Old games thread

[bad guy]

Anything about old games released before the year 2000.

What old games are you playing?
Your top favorites?

Old games I play regularly
------------------------
GTA1
Pinball Dreams
Mechwarrior 2

GTA1 is far from perfect. Still I have so much fun playing it, even more than the polished GTA2. Maybe because it is so fast paced. The situation can change so fast. Catch one bullet and you die. The cops are nuts, and -as you might know- that's what made the first GTA game. I think the driving physics are still excellent, not so much the collision physics though. But sometimes quirks make a game charming. When shooting at cops with a MG about 98% of the bullets miss, which is funny as hell. The police sirens and many other soundFX are also excellent and add to the immersion. A hard game; A grand game.

Here is some concept art. Click it to see people developing GTA1:

[Gwilym]

I return to the first two Doom games every year or two, usually abandoning them midway through Final Doom, though this year I ended up playing a bunch of WADs as well - I really really liked this one: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_the_Way_id_Did

All its levels are consciously reminiscent of the style of Doom 1's levels, and they do a fantastic job of recreating the feel of playing Doom for the first time, stripped of all foreknowledge of level layout. I mean yeah, it's still Doom, same old enemies and weapons, but it was almost like that when I first played it because of all the screenshots I'd been drooling over.

They're doing the same thing for Doom 2; I'm really looking forward to it. I should give the outtake maps a go while I wait.

[Fumarole]

I recently reinstalled and played some Steel Panthers: World at War. It is quite possibly the best turn-based tactical squad-level WW2 wargame out there. Definitely my top game of all time for sound design as well. The attention to detail on sound as well as everything else is enough to make a grognard shed a tear in joy. It's also free, for those that may be interested.

[DaftPunk]

Sounds good,downloading right now. Does it work well on Win 7 ?

[DeathPig]

Published in 2000, but Tachyon: The Fringe still manages to deliver some fast-paced dog fighting action. And they got the physics right for a game in 2000.

Waiting for Star Citizen, but lasers are meant to travel faster.

[soldant]

Like Gwilym I'm constantly playing Doom again and again. I recently played through the 1994 Tune-up Community Project from last year, enjoyed every second of it. I also like to dust off Total Annihilation every so often (I used to love playing that at LANs!) as well as Theme Hospital.

Incidentally I'm playing my way through Heretic. I've tried a number of times since it was first released but always quit half way through the first episode.

[bad guy]

I return to the first two Doom games every year or two...

Although I'm not the FPS type, I should play through some Doom1 sometime. Some Duke Nukem 3D got played recently. Love the pistol in that game.

Something about those old sprites too, kind of pixelart, something I enjoy immensely.

[Protoman]

SimCity 4: Honestly I was a bit late to this, but I really like it. It's probably my favorite in the series honestly.
Nethack: Been playing this for years, and while I can actually admit that I usually have more fun with dredmor and ToME than with this or stone soup, (unlike anyone else I know who will put 50 hours into dredmor and then tell me it sucks because the art isn't ascii) I still come back to the classic every so often.
Megaman: Clearly I despise this series and would never, say, devote a username to one of its characters, in a million years.

[Gwilym]

Yeah, ultraviolence and pixel art go well together; I kind of get the game violence kick combined with the "hey look at this ridiculously gory picture I drew in maths" kick. I think procedural stuff like Max Payne 3 is the future of virtual killings, but I like the more bizarre didactic deaths you get when they have to draw every frame. Every time a mancubus dies, his face explodes and his skin melts off. I choose to believe they die like that even if it's from old age. Maybe that's what the Doom 2 ending is supposed to illustrate.

[Fumarole]

Sounds good,downloading right now. Does it work well on Win 7 ?

It's originally Windows 95 (very first version of the game was DOS), and there is some wonkiness with Windows 7; mostly as relates to the graphics displaying incorrectly (I've found a pretty simple fix online) and using the mouse in the artillery barrage screen (haven't found anything for this).

[Voon]

I find myself delving into Dwarf Fortress at times. I'm not playing it as much as before but I still couldn't get enough of it.

Wished I could find some time to play Fallout 2 again. Never got around playing as a dumbass but I did have a bit of experience in the first game after a misconsumption of Mentats.

[Cosm]

Went back to finish Planescape: Torment recently (somehow got sidetracked about 15 hours in and took a break) but I'm so lost. Going to have to restart that one.

Playing Panzer General 2 a bit, turn-based WWII strategy game in the vein of Conflict, Advance Wars and Unity of Command. It's awesome because it's deep and challenging, but also really easy to get into for a couple rounds every now and again.

[sabrage]

I find myself delving into Dwarf Fortress at times. I'm not playing it as much as before but I still couldn't get enough of it.

Dwarf Fortress isn't old. It doesn't have an excuse for the way it is.

[GunnerMcCaffrey]

Currently playing Dungeon Keeper II for the first time. It's brilliant - utterly original, and chaotic in the way only a finely-tuned game can be - though on every level the endgame gets a bit grindy, and the campaign has overstayed its welcome slightly.

I'm horrible at Master of Orion 2, but that never stops me from losing once more. It's really satisfying to stay on that thin edge between inexorable expansion and utter collapse even for a while.

Starcraft is still a masterpiece in my mind. It's a game of campaigns while SC2 is just a succession of loosely-related skirmishes.

Super Metroid is essentially perfect.

[unruly]

Diablo 1, Warcraft 2, and Starcraft are on my list of games that I'll install every once in a blue moon to replay. Same with a lot of the games of my youth. It's not a constant thing, where I reinstall them every X months or something. It's just sometimes I'll get a hankering for a certain game that can only be sated by that game. Usually it's triggered by something else bringing the game to the front of my mind.

For instance, Quake 2 has had a real refresh in my mind after it made me feel ancient just the other day, and I reinstalled it.

[Wheelz]

For me its probably the old Pokemon red/blue/yellow games. I know their technically not pc games, but my first and only experience with them has been through computer emulation (beginning sometime in the mid-90's), and every now and then I'll get a hankering to replay through one.
I guess on average I probably play through one a year, ocassionally I'll play gold/silver/diamond or I'll try out whatever the most recent one is.

they kinda fill a niche for me that no other game does.

ed: otherwise, Dungon Keeper 2 is always enjoyable (although I'm not sure it counts because I never played it in the 90's). I also recently bought a copy of RollerCoaster Tycoon off of gog on a nostalgia trip, and the game is still very enjoyable.

[Voon]

Dwarf Fortress isn't old. It doesn't have an excuse for the way it is.

It is old if you consider a 2002 game old. Toady still spends his time with its updates in a somewhat frequent basis even till today, so it doesn't feel old.

[sabrage]

That's like saying Duke Nukem Forever is a 1997 game.

[TailSwallower]

I go back and play either Fallout or Fallout 2 fairly regularly. I know there are so many different things I've missed, but I've still seen the majority of it, so the playthrough rarely holds my interest to the end.

My most recent run of Fallout 2 was HtH and slightly stupid (to get away from my usual high INT sniper style), but I found Horrigan impossible. I wasn't tough enough to take on him and the turrets, wasn't smart enough to hack the turrets and wasn't charismatic enough to convince his soldiers to fight against him.

[Kaira-]

That's like saying Duke Nukem Forever is a 1997 game.

Except DF is still in alpha.