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What Game Do You Love?
It's that time of year again, when a person's fancy turns to new games. It's still nice to think of old flames, though, and eToyChest wonders about games you've loved. From the article: "In 1992 I was spending time getting my gaming legs on a then-aging 486 PC. It was loud, ugly, and far from state-of-the-art. But it could still run games off the shelf, and when a friend of mine brought over what he was calling the "best role-playing game he had played since Ultima V", I knew I had to check it out. What began that afternoon stands out as one of the most important events in my life as a game, for as I installed each of the two high density diskettes comprising Sir-Tech's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, I somehow knew that I was in for a treat. What followed were two years of swords, sorcery, and the slaying of many humanoid rats." So what game do you still remember fondly, even if you haven't played for quite a while?
Half-Life blew me away
Half-Life 2 blew me away again
Other worthy mentions
M.U.L.E.
Diablo
Quake 1/2/3/4
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
I still go back once a year and play Legend of Zelda all the way through. Earthbound and MarioRPG get at least once every two years. I still play Mario 3 pretty often. The classics will live on...
As for modern games:
Diablo2 and d2:LOD
KoL
and now, WoW
How Jaded Are You?
FFII for SNES (really FFIV). I was really sad when Tellah died. And I orgasmed when I found out that you got to go to the moon.
This was of course back in the day when LucasArts made good games. If only that was still true.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
The games that I remember the most are the first Doom and the first Warcraft. Those were just both amazing to me at the time. I've always had a special place in my heart for Super Mario 3, but who doesn't? I went Genesis over SNES, and I had a lot of fun playing Sonic 2, but I also had tons of fun playing the first Mario Kart at my friend's house. And then, there was the hours of Goldeneye fun on the 64. Oh, and Baldur's Gate 2:, Shadows of Amn on the PC was fantastic... I was captivated by that game. All of the other rpgs in that genre are just me being nostalgic about that game. Later, there was KOTOR, which I loved... I guess those are the highlights of my gaming life. I'm currently enamoured with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. A farming rpg sounds stupid but I got it as a gift and it is terribly addicting. You either have to be embrace its time-consuming wonder or avoid it like the plague, there is no middle ground...
-Da3vid-
Doom was the first game that really blew me away, and I still have a copy of it that I play from time to time. What made it even better was that there were a host of different maps for it, so even when you got to the point of being bored with the original, there was always something new. It's nice to see that there's still ongoing development for it.
Dungeon Master" on the Atari ST was the best game of its time. It was a very early ST game and was a real eye-opener for anyone used to 8-bit computers. It probably sold almost as many STs as Doom did for PCs. The use of the mouse was perfect and I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
Sim City 2000. 3000 was lame because it required too much micro managment. Anything that Sid did with the Civ saga. I still play my old dos Civilizations from time to time.
We are the Borg...
Doom 2 co-op by in large my favorite game of all time. X-Wing and TIE fighter.
Metroid (NES)
Dragon Warrior (NES)
JetFighter
Rogue
GoldenEye (N64)
Tetris64 (N64)
Tony Hawk 2(DC)
Warcraft II
Command & Conquer
FFIII (SNES)
-- taking over the world, we are.
The original Bard's Tale trilogy was a personal favorite. I can't tell you how many times I played thru each of them on my old Apple IIE.
And of course, by extention, I played quite alot of Wasteland.
These are the main ones:
Fallout
Quake 1
Privateer
All three Descent games
Commander Keen
All three Thief games
Mechwarrior 2
Tyrian
I hate making lists like this since I always know I've forgotten lots of great games.
... I'm a turn-based gamer. Reaction-time games are just not as compelling for me. That promise of "just one more turn" just leads me on ... there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Civ 2 had a lot of improvements but the basic concepts were in Civ 1. I found Civ 3 to be boring ...
Similarly, Heroes of Might And Magic 1 was wonderful; I skipped 2; HoMM 3 was an improvement in every way but still basically the same concept; HoMM 4 wasn't worth the upgrade, to me at least.
Perhaps there's some basic "fun" concept at the core of any game that you can mess with, and you HAVE to mess with if your income depends on continued sales, but messing with doesn't necessarily mean improvement.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Uh uh. Computers were for work. Spreadsheets, databases, programming. Well, OK, word processing for the character sheets for the home-brew dice-and-pencil RPG we played. Consoles? Fuggeditaboutit. Kid stuff, right?
Until my buddy asked me to advise him on the purchase of a new PC. When I asked him what he was looking to use it for, he named all the regular Office stuff, and then added, "And of course, games. I want to be able to play games."
So I studied up on graphics cards -- in the computer magazine articles I had always skipped prior to then -- and made my recommendations. When his box arrived, naturally he invited me over to configure it, for a few beers. In the course of my new research, I learned that the "Game of the Year" in everybody's graphics categories was something called "Mechwarrior II," so on my way over I picked up a copy for him to christen the new box with. He had a state-of-the-art graphics card and monitor, so I wanted to see what a state-of-the-art game looked like running on it.
When the opening cinema played, "I Am Jade Falcon," and that unbelievable by anybody's musical standards score hit, our jaws hit the ground and we did this kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-Watching-NIN-Video take to each other. It was nothing like anything we old dice-throwers had expected in the least.
So, um, yeah, about 400 BattleTech miniatures, countless PC games, and several dozen console games later, I guess I'd have to say that "MechWarrior II" was the most memorable, if not the most, influential, in my experience.
No question...fun game AND you could make your own levels. Sweet!
Come on guys, doesn't anyone remember Leela, Durandal, and that crazy bastard Tycho? And all is not lost if you don't happen to have an old Performa sitting around--come join us at source.bungie.org and work on Aleph One, the open source version, now available for Linux, Windows, and just about anything else you can think of! (Some nut even has it working on Irix!)
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
1024x768 in 24bit color (8 for the low-end Personal Irises) made these machines the cat's meow back then.
The worst bug on the sim was that that the guy who did the aerodynamics equations didn't know how to handle stalls, so he just turned it into a uncontrollable spin. This made landing without crashing really difficult. The correct way to land (as I understand it) is get above the runway and go into a controlled stall. (spin - splat!). Unfortunately, a decent (touch) landing was the only way to refill your missiles, so you had to learn how to do hot touch landings (often while under fire).
I wasted hours on that game!
The early version of dog also had a watcher program that gave you an AWACS type view of a dogfight. I don't know why they got rid of it. (perhaps the military convinced them that it might give 'the enemy' some ideas -- the cold war was still on back then).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I'm not a gamester. But I got HW (the original) as a birthday present from a friend who assumed all "geeks" were into computer games. I tried it out one Saturday morning, and didn't emerge from my cave until late Sunday night. As I say, I'm not a game-player, but it was the STORY that drew me in. There are a handful of films and books that, from the time I was a kid, made me WISH that I could "go there." This was the first and only computer game that made me wish I could "go there." I found myself wishing I could "see inside" the mother ship, see the people in there and watch their lives. The "aura" surrounding that game is like nothing I've ever felt, before or since. (And yes, I've tried the sequels, and no, they just weren't quite the same. The Storyline is the difference. (Ever wish you could "forget" some of your favorite books and movies so you could go back and experience them again "for the first time?")
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.