Which Classic Games Have Aged Well?

thesp writes "We're all waiting for the releases of the next great games (naming no names) which have been mentioned over and over again here on Slashdot. No doubt they will look gorgeous and even be playable on not-too-unreasonable hardware. But there are some games that have an inherent capability to expand to take advantage of higher resolutions and improved rendering as the technology progressed. Would Slashdot like to suggest other titles that, although consigned to multipacks and bargain bins, have aged well and are even more beautiful in their old age, on modern systems, than they ever could be at the time of their release?" This may be subtly different to titles with "Olympian system requirements" at time of release, a category that definitely includes Ultima IX.

Comments

Tempest

[klui]

My favorite game is still Tempest. There are some others that have come close like Test Drive: Le Mans on the Dreamcast.

Top three of all time:

[bobv-pillars-net]

Solitaire. Minesweeper. Tetris.

Nethack

[wandazulu]

Say what you will, I've played this game off and on for ten years and it's still lots of fun.

What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"; because all the levels are randomly generated it's always fresh and new as if playing for the first time.

Re:Nethack

[DLWormwood]

What I've found interesting about the game is that it doesn't have a retro feel, or make me long for the "good ol' days"

Personally, I think most of the posters to this topic have missed the point of the original question. It's not "old games that still play well," but "games that play better on modern hardware."

That said, some client software for the various Roguelikes have employed incremental improvements over the years. My Angband client supports multiple term windows to outload display of information like monster memories and inventory; something hard to do on the original text terminals that the genre was played on. Also, I'm using a graphical tile set that gives the dungeon and monsters a basic 8-bit console game look. It beats pounding on "D's" and "P's" with my trusty Lead Filled Mace. (-; I've even seen clients providing sound effects now.

Freespace 1&2

[Engradius]

Both excellent space shooters with ace intro sequences, great graphics and HUGE ships.

Chrono Trigger

[bretharder]

Still awesome.
Thank God for emulators!

I always wished...

[Chris Pimlott]

I always wished that someone would do a 3D-accelerated re-make of Betrayal at Krondor, a really nice but unappreciated RPG game that Sierra put out in 1993. It's got some primitive 320x200 software rendered 3d graphics, which could look a lot nicer on modern hardware.

A great game regardless. It's based on the writings of Raymond Feist, who was highly involved in the game design, so it's a got a very rich game world and storyline. Aside from the main story you can just travel around and explore, lots of non-essential side quests and fun things to do. And it was released for free by Sierra awhile ago, so you don't have to feel guilty about downloading it :)

Deus Ex

[veritron]

Deus Ex's system requirements were unreasonable when the game came out, but the GOTY edition on just about any modern hardware runs great - same with Morrowind, that game on highest settings can still tax a pretty strong computer.

Serious Sam and Serious Sam II don't seem to have aged at all, and run spectacularly well on modern hardware.

StarCon2

[Relic of the Future]

Star Control 2. If you've played it, you know, if not, the open source re-make is making good progress. A shame that #3 was so bad.