Oldies - Old Games We Might Have Missed

[antisocialmunky]

After buying Pharoah and Tyrian on GoG, I wondered if I might have missed some other old games from the 90s and 00s.  I can't be the only one who goes back to play these things especially since this forum is populated by old farts compared to other corners of the internet.  So I'm creating this thread to see if anyone wants to share their old games.

A few good ones:
- Battlezone 2 - FPS + RTS hybrid.  Kinda reminds me of Halo in a lot of ways except you have the base building of games like C&C Renegade.  BZ 1 had its remaster recently.
- C&C Renegade - Same as above, there are tons of mods to switch between different command and conquer games as well as HD upgrades.
- MechWarrior games -  I highly recommend MW 3 & 4.  Still hold up VERY well.  MW4 was free for a while too so might be abandonware now.
- Tyrian 2000 - A non-bullet hell topdown spaceship shooter.  It has the most content (hidden and otherwise) of any game of the genre I've seen (There's a scorched earth clone in it for goodness sake).  Plus its actually fun rather than bullet hell.  Definitely holds up.
- Pharoah, Zeus, Caesar, Emperor - If you like something like Anno or Simcity but want a more gamey puzzlely City Builder that hasn't really been made since the early 2000s, then this is definitely worth checking you.  I personally like Pharoah because its the most complex.
- King of Dragon Pass - Remember those metaphors about political & economic systems but with cows.  Be a villiage leader, steal cows, get cows stolen.  Grow your villiage while dealing with all sorts of scenarios and quests.  Have you ever wanted to know you would do if one of your villiagers was seduced by a dryad and started spreading plant STDs around?  I haven't but its a thing in this game.  Its hard to describe.  If you like the game Thera this is the progenitor of the genre.

[Gustaran]

Are you one of the 3 people on earth who don't have a huge "Pile of Shame" of unplayed games from recent Steam sales?

In any case, I am not really sold on how well these games hold up, and I have played quite a few of those games on your list. When I bought Caesar 3 back in the day, I was super thrilled. Today, I'd very much recommend picking up something a little more recent like Anno 1404 + Addons than spend your time on Caesar...
But I'll throw a few names out for those interested in gaming history:

1) Point and Click Adventures: Germany has always been the main market for point and click adventures. I remember playing a lot of the classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Sam&Max, Day of the Tentacle, Loom, etc.  If you haven't played any of them, pick up the special edition of Monkey Island 1 on GOG or in the Appstore, which features remastered graphics and is still as funny and playable as it was in 1990.

2) RPGs: I remember the older (Dungeon) Crawler games from the "Might & Magic" series, especially part 3. I also think parts 4 and 5 could be combined into the World of Xeen. I tried the Wizardry series, but IIRC these games were rather difficult and lacked certain comfort functions even for the day (you still had to draw your own maps). Then again, I am not sure why anyone would pick these up today, when there are games such as  "Legend of Grimrock"...

3) Strategy games:The Heroes of Might and Magic series, especially part 3 is quite popular and got a recent HD remake. Settlers/Die Siedler were is quite popular. The Anno series is still running today, with Anno 1800 announced. I personally enjoyed "Cyber Empires", which is a game with a strategy layer and map, but also features a separate battle mode - it's abandonware today.

Other than that there is a rather large list of classic games/series I expect everyone to have played already, such as Diablo, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Planescape: Torment, Pirates, Starcraft & Warcraft games, System Shock, Dungeon Keeper, Baldur's Gate, Command & Conquer, Duke Nukem 3D...
I still think these games were great back in the day, but with limited time for gaming and really cheap prices through online sales, I don't think I would spend a lot of time on those older games today, especially when there has been a comeback of certain genres, i.e. RPGs. Sure, it might be interesting to play Baldur's Gate, but you could also spend your time playing Divinity 2.

Then again, it might depend on age, but at least for me many games I found spectacular when they came out, don't hold up very well when revisited in 2018. Sometimes it's better to let them rest in peace, but your mileage may vary.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Deus Ex still holds up well at least.  I didn't play it until long after it originally came out.  It was fun going through that game as a mostly non-lethal character and whipping everyone in the back with a police baton!  The Deus Exe file might be needed to keep the framerate in check though.

Geneforge is a fun series of RPGs that has similar mechanics to the old Fallout games.  The setting is a dystopian fantasy world where wizards called Shapers genetically engineer life.  The player characters have to decide which political faction to follow in each game.  For example, the first game has the apprentice Shaper player character shipwrecked on a forbidden island where the "Serviles" used for slave labor on the mainland have developed their own societies.

Iji is a good 2d 3rd person shooter freeware game from 2008 or so.  It has stats like RPGs, and the story has different dialogue based on whether your character is a pacifist or not.

[haphazard1]

One reason I play a lot of older games is cost. Many great older games are available att very reasonable prices, and they do not generally require having a strong (by current standards) machine to play them. When your gaming budget is small, this is an important factor.

Also, I missed a lot of these classic games when they first came out, due to work and family commitments at the time. The list Gustaran mentioned of "everyone has played these already" I have played maybe 4 of them. Lots of catching up to do, and if you can look past the graphics and sound (and interfaces) many of them are just as fun now as when they were released and became classics.

[Japper007]

Rise of Nations (2003) has an "Extended Edition" on Steam that has cleaned up graphics and Steam Multiplayer support (old MP lobby was through Gamespy, so RIP). I sunk an inordinate amount of time into it back in the day (even placing pretty high on the ladder) and still play it occasionally with friends. It even has a good AI, which is rare for a strategy game and several fun campaigns which'll take 100's of hours to complete on their own. It was developed by Brian Reynolds to be a sort of real-time civ game, so I imagine it'd fit this community pretty well.

[Mr. Cairo]

I was playing Fallout 4, the Far Harbour expansion, and while walking through some "weather" I heard a very familiar lightning crackle effect. I don't know if it's the exact same effect, but it sounded like some of the nebulas from Freelancer, and old space sim game.

I immediately got nostalgic, and looked it up, and lo and behold, the game is available for free, and it turns out there's a couple of mods with multiplayer capability (official multiplayer support ended ages ago), if you're into that sort of thing.

In any case, it has one of the best single player stories in a space sim I've ever encountered, with good voice acting (John Rhys-Davies, George Takei, Jennifer Hale), and a really intuitive mouse-and-keyboard control system.

And it's free.

[Gustaran]

One reason I play a lot of older games is cost. Many great older games are available att very reasonable prices, and they do not generally require having a strong (by current standards) machine to play them. When your gaming budget is small, this is an important factor.

Also, I missed a lot of these classic games when they first came out, due to work and family commitments at the time. The list Gustaran mentioned of "everyone has played these already" I have played maybe 4 of them.  Lots of catching up to do, and if you can look past the graphics and sound (and interfaces) many of them are just as fun now as when they were released and became classics.

You would think they were really cheap, but I just checked GOG and some of those classics cost 8,49 Euros - that's usually what I pay for my games during Steam sales.

Anyway, I checked some classic charts and noticed I had forgotten about some games. I would add theses to my personal all-time classic list:
Jagged Alliance, Splinter Cell, Gothic 2, Thief 2, Tie-Fighter, Max Payne, Age of Empires 2, Elder Scrolls series,  Rome:Total War, Homeworld,

If I were to recommend buying games on a budget for older laptops, I personally would rather look at games released in the last 5-10 years: They are usually as affordable as the true classics and most computers/laptops with a current OS should still be able to run them:

Crysis, Mass Effect 1+2, Dragon Age:Origins, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Hitman: Blood Money, Portal, The Witcher 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Skyrim, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag

[Sirian]

Covert Action (1990, Sid Meier) was fun and challenging. Nothing quite like it has been done since, that I know of (although some recent indie games might be spiritual cousins), and playing on the highest difficulty in Ironman fashion ought to be a stiff challenge for almost anybody. (Assuming one can get it to run, and at the kind of speeds it was meant to run. Not sure if that would be a problem.) This was the game Sid made prior to making Civ.

Populous (1989?). Another oldie that has never quite been duplicated. Loved it. (There were like 500 maps?? I don't recall if I beat them all or not, but if not I came close.)


There were some that were great at the time because of gameplay innovation or graphics (such as Elder Scrolls 1 or Syndicate, both from 1994) but these probably wouldn't hold up well at all today.

There is also, of course, UFO: Enemy Unknown, also called X-com 1, but you would likely be better off to play its spiritual clone Xenonauts due to horrible UI deficiencies in the original.

There's more, but the two I listed at the top are more likely to be overlooked just due to their age, and they probably both hold up better than most old games.


- Sirian

[darrelljs]

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

[DaveV]

Populous (1989?). Another oldie that has never quite been duplicated. Loved it. (There were like 500 maps?? I don't recall if I beat them all or not, but if not I came close.)

I have some fond memories of that game, although I eventually had to quit playing because I was developing carpal tunnel problems from too much mouse clicking. There was an expansion pack which, as I recall, replaced the city graphics with coffee cups, ashtrays, and pizza boxes. That was an amusingly self-aware programmer joke, I thought.

Another game I played a lot that I haven't seen mentioned: Railroad Tycoon. That game taught me a lot about business, including the difference between cash flow and balance sheet.