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Time-Tested Gaming

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hand-worn-favorites dept.

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."

14 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. tetris! by starbuck8968 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    has been released for practically every game medium

  2. What's the big deal about Nethack? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I mean, sure, it is one of the first real games for the PC (Right?) and it runs on a myriad of systems but I never got the allure of it, and I'm a RPGer myself. Can anyone say what really draws them to this game? I'd like to know.

    1. Re:What's the big deal about Nethack? by alfs+boner · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.

      --
      Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
    2. Re:What's the big deal about Nethack? by dick+pubes · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Nethack is one of the deepest, most complete games out. If you think it should be possible to do, then more likely than not you can do it in nethack.

      If you give it a go for the first time, prepare yourself to be disappointed. Be prepared to spend the first ~hour or so dying many times, mostly from starvation and YASD (Yet another stupid death). But if you get that through hour or so and last beyond around level 10, you will be hooked for life (not necessarily a good thing!). I would recommend reading some of the many guides on the net, but avoid the spoilers at least for the first while, it will spoil the satisfaction of discovering things yourself (like #dipping your sword into a poition of poison will make your sword poisoned as a small example).

    3. Re:What's the big deal about Nethack? by s16le · · Score: 3, Informative
      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).

  3. Civ II by cwernli · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not an adventure, but IMHO definitely the best game around: Civ II. I don't know how many months (man months, not calendar months) I've spent playing it...

  4. One glaring omission by Crysalim · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

    1. Re:One glaring omission by edwdig · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The original Zelda offers a lot that the newer games don't. The game very few restrictions compared to the newer ones. The levels are numbered, but there are very few you have to do in order to do the following levels. (Yes, I know in the later games you can get the item from a level, leave, and go to the next level, but that defeats the point of finishing levels out of order). Within the levels there is more flexibility in the path you take through it.

  5. Duke 3D and 2D artwork by Mr.+Samuel · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Duke Nukem 3D, despite its aged visuals, continues to appeal to me even ten years after its initial release. It probably has something to do with its sense of humor and lack of self-importance, something thats a rarity in today's epic FPS.

    On the other hand, I think there's a hidden appeal to the higher-quality 2D artwork of yesteryear. The glory days of 16-bit artwork like the stuff featured in Chrono Trigger will always look cool in my eyes, where first-gen 3D console titles will stick out as primitive and likely ugly.

  6. Other choices? by Clazzy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still find myself firing up Red Alert, Tie Fighter, Sonic 3 or even Worms 2 time after time.
    Red Alert is a kind of game that still ends up fun, even after eight years. Those times when you turn around and go for a new kind of rush, taking down a Tesla coil with dozens of infantry, or just reliving tank rushes for the sheer hell of it!

    Tie Fighter had all the elements of a successful space fighter game, and allowed you to play as the bad guys. That in itself made it fun to play.

    Sonic 3 might be a bit different for me, since it was the very first game I played, so I obviously see it with rose-tinted glasses. Somehow, it got the formula just right and it keeps you going throughout, pure brilliance.

    Worms 2 should never age. The cartoony graphics, the silly voices and the brilliant weapons all come together to make something truly fun.

    --
    If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
  7. It is in the cards. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "1up has an interesting piece looking at games that have withstood the test of time, aging gracefully where others have not."

    Solitaire!

  8. Re: YASD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > Be prepared to spend the first ~hour or so dying many times, mostly from starvation and YASD (Yet another stupid death).

    That's why I'll never play Nethack. I don't enjoy games where you're forced to "learn by dieing." It's like a stupid platformer game where you're forced to memorize the first N jumps only to fall off at N+1, so you have to start over from 0, only to fall at N+2. Repeat ad infinitum. It's bullshit. I've got better things to do with my time than explore the infinite number of ways some sadistic asshat decided it should be possible to fail. It's like a poorly written choose your own adventure where 99% of the choices are wrong.

    In the real life and also in games I consider fun, 99% of choices lead to non-negative outcomes. (* Note that I make a distinction between positive and non-negative.)

    Sorry for the rant, but I had to vent somewhere.

  9. Re:Recurring theme; Use your brain! by Ekhymosis · · Score: 3, Informative

    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?

    --
    Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
  10. Where's Ultima Online? Where's Quake? by acid06 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ultima Online is still played *a lot*. There are hundreds of free shards around the globe and the official paid servers are still also online (I doubt they're still profitable, though).

    Then, there's also Quake (yes, the first one). It's still played around the world. Quake mods such as Team Fortress (which paved the way to full modification mods as we see today) and some simpler mods such as Total Destruction are still played and there many active communities for these games.

    Although America's reality is a bit different, these facts are completely true in another countries such as here in Brazil, for example, and maybe in many other developing countries. This is the positive side of not being able to have the latest graphics card or whatever: people don't focus that much on graphics. They worry about fun. That's why UO is specially popular: people can make their own world and play with their friends, with a server hosted on their own machine. Almost any PC can run Ultima Online without problems (I used to play it on a K6-350 with 32MB RAM).

    The culture is really different. The most commercially succesful game here in Brazil currently is Ragnarök, a crappy online RPG. It has terrible mixed 2d/3d graphics and people are still paying to play it. Because everyone can play it. It's not like Half-Life 2 where maybe 10% of the computers can even run it at a barely playable level.