Retro Gaming

[Giradius]

Hello folks

Obviously we are all here because we share an appreciation for Dungeon Master and its sequels.
But what other oldies but goodies do people still play?

My dad had an Atari XE when i was a kid, then he got an Atari ST and so I the XE was passed down to me, after a while he got an Amiga (and i got an ST ) and then one day he came back with an Amiga 1200, and I acquired his old 500+, then when he bought a PC I gained a 1200.

This range of hand-me-down computers means I have had a good many years playing those old games, and now I have sold out and joined the PC brigade, I have emulators for all them.

What old classics apart from DM do people play?

I have just started a new game of DM (which forces me to make the shocking confession that I never actually finished the dungeon yet), I picked out Stamm,Halk,Gothmog and Leyla and after creating my own portraits based on their own (except for gothmog who has a new one entirely) reincarnated them, now on level 5 I have artisans in every class.

With that said, it was not long ago that i was playing legend (Crystals of Trazere to those in the USA) and before that I was playing a brilliant game called Phantasie (I would love to see a clone or editor for that).

[beowuuf]

Funnily I don't play many retro games! And sadly, I guess the original half life might seem quaintly retro so some!

I did get an A600 a while back to play my old discs, but many floppy discs didn't work If they could, I would have loved to play assassin, cannon fodder, alien breed, and especially chaos engine again. And perhaps alien 3.

And I think lemmings single player and worms multi-player would still be fun even now.

Still, the only retro game I've actually played recently was Monkey Island (original), and for me it wasn't retro - shockingly it was the first time I played it!

[Jan]

There's much information on it here:
http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 51&t=28011

Basically, now I only play DM-CSB, then Monkey Island and related games, and from time to time I go back to Zork trilogy. I don't play any new games at all. Oldies but goldies.

I had also 800 XL, but I don't remember much games for it (they were all the same, heh - yeah, I remember some like Bruce Lee, Pit Stop, Neverending story, F-18 or F-what, but most of my 8-bit Atari games were 2D scrolling shooters; I was collecting text-based adventures, but there were only a few available in Czechoslovakia for 8-bit Ataris). Then I also got 1040 ST, and that changed my gaming life a lot. I enjoyed mostly adventures and RPGs.

I never actually finished the dungeon yet

[linflas]

thanks Jan for the link. Giradius, coud you please check for any existing topic before posting a new one, and in the wrong forum btw...

[beowuuf]

To be fair that topic was about games that changed you life, rather than games you still play

Probably a good point about the forum swap, once everyone's seen this I'll bump it across to the gaming forum.

[Giradius]

Sorry for putting this in the wrong thread, I did look if there was a similar thread in here (which there wasn't on account of me being the wrong forum :p).

Beowuuf is right in that this is not about games which changed your life, its more about games you still play despite having the option to play more modern games.

Dungeon master is obviously one of them, but what others are there, I personally think the Phantasie series was brilliant, and an editor for that would be brilliant, but i sadly lack ANY programming knowledge apart from 2 lines of basic
10 Print "Atari rules"
20 goto 10

[beowuuf]

For example, chaos engine didn't change my life, but damn if it wasn't fun back then to work out the litle secrets, and damn that I can't still crack it out now in all it's glory! Tried to play the PC version (or maybe the SNES emulation), but meh...there was something about the palette etc on the amiga that just ruled all

[Giradius]

Chaos engine is a classic, I want to start a thread (in the right forum this time ) on the possibility of callaborating a Chaos engine pen and paper RPG (with obvious artistic lisence as the original game was not an RPG).

Jan:
I remember many happy hours playing Bruce Lee, the green sumo wrestler made me laugh and the really stupid ninja always seemed to be killing himself by running into spikes and things.

[Gambit37]

Back in the day, I too had hand-me-down Amigas -- first a cool (and rare at the time) 1MB expanded Amiga 1000 (which I sold a few years ago on ebay for £40 despite it being completely dead - the CHIP RAM was kaput) and then an A1200. I've been a PC user since '89, but didn't actually own one until '98.

The Amiga games I enjoyed were varied, but DM types always rated high, plus anything vaguely fantasy. Eye of the Beholder 1 & 2 stood out, as did Captive which was awesome. I liked some point-and-clicky stuff like Shadowgate and Uninvited, yet I STILL haven't played any of the Lucasarts games -- like Monkey Island. One day I will! I also loved Xenon 2, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Gods, Magic Pockets, Zool, Speedball, Alien Breed SE -- but wasn't very good at any of them.

Later on the PC, though by now also retro, I really enjoyed Half Life 1 (and later 2), The first few Tomb Raiders, Thief 1 & 2, System Shock 2.

I never got into consoles, but briefly had a hand-me down Playstation 1 -- all I played on that was Mortal Kombat 3 and Driver.

Oh, I shouldn't forget the stuff we used to play on the BBC Micros at Computer Club after school: Frak, Chucky Egg, Layrinth, Elite -- and the stuff I played on my friend's C64: Manic Miner, Jetpack et al...

I haven't played many games over the last few years. Indeed, my PC is old and won't play anything new. Would love to try Bioshock and Spore at some point, not much else grabs me to be honest. I guess I'm finally growing up, though to be fair any free time is now spent on my own projects rather than playing games.

Overall I'm not really an experienced gamer. There are tons and tons of classics I've never played. And I probably never will now...

[Jan]

@Giradius: Lol, and I remember Summer Olympic Games for Atari - I broke 2 joysticks on it. Luckily I had 4 joysticks, so my uncle had enough time to repair the broken ones.

[beowuuf]

Commodore 64 - rick dangerous 2!


And let's not forget daly thompson's olympics, where you had to keep pressing..umm, the z button i believe...repeatedly. Fun times!

[Giradius]

Gambit37: but DM types always rated high, plus anything vaguely fantasy. Eye of the Beholder 1 & 2 stood out, as did Captive which was awesome.

There were corkers! Black crypt was interesting but It was quite tricky, and Bloodwych was great fun (if only for the dialogue "thou art an oaf"), Crystal dragon was quite good as well, and the Ishar series (but I could never find a fully working copy).

Gambit37: yet I STILL haven't played any of the Lucasarts games -- like Monkey Island.

I completed Monkey island I and II but lost track of the games once they stopped releasing on the amiga, there was a really good point and click called Lure of the Temptress, it was brilliant.
And as for Darkseed, well, don't play it if you want to sleep anytime soon.

Gambit37: I also loved Xenon 2, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Gods, Magic Pockets, Zool, Speedball, Alien Breed SE

I never got into Gods, I preferred Myth.
I remember Magic pockets because it was one of the phone in games on a Saturday morning kids TV show (It was either number 73, Ghost train or Motormouth) and the weird Betty Boo music.
Alien breed was brilliant, and still is, I have heard they are doing a remake of it http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... ?id=219179

There are some brilliant old PC games as well, I reinstalled Shadow warrior recently "Don't mess with Lo wang" "you are weak as a baby fart, go live in fear", and as for Half-life, I'm a huge fan, HL2 is one of favorite games of all time,(1984 is one of my favorite books of all time so its hardly surprising) such brilliant characters as well.

[beowuuf]

Annoyingly I still have to get back to HL2 and the rest. I played up until the start of the beach road section (loved ravenholm, scary as hell) but then couldn't figure out how to actually get on to the beach road. Left it for a while, and when I came back to it found steam had upgraded itself way beyond my *cough win98* op system and refused to load the game. very irritating, since the game itself ran perfectly happily under 98.

I guess that's progress for you. I've not upgraded my machine nor op system since then (I have no desire to fight with that until I have to) so never got back to it

Maybe by the time ep3 comes out!

[Ameena]

Wuffy - you can get Chaos Engine as a free download these days and run it in DOSBox (I've done it myself, though no clue where I downloaded it from - think my dad may have done it actually, but I definitely played it).
Gammy - Spore is fantastic, and the Galactic Adventures expansion pack is brilliant as well (perhaps not so good if played through the Space Phase of a saved game, but certainly great in the standalone play-any-Adventure mode, also the Adventure creator is fantastic ). It's worth playing just for the creators, even without the actual gameplay itself. You can make stuff from...stuff...I mean, you can make creatures/buildings/vehicles from games you've played or films you've seen. I already made a few DM creatures as you may remember - I think my Worm was kinda cute .

[Giradius]

I have heard spore is good.

If i ever get it, i will be making Cthulhu...or Daleks

[Giradius]

WinUAE is a good emulator, its easy to use and there are actual floppy rip disk images that are easy to find (I have loads), in fact i have found disk images with cracker screens that I remember playing on the amiga at the time.

you can even run CD32 games on it

[beowuuf]

didn't like the pc version, didn't have any luck with amiga rips last time. need to check again!

[beowuuf]

Gah, how could I forget syndicate, or forget the cool simplistic micromanagement stuff attached to it ontop of the mission stuff? Great fun!

And after two weeks off and on, I suddenly had a brainwave on the name of a game I was trying to remember - Realms of the Haunting!

A first person shooter come point and click adventure with cool cut scenes, it had a good story, and i seem to recall enjoying it immensely

Well, except for the end where the cool sword you get was more for shooting with than swinging, where the actual imporant end part was all cut scene and your character did nothing in it, and then i was not able to beat the very end 'boss' which resembled the dog from ghostbusters!

[Trantor]

Strangely enough, I almost never play any old games (or new ones, for that matter), but I sometimes ravel in the memories of my favourite games from "back in the day" and watch some youtube videos of them. A few months ago, I replayed Might & Magic 3 and came farther than I ever used to, but I still got distracted shortly before the ending. From time to time, I dust off Doom and have a go at some custom levels. But the only one I really play regularly is DM.

[Ameena]

I've been playing Frontier (Elite 2) on DOSBox, though not for a while now. That's another one that's great fun, especially if you have the buggy version (like I do), which has a bunch of exploits in it like the Wormhole bug. The site I downloaded it from has loads of different versions of it from different systems and stuff, so you can basically get whichever one you like (for free of course).
Gamewise now, I've not played any oldy-stuff for a while. Just finished Overlord (took me a week) - that was fun (love the Minions!), and got Overlord 2 coming some time soon (got the despatch e-mail today) .

[Giradius]

Frontier was something I had a go at recently, I remember that on Amiga (and the huge tome of an instruction manual).

When googling about (as I often do) I found out at a game that has been called "the spiritual successor" of Frontier...Freelancer.
I gave it a go, but I am not decided on it, it doesnt seem as free and open ended as Frontier (I liked being able to fly anywhere and then crash trying to dock on a space station) I didnt like how you had to fly through those hoops to go from planet to planet.

Syndicate was awesome, I would like to try and get a working version of Syndicate Wars (never played it).

One game i did like on the Amiga was K240, a sort of primitive RTS.

[Narjhan]

Ok so apart from DM and CSB I usually play Defender of the Crown once in a while on WinUAE, UFO, EOB 1,2 and 3 on DosBox. But Im gonna try Syndicate again soon for sure thanks to you guys

[linflas]

*going OT for a while*
about Defender of the Crown, have you noticed the difference of gameplay and difficulty between ST and Amiga version ? I never completed the Amiga version and could finish the game quite easily on ST.

[Narjhan]

Yup Linfl

there was indeed a gap in gameplay and difficulty between the Amiga and Atari version (not to mention graphism and sound ). From memory, the joystick action scenes were easier on Atari. That was the only flaw of many Cinemaware Amiga games imho: you would prolly break zillions of Speedking while playing them (the Rocket Ranger launching sequence anyone ?:D).

[Trantor]

I only played the C64 and Amiga version of Defender of the Crown and vaguely remember beating it... I think I never got really far on the C64 and finished the game a year or two later on the Amiga, but to be honest, it's too long ago to really remember any differences.

[linflas]

Well, you can try it on Steem : you will see differences in the gameplay and probably complete it at the 3rd or 4th time !

[Giradius]

I installed Steem because there was a game I could not find for WinUAE (although I remember it from the ST rather than amiga), and that was Technocop.

VERY gory for its time, but also difficult as hell.
One other advantage of Steem, was that I could play Blasteroids again, and play Zombi with the brilliant (and quite creepy) ST music.

[linflas]

Yeah, i mostly prefer ST versions because of the chiptune sound, more retro than Amiga mods. And Steem is faaaar simpler than WinUAE.

[ragge]

Started playing Nemesis on my MSX spectrovideo 128, that game is gradius i think, but was called nemesis on msx.
Then bought atari st and played dungeon master for many many many many hours

But one old game i almost liked as much as those is the millenium 2.2 a space strategy game
theyve remade the game for pc today, here is a link http://glitch01.wordpress.com/
And they made a millenium 2.2 sequel with the name Deuterious.

Really really fun, actually thinking of installing a amiga emulator.

then was quake and last dark ages of caemlot wich ive played for 8 years straight now

[Sophia]

I have seen the MSX ports of those games (after the fact that is-- the C64 and the Apple II were the big home computers around here, nobody had MSX anything), and I can't understand how anyone played them. At least to me the lack of smooth scrolling was completely off-putting. Or maybe I'm just picky. The music in the MSX version was pretty good, though.