Time-Tested Gaming

1up has an interesting piece looking at games that have withstood the test of time, aging gracefully where others have not. Titles discussed include the Korean powerhouse Starcraft, Nethack, and the Sim series. From the article: "It's hard to label which games are suitable for repeated lovin' and which are forgettable. One gamer's Halo is another gamer's Superman 64. But when it comes to firing up a favorite, some adventures hold the same appeal they did when they were released years ago -- and jumping in for the fortieth round is every bit as pleasurable as the first time."

Comments

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[alfs boner]

The game is amazingly deep. There's just so much you can do in it. There are tons of easter-eggs buried in there and lots of references to other works of fiction

I'm sure others who have more knowledge in Nethack will provide more info. I myself am not an expert on the subject.

One glaring omission

[Crysalim]

The first game I thought of was Zelda, but it was nowhere to be found in this article.

I have followed Zelda games ever since I was a child, and even today, tons of people follow it. It was simply a perfect game. There's a community online that makes their own quests with an engine:

http://www.zeldaclassic.com/

Also, a person has redone the original NES rom and made another game that's fantastic on its own:

http://rha.cymoro.com/zelda3c/ZeldaC/

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[s16le]

It's also very well thought out. This is in contrast with Slash'em, a Nethack fork. The Slash'em developers basically just add everything they can think of without stopping to think if it really improves the game. There are some good things in Slash'em and I would like to see some of them brought to Nethack. But the Slash'em developers should really try to make the game more balanced. Try playing as a doppelgangen monk to see what I mean (you get polymorph control at level 9 and all sorts of excessively powerful techniques). It's like riding through the dungeon in a wheat thresher.

Nethack isn't perfect though. I think the Monk could use some tweaking (perhaps a slight improvement in fighting ability or the ability to advance beyond the basic skill level in attack spells in exchange for a stricter penalty for eating meat).

Re:Recurring theme; Use your brain!

[Ekhymosis]

If I'm not mistaken, Go (Igo, weichi, paduk) is over 5,000 years old, probably making it the oldest board game in the world. How's that for time-tested?