Computer game nostalgia

[chungy]

Danarchy said:

Oh, I just remembered the name of that game...Quarky and Quasoo's Turbo Science. It was actually pretty fun, and I learned quite a bit from it.

Heh, I remember that, along with Pepper's Adventures in Time (I had to look through the list of educational Sierra games to remember the title...). I wonder how terrible the game will seem if I tried playing it again, rofl.

EDIT: the developer actually has the game online for free too: http://www.markseibert.com/the_full_game.htm -- now I can see how terrible it is without hunting it down from warez sites @_@

EDIT AGAIN: doesn't run in DOSBox, ah well

[Super Jamie]

Hellbent said:

aww... sounds like I missed out on a great game. Is this the game: http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-33866.html

Has anyone played Myst?

That is Stunts. I think there are even active Stunts groups still making maps and discussing the game, though nowhere near as many as Doom.

I sat down and finally finished Myst a few years ago. If you like puzzle games then go for it, but myk's right, it's way too overrated for what it really is. My gf plays a couple of flash games which are surprisingly similar to Myst, I can get the links if you like?

[pavera]

I'm only 18 but I've been a gamer since I was very, very young. My father started me on Wolf3d as a toddler, so that game is extremely nostalgic for me. I used to sit on his lap and hit the spacebar to open doors for him. Obviously, Doom came next and we played the CRAP out of it. Most of these games are just games I remember well from my childhood, but aren't necessarily the oldest games in the world. I am a little young to remember the 80s.. :>

Besides those, I distinctly remember mass quantities of Command and Conquer (and Red Alert), X-Com: UFO Defense, Dune II, Steel Panthers (1 and 2), Space Quest (entire series), Leisure Suit Larry, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, etc..

Other games we played included:
The Dagger of Amon Ra
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Curse of the Catacombs
Railroad Tycoon
Wing Commander
Privateer
Privateer 2: The Darkening (one of my most nostalgic games actually, and my first exposure to Clive Owen!)
...there's plenty more. My dad personally turned me into a gamer.

[Hellbent]

There's some math game I vaguely remember... oh well

Anyone remember Willy Beamish??? Great game. http://www.freegamesblog.org/post/abandon/willybeamish/03.jpg

I remember space quest IV, although didn't get very far in it.

@Jamie: sure, I might play it some time. I do like puzzle games.

bimlanders said:

everything is so "real" looking now, that some of the magic is missing.

I have to agree. Many games strive for realism, but realism /= fun.

[Super Jamie]

Hellbent said:

@Jamie: sure, I might play it some time. I do like puzzle games.

My mistake, they turned out not to be flash games. Still, here's the link if you want to look around for them. Speaking of puzzles, If you like the sound of Bejeweled crossed with a casual RPG, check out Battlejewels.

I remember hearing about and seeing reviews of Willy Beamish, but never played it. I finished all the Space Quests as they came out, and all without walkthroughs as well. I recall some taking me weeks and weeks to get past one bit or another I was stuck on at the time. Ditto for Dagger of Amon Ra, which was mentioned above.

Many games strive for realism, but realism /= fun. [/B]

Whilst I could write paragraphs on the subject, this is one of the main reasons I love Doom so much. It blends the exact right amount of detail to set a mood, with the exact right lack of detail allowing your imagination to fill in for you. And as everyone knows, imagination is limitless :)

[RestlessRodent]

What was that math game where the guy had a laser gun, you had to go after this spy guy, you also killed stuff, and the whole place was blue (blue walls, blue floor, blue ceiling, etc.). I also remember that you had to get these useless items before time expired. Was a Win95/WinNT game I'm pretty sure.

[Zaldron]

Baking bread in Ultima VII at the bakery while I waited for night to fall so I could steal the jeweler's store 3 stores down the road.

Fuck the virtues.

[Julian]

Jeez... my first console was a Philips Videopac system... I had three cartridges I played like crazy (1-2-3).

The first computer was a TI 99/4A and it was mostly used by my father for programming... the only game I remember on this thing was Tombstone City.

Now, if you thought Doom was abstract, look at those screenies ;)

[Georgef551]

This is REALLY going back....

I played Space Invaders on a Digital Rainbow computer, around the very early '80's. The computers didn't keep up too well, because there was a lot of lag in the controls (about 1/3 second).

In my Electronics Class (High School), we had a few ancient Apollo computers with Breakout. It was B&W vector graphics, with different cross-hatch patterns in each row of bricks, and it too, had laggy controls.

[Zaldron]

Zaldron said:

Baking bread in Ultima VII at the bakery while I waited for night to fall so I could steal the jeweler's store 3 stores down the road.

Fuck the virtues.

Of course, that isn't my first gaming memory, but the definitive point where games transformed from abstract, funny-stupid time passers to virtual worlds open to interpretation and experimentation.

My first gaming memory is either an x86/DOS port of SpaceWar! or Galaxian.

Later games I associate with my first forays are Alley Cat, BlockOut and 3-Demon (god, what a shitty game).

[RestlessRodent]

Galaga kicks ass!

[Bucket]

True. When I figured out how to make your ship get captured and then rescue it for double the firepower, I peed myself.

[kristus]

My father was vehemently against all kinds of computers and computer games. But that didn't stop us from playing anytime we got the opportunity. Ice Climber and SMB were the shit. My favorites were Castlevania though, and Gun smoke, cause of it's "realistic" (lack of a better word) atmosphere.

First computer I had was the Atari ST. And there were a lot of really sweet games for that.

[GreyGhost]

Hellbent said:

Anyone remember Willy Beamish??? Great game. http://www.freegamesblog.org/post/abandon/willybeamish/03.jpg

Heh - not a game you'd want to play on an Amiga 500 with only a single floppy drive - the constant disk swapping will drive you crazy.

[RestlessRodent]

kristus said:

... Gun smoke ...

Gunsmoke was great, I could only get to the second level though. It sucked that when you died, you lost all your powerful shit.

[Phoenix]

my first game was on an ibm, sort of 2D starfighter game, black and white, on floppy disks, boring really - than a chess game, I think I only beat it once - Genesis came along with Sonic - then i got a 386 and DoomII. This got me hooked, on gaming. I think I might be one of the oldest guys here, but before Doom, I simlpy did not play games.

[Mithral_Demon]

My first games were Shareware Doom, JetPack, and Hexagon on a Windows 95, back then it was damn good, now looking back I can't believe how far we advanced in computing...

But that was when I was maybe 5 years old, didn't understand Doom until my sisters friend showed me, then I got nightmares but addicted all in the same time.

[Christoph]

Super Jamie said:

Fuck yeah! How many hours did everyone waste making tracks in this :D and there was that bug where if you hit a jump a certain way you'd shoot vertically up in the air for ages, before crashing to the ground and exploding!

LOL - I definitely spent many an hour making and testing Sunts maps. Yes I remember that bug, and some other ones like when you win as soon as you start. There was another even weirder bug that made you spiral up in the air like you were in a tornado - I think you had to crash a certain way or touch an opponent's crashed car or something to trigger it. I always liked to make the opponent crash (by nudging them from behind), but it's not easy to pull of without crashing yourself too.

Speaking of educational games, I did used to play Spelunx back in early grade school on their old Macintush computers. But it was so stupidly slow that by the time I ever got anywhere fun/new, the class would be over. Also played a lot of Math Blaster+ in that class. I think that was when they used the "turtle" instead of the mouse. I guess they could've also called it a snail, considering how slow everything was...

EDIT: Just also remembered:

Jazz Jackrabbit!
Asteroids!!
Blakestone (if that counts, being post-Wolf3d)

[deathbringer]

Oh, my cousin had an Einstien computer that gave us hours of fun, even though he had every other major console going sitting right next to it (which at the time would have been Saturn, N64 and Playstation, to be "different" he of course played the Playstation the least because me and my brother played it the most).

The Einstien even had a forerunner of GTA on it, where you drove around streets (pacman fashion, there was no 'car handling' **) avoiding police cars, and thens stopped at places like a mansion, art gallery, bank etc and went inside to rob them. The robbery missions turned into a platformer where you ran around the different rooms avoiding police and stealing items. Thinking back i think there was even simple maths questions you had to answer to crack safes.

Hmm, i ought to do a re-make of that game, it ruled!

[Steeveeo]

Doom is my earliest, came out when I was two, heh.

[Super Jamie]

Remember Prince of Persia? Watch this :)

[Rankle]

PoP was annoyingly hard when played on a slow PC.

What about Another World?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoOsXCDyASE

[deathbringer]

Steeveeo said:

Doom is my earliest, came out when I was two, heh.

Hmm, i wonder if there's any members of the Doom community who are actually younger than the game?

[Super Jamie]

I'm sure I've seen at least one, can't remember where though. Probably idgames.