Oldies - Old Games We Might Have Missed

[Gustaran]

Deus Ex still holds up well at least.

This remains my favorite and most influential gaming experience of all time, and I dust if off and play it through about every few years for the dialogue, and to indulge my inner conspiracist.

Darrell

I haven't played the game in years, but I remember spending an incredible amount of time on the first mission until I had accustomed myself to the playstyle.  For some reason I still remember that you could find a weapon when you turned around right at the start and jumped into the water, couldn't you?


Back to a real classic: One of the earliest notable gaming series were the "Zork" text adventures by Infocom released around 1980:
https://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology
Infocom veteran developer Bob Bates has recently developed a new text adventure through a Kickstarter. So if you are interested in a *very* old school gaming experience, you can check it out here:
http://www.thaumistry.com/

[AdrienIer]

Some of my favorites (I'm younger than many here so they're mid-2000s games) : Sid Meier's Pirates, Medieval II Total War (+ Kingdoms expansion), and Cossacks II (which got bashed at the time because people expected something closer to the original, but is a great game).

[Singaboy]

Ha, they actually have populous to play online.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/populous-qk/play-qk

Anyway, I loved Deus Ex too and played it several times. The atmosphere was absolutely brilliant. At around the same time, there was system shock 2. The game had me jump and I could barely play it with sound. Totally spooky.

[Bacchus]

Tycoons, adventures and city builders are what I miss, most have been mentioned. I think Caesar III clones actually easily stand up well, I played them about two years ago and had lots of fun. The Anno series tends to annoy me, by contrast — everything is just slightly off, somehow. The pace, the gratuitous action sinks like naval trade routes, the presentation. Totally irrational on my part, but I just cant enjoy it.

[T-hawk]

This is one of those threads where everybody is just reciting their favorites and nobody's really going to play anything based on the recommendations, but here's my several cents anyway.  Mostly I'll cover areas and genres that haven't come up already.

The early 90s were the heyday of shareware games, up to Doom as the biggest landmark.  Commander Keen, Duke Nukem (pre-3D), Jill of the Jungle, Zone 66, Raptor (often cited with Tyrian), Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall, Wacky Wheels.  Many others of course but those are the ones I played that come to mind.  It was the most exciting thing in the world when a full registered copy of one of these would show up on a local BBS.

Pinball games: Epic Pinball became the most known, also Pinball Fantasies, and a ton of others: Pinball Dreams, Pinball Illusions, Silverball, Psycho Pinball, Crystal Caliburn and its sequels.  The best series was Pro Pinball, and Timeshock recently had an updated rerelease for modern platforms.  Other than Pro Pinball, everything that moved into 3d pinball simulation kinda sucked, including Space Cadet.

BBS door games, that's a genre almost entirely forgotten by now with no real successor.  Solar and Barren Realms Elite, The Pit, Legend of the Red Dragon, Planets, Tradewars.  I downloaded them to play offline against myself, a precursor to the technical number-crunching in my Civ reports nowadays.

Racing games: Brøderbund's Stunts, Daytona USA, the original Nascar racing series, Moto Racer, Dethkarz (a clone of Wipeout), Carmageddon, Need for Speed (long series, I played High Stakes the most.)  Not really any reason to play any particular one of these nowadays compared to modern technology.

Strategy games besides Civ: Heroes of Might and Magic of course (I liked and played 2 much more than 3), the Microprose Magic the Gathering game (Shandalar), Nethack, Oregon Trail, Star Control, Worms.  All of these hold up perfectly fine to play today, like MOO 1.

And a standalone mention for Wing Commander Privateer.  That's the game I most wish I could play again for the first time.  I've never quite gotten that same feeling of freedom and exploration from anything else.  The spiritual sequel Freelancer came close, although you had to finish the railroaded campaign before you could really go exploring.

[AdrienIer]

This is one of those threads where everybody is just reciting their favorites and nobody's really going to play anything based on the recommendations, 

I think I'll buy Rise of Nations next time it's on sale to see if I like it. It fits in the category of games I should have been playing at the time it was published but somehow didn't.

[haphazard1]

Lot of great memories for many of the games mentioned. The old Infocom text games...Zork, even. Going back a ways for those. And Populous -- spent tons of time with that one. The first X-COM (by whichever name) is still very fun. Since I played it back in the day the interface is just an old friend, and not something to struggle with; Xenonauts is a solid modern take on the idea if you don't want to deal with the original's quirks.

Nethack, along with options such as Moria, Angband, and their many derivatives absortbed a lot of hours.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3 are both still fun; have a campaign going in 3 right now, in fact.

MoO continues to be great; disucssion for another SG has started in the relevant sub-forum, drop by if you are interested! /shameless plug

[pindicator]

If we're going nostalgia, then Myth 2: the Fallen Lords was the first game I really played as multiplayer with any kind of matchmaking srvice. I don't know if you can buy it anywhere, but there is a group of people keeping it up to date for modern operating systems, and teams still compete in a yearly Myth World Cup.

This was Bungie before they were bought by Microsoft and made Halo, and they do just as good a job as creating a story and immersive world as they did in the original Halo. So the single player is also great on its own.

[Dantski]

If we're going nostalgia, then Myth 2: the Fallen Lords was the first game I really played as multiplayer with any kind of matchmaking service. I don't know if you can buy it anywhere, but there is a group of people keeping it up to date for modern operating systems, and teams still compete in a yearly Myth World Cup.

This was Bungie before they were bought by Microsoft and made Halo, and they do just as good a job as creating a story and immersive world as they did in the original Halo. So the single player is also great on its own.

It was Myth 2: Soulbighter, TFL was the first one.

I went back and played Persona 3 a couple of years ago and it was as good as ever, the soundtrack for that game was just so damn good and I'd recommend trying it if you haven't touched the series before.

One game that's missing so far (at least when skim reading) is Final Fantasy, since I wasn't much of a console kid it totally passed me by. Is it worth going back to the old ones nowadays?

[Fenn]

I'd say the older Final Fantasy games are well worth going back to. FF5 offers the best combination of accessible yet complex gameplay, but I think all of the old ones are good in their own way - well, maybe not 2. The first three games have been changed pretty dramatically in the later remakes, so 1 and 3 are probably best experienced in their original format (or the PSX remake for FF1, if you can find it).

I played the Marathon series a few years back - one of the few FPS series for Macs back in the day, although I just used a source port. A very challenging game on the higher difficulties with some juicy mazelike levels. Atmosphere was top-notch too, even if the text sometimes got a little too abstract and existential for my taste.

Thief 1/2 I count among the all-time classics - if you haven't played these yet you really owe it to yourself to give them a shot, there's nothing quite like them even today. They still have an active community making custom missions too; there's hundreds of great maps by now and more being made all the time.

Lots of games mentioned here I'd love to play if I had time, but there's never enough of it sadly.