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Old Games that are Still Alive and Kickin'?
Lord Grey asks: "Recently I was killing time while debugging a long-running program and decided to fire up a copy of Shanghai II -- a Mahjongg game for the Macintosh. I've had this game for years, faithfully moving it from computer to computer while keeping pace (more or less) with the newer hardware. I started wondering if there were other people out there that just hold on to those old games and, if so, just how old are they? It would be interesting to see what the oldest game that still runs on current hardware is (my Shanghai II dates from 1991). Or am I the only one that's clinging to the past?"
Pirates! - 1987. Covert Action - 1991(ish) Sword of the Samurai - late 80's/early 90's (see a pattern forming yet?) The various Gold Box AD&D/DragonLance/Buck Rogers games - C64 days. Leisure Suit Larry/Quest For Glory/Space Quest
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I also have ColorizedGunShy 1.2.1 creation dated Dec 20, 1998, Daleks 2.0 dated May 18, 1990 (can you see a pattern? I must have done a recovery of some kind on May 18, 1990). I have a dungeons of doom dated May, 1986, but it doesn't seem to run anymore.
WAIT - I think I just found my oldest one that still runs - StuntCopter1.2 creation dated November 7, 1986!
So, no, you are not alone, I am a packrat too!
Some of the best games ever are the truly dusty ones. PCGamer released a CD not too long ago with some fantastic oldies that run well on todays hardware. Here I'm thinking Wing Commander, XCom and The Secret of Monkey Island among others. I spent money for The Ultima Collection awhile back and it was the best $30 I have ever given up. Even if you have mem or hardware problems, remember that there are some cool people who have reprogrammed games to run on modern hardware (Ultima 7 for example can now run under WinME) and one can always grab MoSlow or an emulator if you're desperate.
I played this one last year for old times sake when I downloaded a Z-machine interpreter for Windoze... but I actually have a copy in the original packaging ("Official Documents File") for CP/M on an 8" disk. Dates back to 1983. Nice to have all the original junk from the package. I had the C-64 version when I was in high school and actually signed the Stellar Patrol Special Assignment Task Force card and carried it in my wallet. Geez, I was a loser!
I guess I keep it because someday it may be valuable! (Or maybe my dad might someday piece together one of his old systems for his "computer museum" and we could see if the disk is still readable.)
I about wet myself when walking through a Meijers just the other day. I walked through the video games, and found a cartridge from Namco that absolutely had to walk out of the store with me.
Namco has released NamcoMuseum, a game cartridge for Gameboy Advance that has four of my all-time favorite legacy video games... Pole Position, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac Man, and Galaga (Galaxian too, but who cares). Combined, these four games probably took the majority of my childhood quarters. This cartridge is fantastic, because even though I used to own the consoles to run these games, as of recently I can't find anything older than my SNES. This more than makes up for my loss.
I had purchased my GBA to play all of the Gameboy games I hadn't played in years (due to a fried gameboy), so I had legacy titles in mind from the start. I only own two GBA titles... F-Zero, and the NamcoMuseum pack... and I can honestly say I haven't touched F-Zero in weeks. Merely turning on NamcoMuseum and hearing all of those familiar sound effects and songs from years ago gave me chills. I can't put this game pack down.
New games come and go... but those legacy titles never die. Hopefully in a few years I'll have enough dough to start collecting the actual arcade units... but multi-game packs like these will more than keep my attention for the time being.
My first game was Adventure back in the 70s. Almost 30 years of gaming latter, and I still play it! Had to set it up as a green screen game.... my old age I guess.
Personally I am in love with lode runner. I have never played lode runner 3d for the n64, but I have a copy of the mad monks revenge, which I originally played under windows 95. I played and beat it under win95, and twice under win98 (I ran 98 for a long time, and that OS made it through two or three of my main machines). ANYTHING by lucasarts is fair game (day of the tentacle and indiana jones and the fate of atlantis are two that I own and have played frequently). The original warcraft and then warcraft two got more play from me than starcraft plus every FPS I ever played. I just reinstalled warcraft II on my machine yesterday, actually.
Check out some of these truly excellent abandonware sites for some good games:
The Underdogs
BumbleB
The Abandonware Ring
Your
I still play empire. I think that is from 1978 or even earlier. There's a Linux version now.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I've kept around my Master of Orion game. I still love it. (And MOO3 is to be released soon!)
;)
I think, however, the "oldest game" list is best satisfied by retrocomputing. Mind you, I have some Atari home computers in my closet, with cartridges and software on disk/tape.
I've also played them, now and then, on my Atari home computer emulator. I've also used the serial port on my PC to emulate an Atari disk drive (!) and played some favorites on a hybrid Atari/PC combo.
And even in another form, classic arcade games sort of fit the bill. But my oldest ones are all from 1981: Gorf, Pac-Man, Wizard of Wor, Zaxxon. Still running on original hardware and still quite playable.
Yeah. Those classics are staying around for as long as they generations who played them are still on the earth. And probably just a little bit longer.
I'm just happy that I don't collect rotary phones. Heck, kids today probably don't even have any idea how to use them!
I've got a working (seems to boot, after which I have no idea what to do)Apple II, including 2 floppy drives, but no software for it. E-mail me with slashdot and apple II in the subject line, and maybe we can work something out.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Sword of the Samurai was one of the first games I ever played, I loved it then, and I love it now. I still play it, at least once a month. There is nothing like conquering the whole of Japan to make you feel damn good about yourself. I even got it to run on win2k, I expected it not to work.
This game is truly awesome, it has a great deal of complexity and an engaging story. You have many choises as to the way in which you acheive your goals. Even the graphics have an excellent retro feel. I would recomend this game to anyone, even today. I introduced some people in my office to it, they were dubious at first, but after a while, I found them playing instead of working. They were addicted
By the way, it was published in 1989 by Microprose
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
Still occasionally play the old classics on the Commodore 64...PacMan, Donkey Kong, QBert, etc. Sometimes, the simple games are still the best. The clunky joystick reminds me of how far we've come with peripherals. We had Wheel of Fortune too on disk, but it was broken such that you could never get to the final round, it just hung. Always wondered if the programmers just hadn't finished it.
The oldest PC game I've got floating around is probably Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (DOS), my parents still have it for my brother. Runs too fast even on a slow pentium tho so you can't see the animations (it used to be on an old IBM 286).
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
I used to spend hours on that game; very simple, but a lot of fun (somewhat like Tetris)! These days, I have free replacements in Gnome and KDE, although I prefer KDE's version, just for the graphics. I find it harder to differentiate the tiles under Gnome.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Bandit Kings of Ancient China yet. That game ruled all in stunning EGA glory. Courtesy of Koei 1989. It's about the only game I play semi-regularly, and, along with Stars! and Scorched Earth, the only one I've kept on my systems over the years.
I know everyone one must be desperate to know who I play. Wu Song, the hairy priest, who else?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Check out Windmill Software's Digger (http://www.digger.org). It didn't work on modern PCs, but I reverse-engineered and recompiled it so now it does. Source is available, as are *nix versions.
I have an old Osborne portable (meaning it's the size of a large suitcase) with 2 8" drives, a 3" screen and 1k of RAM - and I still play Alien Attack on it. Dates from 1976 as far as I can tell, and I have a stack of Dragon games I play on my Emulator - Android Attack, Cuthbert in The Mines, Donkey Kong, Cuthbert goes Skiing, Gridrunner (mmm Gridrunner!!!!) and I had all of these by 1984 so they are at least that old.
Wonderful use for a fast PC, eh? Install MAME and Speccy & Tandy emulators and play better games than most of the junk around today.
Admittedly I play a lot of Unreal Tournament too!
I believe Coin Op Warehouse here in northern Virginia had a Tempest cabinet in stock (at least the last time I was there a few weeks ago).
:) Great guys.
Hope this doesn't sound like an ad for them. I don't work for 'em, but I did buy a pinball machine there, and they let me skulk around the showroom playing classic pinball / video games for free during my lunch hour
1. Find yourself an AppleDOS floppy
2. Break out the soldering iron and build this
3. Download Apple disk images from the net and transfer back.
4. Play!
I'd love to get Novalogic's Comanche going again. But whenever I try it on a modern PC it isn't interested. ;-(
;-)
/biglig scans the web
Comanche 4 (4?!?) out next month, eh? Looks pretty good too. Previews suggest Commanche 2 & 3 were a bit too like a flight sim for me, so perhaps I'd better wait.
Ah, well, if I try and save my money I'll only end up buying an iPaq.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
You can come play it, if you want.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
They all still Run on my Dual P3-600, these are positively ancient...I wonder if they still run on the Mainframes they spang from. Also Zork 0,1,2 Etc, and Karteka, wierd watching a modern Machine boot from a 5 1/2 Floppy with the OS and the game on the disk!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Still run it. Still build new, harder, better tracks with the track editor. The most 'deadly' track so far I have only managed to actually finish (>8minutes) twice. And the computer player crashes in the first jump...it's wicked.
Papa's got a brand GNU bag. -- Advertisement: year 30 ALC (After Linux Commercialization)
Disregarding the seeming unavailability of that link, how would your suggestions enable me to assist the person to whom I replied?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
An old EGA shareware game by William Soleau with various files dated between '90 and '92. A simplified version of Risk with a pretty dumb AI, it has entertained me for ages. I've played probably 2500 games, achieving nearly 40% wins at 7 difficulty, 3 armies setting (if that means anything to anyone else I'd be amazed).
Bleh!
Both moo's seem to suffer from that.. I stick to three or four systems, and just research the fuck out of everything.. build up some automated factories, and then through everything in research into those research lab type things.. once i see something's going to be headed my way, work on battle stations and weaponry, whlie still researching the fuck out of it.. once i have doom star and stellar converter, i go build myself a fleet of death stars and just vaporize every planet the enemy is on.. he can't rebuild when there's nothing to rebuild on.
I still run Elite on the Horizon BBC emulator (oops - that page is now dead)
Yes, the one and only. I think the first incarnation of that game was written in FORTRAN or something.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.