not regret it. It has much more longetivity and replay-value than most games made today.

Oh yeah. You can still download the CD-Rip for free. Chances are that HOTU will take it down in the next few days, as the game is now commercially availible once more. (Would somebody seed this as a torrent?)

has this anything to do with it?

HOTU Overview An absolute and addictive gem of a game.

Did you play Shufflepuck on it? Playing that game on an old Mac SE was one of the first "holy shit" computing experiences of my life. I'm sure it would have worked just fine on a Mac Plus, provided you moved the unnecessary biomedical equipment out of the way.

Universe 1
Universe 2
Universe 3

Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing :)

Universe 1
Universe 2
Universe 3

Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing :)

Universe 1
Universe 2
Universe 3

Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing :)

Universe 1
Universe 2
Universe 3

Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing :)

IMHO, I think that the worst trend that has been hitting the PC gaming industry in recent years is a near-total lack of serious innovation and originality. The kinds of trends described in the article are nothing compared to this. Compared to the 1980's and early 1990's, the games of today seem to me anyway, comparatively lackluster and boring. Every major gaming company seems to be suffering from a me-too syndrome that causes the market to flood with dozens of similar games on the coattails of the last major innovation (which comes more and more seldom thanks to this phenomenon). We have hundreds of first-person shooter games and their close variants, more and more games in a genre that was saturated long ago. Real-time strategy games seem to suffer from the same problem. IMHO, the worst thing that ever happened to the gaming industry in recent years was the 3D card, which has seen more than its share of abuse at the hands of the major game companies. They seem to think that making a game 3D with impressive graphics is enough to make up for all of its shortcomings; in fact it's usually more true that abuse of the 3D engine can very quickly become a game's biggest shortcoming. Good graphics does not make up for an RPG's lack of plot and coherent storyline (cough...Ultima IX...cough), nor is it even required for many genre of games (cough...Warcraft III...cough).

DRM-ish measures in games and the other inconveniences mentioned are relatively minor compared to the mess that is a mediocre or unoriginal game.

This article is a better, more insightful read into what's wrong with the gaming industry today.

I've never found anything *new* to what he says --let alone some good psychologist-- but he surely had a lot of time/money to spend on new toys, and i envy him for that one. I never played creatures, but for the reviews it should be a realy enjoyable game, while on the design papers it seems to be not so special that people should deitify(sic) him.

i personaly think that civ/sim city or even more ancient games like Shadow President have more complexes AI. And still, you don't see people hiring Sid Meier to design anything other than an ejoyable game.

I hope they have a good budget and don't spoil it. BTW, I don't know that actor, and haven't seen "The Office", but his puzzled face in the picture someone posted looks perfect. If this works perhaps more people will get to know where the names "DeepThought", "Trillian" and "BabelFish" first appeared.

Anyway, Douglas Adams fans should know that his computer works are now abandonware, and available for free download:

Last Chance to See -- The CD ROM, multimedia version of his book about endangered species

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the text adventure game adaptation (by Infocom)

Bureaucracy -- the original text adventure game (by Infocom)

Cheers.

I hope they have a good budget and don't spoil it. BTW, I don't know that actor, and haven't seen "The Office", but his puzzled face in the picture someone posted looks perfect. If this works perhaps more people will get to know where the names "DeepThought", "Trillian" and "BabelFish" first appeared.

Anyway, Douglas Adams fans should know that his computer works are now abandonware, and available for free download:

Last Chance to See -- The CD ROM, multimedia version of his book about endangered species

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the text adventure game adaptation (by Infocom)

Bureaucracy -- the original text adventure game (by Infocom)

Cheers.

I hope they have a good budget and don't spoil it. BTW, I don't know that actor, and haven't seen "The Office", but his puzzled face in the picture someone posted looks perfect. If this works perhaps more people will get to know where the names "DeepThought", "Trillian" and "BabelFish" first appeared.

Anyway, Douglas Adams fans should know that his computer works are now abandonware, and available for free download:

Last Chance to See -- The CD ROM, multimedia version of his book about endangered species

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the text adventure game adaptation (by Infocom)

Bureaucracy -- the original text adventure game (by Infocom)

Cheers.

There's a native windows version here while there's also a Nintendo version (the state of NES emulation is extremely good).

I see your point, but free stuff makes people like the product, unless the said product is crap, in which case he will know this and just give up. However, if the product is good and useful, people will donate. Its a fact of life, you see it everywhere like here and here. Both those sites give something for nothing, and they manage to make a living perfectly well.

but it's the most original game I've ever seen

You haven't seen enough then.

I was playing something very much like Tranquility back in the early 90s called "Continuum".

The differences from Tranquility included that instead of just playing a "level" you went through a sequence of rooms trying to reach the target in each, and that you could change your "mobile", each of which had different properties. Some flew forward very quickly, but had lousy turn response time, others had a lot of mass, so would gain speed on the descent quickly, but didn't bounce worth a darn. Still others could turn and reorient themselves quickly, bounced very high, but were painfully slow moving forward. Part of the skill came in knowing which mobile was appropriate for what, and when to change. (ie, one of the tougher areas required that you switch to the heavy mobile to descend quickly, then just before hitting, switch to what I called the "frog" so that you could bounce extremely high and rapidly turn to face your intended target, then switch to the "rocket" at the apex of the bounce so that you could fly the length of the room and reach the otherwise inaccessible platform under the target.)

Additionally, there were other mobiles that would attempt to knock you off your platform -- some moved in predictable patterns, others hunted you down more directly.

Do you mean this?

Your assertion that there is no difference between console games and PC games as regards story presentation, strategy, depth, etc. is false. The limited control scheme of consoles is in fact a major reason why this difference still exists even though consoles are otherwise just as powerful as PCs are today. The Scratchware Manifesto describes the problem thusly:

Death to Sony, Sega, and Nintendo! Your insistence on controlling every step of development, of ensuring that no product strays too far from your own blinkered twitch-game aesthetic, your absurdly high platform royalties, your gouging prices for development stations and SDKs, your boxes with the controllers wholly unsuited to a game of any depth make you irrelevant to anyone who wants to develop games of enduring merit.

BTW, console FPSes are indeed inferior to PC FPSes because of the default control scheme, just like how most fighting games on the PC suck because of the PC's default control scheme.

Rob

Apparently, it's StarFlight (one word, not two). I tried it once at the-underdogs.org and then Google (which corrected the punctuation). So, it is available at the-underdogs.org, although technically it is a copyright violation to download it.

I also haven't tested the game(s) myself, so I don't know if they work at all.

So what I want to know is, are there any system simulations based on different political ideologies? SimCollectiveFarm, or SimCommune, or whatever?

Sounds like this is what you're after. ;)

President Elect was an excellent game, with (for a game) a realistic grasp of electoral politics based on a database of actual state-by-state results from 1964 to 1988.

One could run as various historical candidates, or make one's own candidate by selecting the candidate's position on various issues.

It's mostly a resource management game: you spent money and time on different states or regions to sway the voters in those places. The trick was knowing which states were swing states, and spending your time and money there.

The game ended on election night, with each state reporting in and showing percentages and the color of the candidate who won it. The states reported in on a staggered schedule based on local poll-closing time, and once or twice I even saw one candidate declared the winner, only to see it change when all votes in swing states had reported in.

If I were not watching the webcast of Don Knuth's 10th Annual Christmas Tree lecture at 4:15 pm PST,
at http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/, I'd tip my hat to Strom Thurmond's illegitimate mixed-race daughter by playing Strom against Goldwater in 1964 tonight.
If they made a copy updated with electoral data and demographics through 2004, I'd buy it in a minute.

Unfortunately I have yet to see one, but if you're interested in paying money, ROTK8 came out recently for the PS2. I don't know what the last one to come out for PC outside of Japan was (I think 6?) but you can find several of them at HOTU if you're looking for a shady, not-quite-legal method of getting the game(s) (unless of course you own the original). As for 8, I can attest to its addictiveness. It gets a bit bland after awhile, but it's a game where it's hard to stop playing.

Fallout was intentionally designed as a sequel to Wasteland, but I guess Interplay didn't have the rights to the name

Anyway, here's Wasteland

" Serious game music for the mainstream user on the PC started with Sierra back in 1988. Before this, PC's were only equipped with a tiny beeping speaker. Sierra prepared to change all this by creating games that contained serious, high quality musical compositions drawing on add-on hardware. Sierra struck a deal with two companies, Roland and Adlib. Sierra adopted the Roland MT-32 and the Adlib Music Synthesizer. They would compose music for these units starting with King's Quest 4. Sierra would also become a reseller for these units.

The Roland MT-32 was the higher end of these music devices. In today's terminology, it would be labeled a "Wavetable Synthesizer". A wavetable synthesizer usually implies that real instrument sounds are recorded into the hardware of the device. This device can then manipulate them to play them back at the various notes you need. This may not be the most accurate description as the MT-32 had the ability to manipulate parts of its built in sounds using something called "Linear Arithmetic (LA)" synthesis. Technobabble aside, it was a very good device that can rival even today's sound cards (though Tom and other MT-32 users will be quick to point out the lack of a built-in piano patch). It was also a very expensive sound card, costing $550 through Sierra. " (quoting an article by Eric Wing)

I hear you. And there are still plenty of great old games that I still haven't played, but which will run perfectly on a nice 486 or low-end pentium, which you can pretty much find in a dumpster these days. How sad... It goes with my theory that old hardware software never become obsolete, but are merely overlooked for the sake of novelty.

I'm sure there are still plenty of ideas to be exploited that are implementable on a 486-based system, especially in the adventure game genre. The graphics of that age were a style that, when done well, will never age. Just look at Doom, Lemmings, many of Sierra's adventure games... their graphics were all elegantly crafted to make maximum use of the resources available to them, but still look good, stylistically. It's certainly worth the time to check out these old games.

Jesus, I'm only 20 and I'm reminiscing about the "days of old." Technology is great. :)

i guess he meant this game

you can (legaly) get it here

There's actually quite a story behind Princess Maker 2. You can read all about it here, but here it is in a nutshell: an English translation of the game was being created, but after a series of problems (companies going bankrupt, etc.), the (DOS based) game became too dated to do well commercially, and development of it was stopped.

The partially translated version (lacking only some of the endings) was being distributed on abandonware sites (such as here), but has since been pulled at the request of the US license holder, as there is apparently still some chance of the game having a US release (a graphically updated version perhaps?).

You don't mean This game do you? It is still possible to get some of these great old titles, if you know where to look. And, considering that you had paid for a copy of it once, I wouldn't think that downloading it now should be that bad.

I don't mean to be particularly critical, but how can anyone miss so many underrated classics?

Sid Meier's Covert Action comes first and foremost to mind, with it's witty "double-oh-seven" style action and puzzle-solving as one of the best but critically missed classics. Perhaps its only flaw is that it has circa-1988 graphics, but I still play it every few weeks just to see if I'm still 'on my game'.

There are also mid-range 'kinda unknown near classics', which would've been big blockbusters with just a little more marketting, or a little more polish. Games such as Syndicate, Magic Carpet, (I'm not a Bullfrog saleswoman) and Daggerfall.

Though, it seems to've missed some of the other fine more mainstream classics out there, such as Neuromancer. What about Descent? Or Descent: Freespace?

None of these were really Genre-setting benchmarks, but they all pushed the envelope for their time, and truly made you think about what games could be capable of one day. Games like these are the reason I got into game programming in the first place. They were innovative, smart, and often overlooked, as this list seems to've done.

Perhaps instead of listing three Maxis "sim" games, perhaps it should've made room for a few of these underdogs.

all i gotta say is anyone who thinks that 512mb is a limiting factor must not have been around when 16mb was a luxury. and even with 16mb you could do more in less time than most of today's gui eye candy, mouse-handicapped software.

people who say that 512mb is a limiting factor in a sub-3lb notebook computer need to get a grip on reality because they are obviously mistaking subnotebooks for 3d graphics workstations or extreme gaming machines. of course, lazily programmed bloatware is also to blame. give a bloatware programmer 10 megs to work with and i'm still not sure they can program alley cat. ~10bt

Does anyone else remember the great Atari/Amiga/DOS Dune adventure/strategy game by the French company Cryo from 1992? It was based partly on the book and partly on the Lynch film. I believe the same company tried again a year ago or so ago with "Frank Herbert's Dune", this time more based on the Sci-Fi channel mini-series. The reviews this time was more so-so.

The best thing about the original game was the atmosphere, helped along by the great soundtrack and the impressive architecture...

You can download the whole game here!
review

another..

another...

It looks like you remember incorrectly. Bloodwych wasn't out till '91, Bard's Tale was out in '85.

The reason I went looking was I remembered Bloodwych being a so-so game for the Amiga, but BT being kick-bottom on the C64.

Can I have my pedant point now, please?

Or even classic free pc games. And for modern free classics, give Soldat a try, it's pretty damn good.

after using that site to remember your game's name, you can visit The Underdogs, it has lots of info on old games, including downloads, reviews, and copyright info (free, shareware, ...).
What I like the most about it is the random pick feature, I found several nice games that I never heard about before, use it when you need a time waster ;)

This might even be an interesting way to discriminate between magic users who use talent as opposed to study (like sorcerers and wizards in D&D 3E) in MMORPGs; sorcerers may have more power, but can't share spells, while wizards might have less casting power but can share spells with one another.

If you're interested in a modern game that uses a similar system, check out Morrowind. The whole game is incredibly open-ended. While it doesn't have any experimentation requirements for spells, you are allowed to create your own and buy them in standard fashion from wizards, as well as use lots of predefined spells. Also, its alchemy system comes a lot closer to your ideal: you can actually pick flowers and berries from plants (which have some small effects), then use a mortar and pestle to mix potions and other tools to modify the effects. The lists of possible potions on Gamefaqs run for many pages; it's really an incredibly versatile system.

All the games are alive and well and available here I loved those games so much. I remeber when I was a kid with the first elite, docking your ship was a near impossible task to begin with. I don't think I ever worked so hard at a game as I did with elite.

Ahh. So you want a game something like this?

I agree, they are interesting; fortunately, someone beat you to it. :)

I'm sorry, but it's not me who played it at such low settings. I got this information from a friend of mine in a discussion about the demo. (I'm sure you get lots of feedback on the game, and the link I posted offers precious little in the terms of technicalities and is more about gameplay issues, but be aware if you check it out that these guys are not fanboys of the new game, and they don't expect the development team to read it, so it may be a little less biased than the feedback you receive.)

If you've never played Ultima IV, you should, even if you don't like RPGs. It's worth your time. Luckily, Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) has made this easy to do by releasing Ultima IV as freeware. You can download the game here and the documentation here. Also, an upgrade patch has been created that improves the graphics and sounds without mucking with the game mechanics. You learn more about Ultima IV as well as download the upgrade here.

One other thing, it's a long game and even if you don't have the time to play it, download it and play through the introduction (10-15 minutes tops). There are a series of ethical/moral questions that determine your character type and they're really interesting. So interesting in fact that fans have reproduced the 'quiz' on the web so if you're really not into downloading the game, you can still take the Ultima Personality Test.

If you've never played Ultima IV, you should, even if you don't like RPGs. It's worth your time. Luckily, Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) has made this easy to do by releasing Ultima IV as freeware. You can download the game here and the documentation here. Also, an upgrade patch has been created that improves the graphics and sounds without mucking with the game mechanics. You learn more about Ultima IV as well as download the upgrade here.

One other thing, it's a long game and even if you don't have the time to play it, download it and play through the introduction (10-15 minutes tops). There are a series of ethical/moral questions that determine your character type and they're really interesting. So interesting in fact that fans have reproduced the 'quiz' on the web so if you're really not into downloading the game, you can still take the Ultima Personality Test.

A great site for old games that you can't find anymore is The Underdogs. I found their site about two years ago, I think, and am amazed at how many good games there are that no one talks about anymore. Check it out.

What's really sad though is that many games are vanishing because companies refuse to give up the rights to their products, even though any chance of making money on them has long since passed. Hopefully they will not be lost to time.

There's a vision buried just beneath the surface of Republic, one that indeed needed a freeform GTA-esque engine. I think that what happened is they built up the engine and then realized that they couldn't accomplish everything they would've liked, so instead used it but scaled back everything into a much more linear campaign mode.

That said, players of Republic will spend the majority of their time in the top boardgame view anyway. Here's some older but wiser games that I think Republic could have outperformed or equaled, but due to the oppresive capatalist shackles of the 3d engine, just can't quite do so.

Hidden Agenda is slightly more educational in nature and Hispanic/Latin in surrounding, but offers high replaying value due to the various idealogies. Shadow President is globally based and fundamentally differs from Republic in that instead of throwing a coup against a small dictator, you are the largest dictator in the world: President of the United States! Still, the political feel of the game is the same, even if you're on the other side of the coup (which is, admittedly, more fun in this case). And who can forget Chris Crawford's classic Balance of Power? The guys who made Republic, apparently.

Any I'm forgetting? (Tropico was already mentioned)

There's a vision buried just beneath the surface of Republic, one that indeed needed a freeform GTA-esque engine. I think that what happened is they built up the engine and then realized that they couldn't accomplish everything they would've liked, so instead used it but scaled back everything into a much more linear campaign mode.

That said, players of Republic will spend the majority of their time in the top boardgame view anyway. Here's some older but wiser games that I think Republic could have outperformed or equaled, but due to the oppresive capatalist shackles of the 3d engine, just can't quite do so.

Hidden Agenda is slightly more educational in nature and Hispanic/Latin in surrounding, but offers high replaying value due to the various idealogies. Shadow President is globally based and fundamentally differs from Republic in that instead of throwing a coup against a small dictator, you are the largest dictator in the world: President of the United States! Still, the political feel of the game is the same, even if you're on the other side of the coup (which is, admittedly, more fun in this case). And who can forget Chris Crawford's classic Balance of Power? The guys who made Republic, apparently.

Any I'm forgetting? (Tropico was already mentioned)

There's a vision buried just beneath the surface of Republic, one that indeed needed a freeform GTA-esque engine. I think that what happened is they built up the engine and then realized that they couldn't accomplish everything they would've liked, so instead used it but scaled back everything into a much more linear campaign mode.

That said, players of Republic will spend the majority of their time in the top boardgame view anyway. Here's some older but wiser games that I think Republic could have outperformed or equaled, but due to the oppresive capatalist shackles of the 3d engine, just can't quite do so.

Hidden Agenda is slightly more educational in nature and Hispanic/Latin in surrounding, but offers high replaying value due to the various idealogies. Shadow President is globally based and fundamentally differs from Republic in that instead of throwing a coup against a small dictator, you are the largest dictator in the world: President of the United States! Still, the political feel of the game is the same, even if you're on the other side of the coup (which is, admittedly, more fun in this case). And who can forget Chris Crawford's classic Balance of Power? The guys who made Republic, apparently.

Any I'm forgetting? (Tropico was already mentioned)