Topic: Retro time! (Read 34849 times)

ForteBass · « **on:** 09 May 2013, 01:14 »

So, I almost never buy games when they first come out. I wait for quite a while before I play some things. It's better for my wallet that way and the games are just as fun. Recently I just did my first playthrough of Portal. I absolutely loved it. What old(er) games are doing it for you people?

ADDENDUM: Since this came up -- We're going to consider "retro" to be anything that falls outside of the last 5-7 years. mostly because of how the industry moves and saturates.

Parkour Lewis · « **Reply #1 on:** 09 May 2013, 01:33 »

I'm trying to play Total Annihilation lately because I never got to play it when it was popular, but I just can't get into it. I guess I'm just not into RTS games anymore, even though Planetary Annihilation looks like it'll be a great game, so maybe it'll be different for me.

mtmerrick · « **Reply #2 on:** 09 May 2013, 02:14 »

Last "old" game I played is cave story. Great fun.

Dang, in retrospect, I never finished it...

I also have Duke Nukeum on my phone, which I've been meaning to play, but have never gotten around to.

LTK · « **Reply #3 on:** 09 May 2013, 02:14 »

I keep telling myself not to buy any more new games so that when I get money I can buy Planescape: Torment, System Shock 2 or Thief, buuuut then something like Bioshock Infinite comes along, so it's taking a while.

And if Portal is now considered retro, I must already be old. ¬_¬

Parkour Lewis · « **Reply #4 on:** 09 May 2013, 02:19 »

Quote from: LTK on 09 May 2013, 02:14

I keep telling myself not to buy any more new games so that when I get money I can buy Planescape: Torment, System Shock 2 or Thief, buuuut then something like Bioshock Infinite comes along, so it's taking a while.

And if Portal is now considered retro, I must already be old. ¬_¬

The really messed up thing is that if Half Life 2 ep 3 ever DOES come out it'll already be retro before its release.

BeoPuppy · « **Reply #5 on:** 09 May 2013, 03:25 »

Quote from: LTK on 09 May 2013, 02:14

I keep telling myself not to buy any more new games so that when I get money I can buy Planescape: Torment [...]

Do it! Such an awesome game and a completely compelling story.

~~GarandMarine~~ · « **Reply #6 on:** 09 May 2013, 05:50 »

I need to replay some of my beloved Game Cube RPGs this summer, Tales of Symphonia and Skies of Arcadia Legends rate at least one more replay, also need to replay some Zelda...

Define classics I suppose?

LTK · « **Reply #7 on:** 09 May 2013, 05:52 »

Quote from: BeoPuppy on 09 May 2013, 03:25

Do it! Such an awesome game and a completely compelling story.

I know! I've heard the exact same thing from a thousand other people!

Quote from: GarandMarine on 09 May 2013, 05:50

Define classics I suppose?

Classic games are often retro but not all retro games are classics.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #8 on:** 09 May 2013, 06:05 »

Last night, I fired up my Acorn A3020, and was playing some stuff on it.

Holy crap, the Brits were smoking the good stuff.

Let's see... (all of these games downloadable from here FWIW)

Big Bang: Sonic on acid, with teddy bears instead of rings, and without any attacks (or going high speed at all).
Cycloids: A clown on a unicycle avoiding flying pig-elephant things.
DinoSaw: A caveman attacking dinosaurs and such with a chainsaw.
Hamsters: An alien thing squishing various furry animals with a hammer.

snalin · « **Reply #9 on:** 09 May 2013, 06:08 »

I think it's fair to say that Dungeon Keeper 2 is retro, and I have been playing the shit out of that lately. So crazy fun.

Pilchard123 · « **Reply #10 on:** 09 May 2013, 14:27 »

Robin Legend of Sherwood - or something like that anyway - and a bit of Pikmin. I might actually get to play that more now that I've got some of my "sensible adult" stuff out of the way. It's been sat on my shelf for...3 months now?

Akima · « **Reply #11 on:** 10 May 2013, 03:27 »

I recently played KotOR for the first time. The download cost about $20 and I had a lot of fun playing the game, while ignoring as much of the Jedi stuff as possible.

I'd like to play KotOR 2, but that was never ported to the Mac, so I'd have to mess about running a virtual Windows 7 or something which would be a hassle.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #12 on:** 10 May 2013, 03:46 »

I can't emphasize it enough: "Thief: The Dark Project" and its successor "Thief: The Metal Age".

These are the most awesome stealth first person games ever.
Much better than Splinter Cell imho.

Set in a steampunk world you rid the wealthy of their unnecessary goods, get involuntarily involved in fighting multiple religious organisation and save the world as a cynical anti-hero.

ackblom12 · « **Reply #13 on:** 10 May 2013, 06:47 »

I'm sure you are already aware of it's existence, but GOG will likely include most of what I or anyone else lists, and if they don't Steam probably has it. Just a quick list...

Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura
Geneforge series
King of Dragon Pass
Quest for Glory series
Realms of the Haunting
Beyond Good & Evil
Freespace 2
Disciples II
Evil Genius
Dungeon Keeper 2
Planescape: Torment
Psychonauts
The Longest Journey
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Sanitarium
Sacrifice
Clive Barker's Undying
System Shock 2
Escape from Butcher Bay
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Deus Ex
Galactic Civilizations II

snalin · « **Reply #14 on:** 10 May 2013, 07:19 »

That list is missing Might and Magic. It needs Might and Magic.

ackblom12 · « **Reply #15 on:** 10 May 2013, 07:21 »

Also Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines now that I think of it.

LTK · « **Reply #16 on:** 10 May 2013, 09:28 »

...which is not on GOG.

Just on Steam. Also on my to-play-eventually list.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #17 on:** 10 May 2013, 09:51 »

I just added the GOG links for Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age to my post above. I bought them a few days earlier, and they are still fantastic.

LeeC · « **Reply #18 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 11:51 »

watching farfromsubtle play earthbound. it looks fantastic! can't believe I didnt play this as a kid. Kind of want to play it.

Blyss · « **Reply #19 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 13:05 »

Replaying the old XCOM on PS1, and my son just bought his first console - a used gamecube. I fully plan to get the Resident Evil REmake for that.

LeeC · « **Reply #20 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 14:37 »

wow. aparently one of the first guys you meet in earthbound is this guy

he even takes you to his basement in his crummy house. he's a totally creepy dude too. WTF!?

de_la_Nae · « **Reply #21 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 19:20 »

The Mother series is fucked up.

ackblom12 · « **Reply #22 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 19:49 »

In all the best of ways.

de_la_Nae · « **Reply #23 on:** 23 Jul 2013, 20:01 »

From what I gather. I haven't actually taken it for a spin yet though. However, it's hard not to get behind a game that

(click to show/hide)

.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #24 on:** 24 Jul 2013, 17:33 »

And I'm at a retrocomputing conference (KansasFest), that Steve Wozniak made an appearance at.

kyomi · « **Reply #25 on:** 27 Jul 2013, 14:58 »

Dude.. Sanitarium was a *fucked up* game.. or possibly because I was playing it when I was like 13..
I still remember bits in the intro where there was some guy just muttering something beating his head on a bloodstained patch of wall.
Shortly after there was a guy which looked like he was peeing off the edge of a cliff.. you get near him and he freaks out and jumps off.

On the subject of retro.. you can't go wrong with DOSBox and anything Apogee released

(or is that too retro?)
Audiosurf is pretty fun.. especially with Savlonic songs (look them up on youtube

)
Black Mesa is a free game that's a re-imagining of the original Half-Life (Gets you up to before you go to XEN, they are making that part a whole game

)
Although it's not related to the Operation: Black Mesa, which is essentially the same type of thing but with the Opposing Force game

I keep going back to Unreal Tournament, mainly to play the Unreal Coop mod (lets you go through Unreal with friends and a ton more enemies.. I recommend checking it out

)

This is not entirely retro.. but there is a game on Steam called "Antichamber" which is a pretty awesome mind-fuck

Personally, I've been going back and playing Red Faction: Guerilla to try to finish it.

If you need any other ideas of games, let me know.. it's basically all I did my entire childhood.. and still do to this day.

Sorflakne · « **Reply #26 on:** 28 Jul 2013, 19:08 »

So I bought the Tomb Raider pack during the Steam sale (why not? all 10 games for like $18). I load up the first game and after mapping the keys to my preference, I notice that they're all used by my left hand (I set them up according to my Skyrim layout). Of the first five TR games (I stopped at 6 because of how glitchy it was), the first was the one I played the most, being able to do a complete run getting all items, secrets and kills in a few hours.

Playing that game now, after having not played it for at least 10 years is just weird. No using the mouse, having to manually activate the Look function, no repositioning the camera, long jumps have to be set up, auto-aiming, can't just press the Fire button to draw your weapons...at least you can save whenever you want now though.

de_la_Nae · « **Reply #27 on:** 28 Jul 2013, 19:47 »

Sanitarium is *great* (at least the first half), and Mother and her situation is one of the best creep-outs from games of that time I ever saw. The themes and ideas in that act had a surprisingly large impact on my writing and storytelling projects over the years.

kyomi · « **Reply #28 on:** 01 Aug 2013, 05:22 »

Just a FYI.. ROTT13 (newly overhauled version of the original) came out yesterday on Steam. It is glorious

Be sure to check out the Steam forums for that game for a few tweaks too.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #29 on:** 14 Sep 2013, 20:14 »

Just got this going:

Looks like there's a hangman game for it, so it counts towards retro gaming, right?

Is it cold in here? · « **Reply #30 on:** 14 Sep 2013, 21:25 »

Thrillho · « **Reply #31 on:** 15 Sep 2013, 03:38 »

Some old games hold up incredibly well because they made the most of their limited animation. Theme Hospital and Windwaker for example, both have highly cartoonish graphics that make no effort whatsoever to seem realistic and so their animation still looks great now.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #32 on:** 15 Sep 2013, 04:54 »

And some games looked good for their time, and despite the graphics not holding up very well today, the gameplay mechanics were bang-on perfect.

(UT99 and UT2004 come to mind.)

Masterpiece · « **Reply #33 on:** 15 Sep 2013, 08:31 »

Bastion

LTK · « **Reply #34 on:** 15 Sep 2013, 09:52 »

Quote from: Masterpiece on 15 Sep 2013, 08:31

Bastion

2011, try again.

What does qualify is the latest Humble Weekly offer on retro shooters. (So what if I already posted it!) I think Duke Nukem 3D was the last (good) Duke Nukem game but I haven't played any of them, so I might give it a shot to see what it's all about.

Quote from: bhtooefr on 14 Sep 2013, 20:14

Just got this going:

What is this?

bhtooefr · « **Reply #35 on:** 16 Sep 2013, 04:54 »

It's an IBM RS/6000 desktop workstation, with a P/390 card set (2 cards that add a mainframe CPU and 128 MiB of RAM). The R/390 mention is referring to IBM's name for an RS/6000 with a P/390 installed.

Running VM/ESA (one of the IBM mainframe OSes, dates back to the 1960s, and yes, VM means virtual machine, and yes, it means the same thing as it does in PC-land - VM basically gives every user a VM of their own, running a special-purpose stripped down OS called CMS, and all services get VMs of their own, and any other IBM mainframe OS can run within a VM as well), which is the OS that this card set was primarily designed for (but not IBM's flagship mainframe OS - that is the MVS (means Multiple Virtual Storage, but it's so obtuse that many call it Man Vs. System), OS/390, z/OS lineage).

No, there is no reason to run this hardware - emulation is easier to set up, and is far faster. And, no reason to play with mainframe hardware, either, but hey.

kyomi · « **Reply #36 on:** 16 Sep 2013, 05:31 »

I consider myself pretty technical and up on computer stuff.. but I think I went cross-eyed for a second there while reading that...

pwhodges · « **Reply #37 on:** 16 Sep 2013, 06:46 »

It was IBM's deep experience of VMs that enabled them to make the DOS and Windows boxes in OS/2 v2+ genuinely as advertised: "a better DOS than DOS" and "a better Windows than Windows".

bhtooefr · « **Reply #38 on:** 16 Sep 2013, 20:50 »

So, now I think I'll go ahead and post on the QC forums.

From a mainframe. And this thread is as good as any.

Blyss · « **Reply #39 on:** 18 Sep 2013, 11:37 »

I found Panzer General 2 on GOG, but not the original, and my version doesn't work with Windows 8. Even with dosbox. Damn it.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #40 on:** 19 Sep 2013, 08:19 »

fucking awesome music from a fucking awesome game:

Settlers was the first computer game I've ever played.

kyomi · « **Reply #41 on:** 25 Sep 2013, 13:54 »

God, I absolutely love old game (DOS and before) music.. sooo much better then most of today's stuff

Masterpiece · « **Reply #42 on:** 26 Sep 2013, 02:54 »

How do you feel about the Super Meat Boy Soundtrack?

kyomi · « **Reply #43 on:** 26 Sep 2013, 17:14 »

I haven't played that game. It didn't seem like something I would enjoy.

snalin · « **Reply #44 on:** 27 Sep 2013, 00:51 »

There's so many recent indies with awesome music that really can stand up to the classics. Bastion, of course, but Frozen Synapse and FTL are also up there. The classic Cave Story has great music too.

If you like Vidja Game Music, the artists at OverClocked ReMix makes a lot of good stuff! Check out their albums, or just listen on rainwave. Links!

Also I can't mention VGM in a retro thread without linking Smooth:

Masterpiece · « **Reply #45 on:** 27 Sep 2013, 03:48 »

Quote from: kyomi on 26 Sep 2013, 17:14

I haven't played that game. It didn't seem like something I would enjoy.

You can still listen to the soundtrack though...
Linky Link

edit: The music of the first chapter isn't as good as the next ones. Don't get put off quickly.

de_la_Nae · « **Reply #46 on:** 27 Sep 2013, 04:01 »

Well done, bhtooefr! (Also I laughed at Violators will be soylented.)

Frikkin Serious Sam, man. Picked up the Humble shooter bundle and the remake of the first one is all I've gotten to so far. It is *quite* a serious endeavor.

Masterpiece · « **Reply #47 on:** 01 Oct 2013, 03:12 »

On the topic of great video game soundtracks, I offer you...

The Operative!

No One Lives Forever!

On the topic of No One Lives Forever, apparently nobody knows what happened to the game. Case in point, not even Activision, the producer that gobbled up Vivendi, the original publisher, or Monolith, the studio that created N.O.L.F. and its sequel know where the rights are. Which is A FRIGGIN SHAME, because the game is the first ego shooter I've played, is FUCKING HILARIOUS, has great stealth sequences, is an homage to the spy film genre (but not parodying it like Austin Powers) with all the ridiculous spy gadgets that come with the genre, and involves the best character dialogue ever (including one scene where you overhear an armed guard confessing his love to someone, and when you go inside the room that someone turns out to be a goat).

The Wikipedia article sums the game up thus: The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a story-driven video game, set in the 1960s, and stars spy Cate Archer as the eponymous Operative, who works for UNITY – a secret international organization "dedicated to protecting humanity from megalomaniacs bent upon world domination." During the story of the game, Archer is sent on missions to a number of locales, including Morocco, East and West Germany, the Caribbean, and the Alps, where she gets into intense situations, such as scuba diving a shipwreck, free-falling from an airplane without a parachute, and exploring a space station in outer space, all the while fighting armed villains.

And it has an adaptive soundtrack, which is something I love in video games.

kyomi · « **Reply #48 on:** 10 Oct 2013, 07:08 »

Quote from: de_la_Nae on 27 Sep 2013, 04:01

Well done, bhtooefr! (Also I laughed at Violators will be soylented.)

Frikkin Serious Sam, man. Picked up the Humble shooter bundle and the remake of the first one is all I've gotten to so far. It is *quite* a serious endeavor.

Just remember that we don't mention Serious Sam 1+1 (Although it was a pretty neat game.. it didn't fit the SS style or really much of the story, just that it was set in the SS "universe")

I still need to finish Serious Sam 3.. I couldn't for awhile because it kept making me nauseous for some reason.

Smooth McGroove is awesome... and he looks like a Viking

Quote from: snalin on 27 Sep 2013, 00:51

If you like Vidja Game Music ...

Check out SLAYRadio for some awesome Remixed C64 music and SceneSat for a wider selection from C64, Amiga and a few newer areas

Quote from: bhtooefr on 15 Sep 2013, 04:54

And some games looked good for their time, and despite the graphics not holding up very well today, the gameplay mechanics are bang-on perfect.

(UT99 and UT2004 come to mind.)

I fixed it for you. Also.. I still play UT'99... that game is awesome for all the mods that are out for it and neat maps. I've played through Unreal using UT'99 map packs and mods about 10 times already.

Quote from: LTK on 15 Sep 2013, 09:52

I think Duke Nukem 3D was the last (good) Duke Nukem game but I haven't played any of them, so I might give it a shot to see what it's all about.

I still liked the recent ones too.. Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project was pretty cool; it was like Duke Nukem 3D + Duke Nukem 2 in that weird 2.5D. The gameplay was pretty awesome and the music was nice too. Duke Nukem Forever was still lots of fun, I can't understand all the hate it gets. You can't go into something like that with high hopes given it's... history. Granted, the loading times were a bit long.. but the game itself was still fun. I miss games like those where it's just "Hey.. kill these things.. that's it" and not a movie crammed into your face ever level/chapter of these military shooters.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #49 on:** 10 Oct 2013, 07:33 »

Old (like Apple II-era) Apple CRTs smell amazing when they warm up.

My cube smells amazing now. (Warmed up an Apple Monitor //c.)

That is all.

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Author Topic: Retro time! (Read 34849 times)

ackblom12

ackblom12

ackblom12