Q: What are the five (5) video games from the 20th Century that you want to be able to play again today? And why?
* Maybe you no longer have time, or, there are no modern ports or adaptation.
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I’ll start with mine.
(in no particular order)
It seems easier to play than #SimCity, but as you progress, it is actually challenging. I love the challenge.
- #Empire / #EmpireClassic (DOS version specifically).
If I am not mistaken, before there was the #Civilization franchise, there was “Empire”. It was a fun game. There is #EmpireDeluxe available on #Steam, but I miss the DOS version that I played a lot.
A very fun game. Once I start playing this, time flies fast. I miss this game.
Here’s a video of it, it’s hard to explain this game as there are many features/gameplay “modes” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBJ0q52bXJM
Modern games today are usually limited to certain themes. If it’s flight, it’s flight. If it’s tank, it’s tank. If it’s strategy, that’s it. Carrier Command have it all.
- #Hyperspeed / #Lightspeed (DOS)
Years before the era of #EVEonline came. RPG-ish space game that made me felt exploring space. This was new to me then and I enjoyed it.
- #StarControl / #StarControl2 (DOS)
I know, we can still play this today, however, what I miss with this game is the 2 player mode.
You just play with your friend and blast each other to friendly matches and laughter.
Being able to play 2P mode, face-to-face, is something that we have taken for granted, and now we’re all just virtual avatars in online games (even online multiplayer games).
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So, how about you?
Q: What are the five (5) video games from the 20th Century that you want to be able to play again today? And why?
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UT99. To this day one of the best shooters. Can’t play it like I used to, since I don’t have anyone who’d play it with me. Also, only LAN parties are the real deal for games like that.
Agreed. I also loved UT2004 and there are still servers up if you play online. Loved the custom sniping maps with low gravity or the giant team vehicle race maps.
Honestly there are no games like these nowadays. The closest being fortnight? But that game doesn’t have any modding and being 3rd person changes the gameplay from 1st person.
Fortnite most definitely does have modding - have you not checked out Creative/UEFN?
Pardon my ignorance! I wasn’t aware.
I loved UT99. Still routinely fire it up now and again, but you’re right that it isn’t the same.
Maniac Mansion, Commander Keen, Out of this World, Battle Toads, Time Traveller.
Some because I remember them being funny or having really cool styles, others just because I’m old/lazy and tracking down emulators and making time is too much.
FWIW, the entirety of Commander Keen is available on steam!
I loved commander keen! It really fueled my imagination.
Ooh, Maniac Mansion was a fun one too. Didn’t they make a sequel?
Day of the Tentacle is the best! And! It includes Maniac Mansion in the game!
Did you mean Time Commando by any chance? That was one of my favorites back in the day. Controls probably wouldn’t hold up these days but the time traveling aspect was super fun!
I like that one but this was a bizarre arcade machine that projected a « hologram » of the game. I was broke and terrible so lord knows how the game ends:
Descent - really loved the immersive 3D world and gameplay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)
But I must have my CH Flightstick Pro to get the most out of the manuverability of the ships.
200-503 CH Products Flightstick Pro USB 4-Button Joystick 8-Way Hatswitch https://a.co/d/4DzrpAv
Of course I haven’t played it in 30 years so I might be a tad rusty now even if I have all the gaming upgrades. 😁
I picked up Overload recently, and it’s from the creators of Descent. I really enjoy it - even if I’m flying into the walls most of the time.
It really captures the fun parts without the drudgery. And IMHO the controls with an ordinary gamepad blow away any of the fancy controllers I tried using back in the day.
Hardwar is something I wanted to play but didn’t think I’d get a chance to, but it’s up on steam now (so I just bought it)
I want to play baldurs gate 1 and 2 to completion but I just don’t have time for it
I never did play through Final Fantasy 7, and it’s a chonker of a game to play through
I’ve played through the later Final Fantasy Tactics Advance games, but I never got very far into Final Fantasy Tactics.
I own all 5, but my main focus in life has been my little guy.
And as a bonus… I kinda want to have game of civ… one more turn!!!
At least Civ has had sequels. I have no nostalgia to play the original Civ because I find the new ones objectively better.
I had a hacked copy of Civ I at first, too, and ended up hand copying a bunch of the Civilopedia entries by hand to learn how to play. I was sure to pick up a copy later when I had my own computer.
I usually hit civ 1 for ms-dos, civ 3 for windows, and I think I have civ 5.
But I like the first for no good reason. Same as my favorite version of simcity is the snes version.
I started out with 3 but not until after Santa gifted me the DLC box for Christmas and I cried for hours until they promised I could get the actual base game to play it with lol
Oh noooo!!
Oh, one thing I can’t really do anymore (for now at least) is some old school multiplayer gaming in doom, duke3d, quake, all those old games. That was my childhood, but not playing online – playing where I can look over to my little brother and shit talk him for that kill or whatever.
I really wish there was a better modern version of Mac Syndicate.
There is a PC remake but it misses the spirit of what was so great about the original game, which was that your agents were largely autonomous (or at least could be) by idk, 1994 standards. It didn’t add anything to their autonomy.
As a kid it felt like you were working with your agents as if they were intelligent to accomplish the missions. investing in their upgrades made them make better decisions.
I’d love a remake or reimagining where you are literally training AI agents do so these missions, maybe go against other players AIs, copy and sell your own. It could be super cool.
I have Syndicate on my Steam Deck and have played a few missions. Fun nostalgia.
Old or new?
I bought the new on and didnt get into it. Controls on the steam deck were bad.
The original one, not Syndicate Wars. I have it through the Origin Store. You’ll want an external mouse.
Did it stand up to a replay?
It’s as I remember it - somewhat simplistic vs games of today. I enjoyed it for the nostalgia, but have been spending the little gaming time I have on Oxygen Not Included and Dead Cells.
Interesting you ask the question - now critically thinking about it - it’s one of the nostalgia moments for me that I’m surprised didn’t differ from memory. I recall trying to watch Star Wars (take your pick of the original three) and found them unwatchable, which was sad and unexpected. I loved those movies as a kid.
Simplistic
Oh I’m sure. I think I might download it and give it a spin. it might be passable on a steam deck.
@TropicalDingdong That’s true. When a modern remake is made, it misses the feel of the original that made it popular.
The remakes usually focus on the gameplay and graphics, forgetting that there are other factors which made the original so awesome to play.
You Don’t Know Jack — the German editions. Loved those games. Unfortunately the new ones didn’t get translated as far as I see, and while I speak English quite well, I miss the cultural context for many questions. And the old ones are somewhat outdated for a lot of questions.
But I loved the attention to detail in those games.
Duke 3d
Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
Carrier Command was utterly brilliant. I first had this on my ZX Spectrum ( it only played on 128k models)
The graphics were clear wireframe and moved so slowly but the tactical game was awesome.
Then I later got my first 16bit computer, the Atari ST and it came with…Carrier Command.
Now the graphics were in colour and the vehicles were made of solid geometric shapes and everything moved so fluidly in comparison to the previous version.
Loved the game all over again.
I know there’s an (unofficial?) Sequel on PC but I haven’t looked into it yet.
Marathon. Not the extraction shooter that Bungie recently announced, but a remake of the original with a modern graphics engine.
That is what Aleph One is. https://alephone.lhowon.org/ Plus there’s a good number of user-made scenarios for it too.
Assuming it’s ok to include arcade games (and at the risk of dating myself)….
Pong Simple yet challenging and you could carry on a conversation while playing it.
Zork Puzzles and world building were engaging. Imagining the world from the text descriptions was like getting lost in a book.
Battle Zone This was the first FPS that I played. Loved the immersion.
Missile Command Just a fun save-the-world game that ate all my quarters.
Myst Great worlds, great story, great puzzles. Amazing considering that it ran in HyperCard.
Battle Zone
Regarding that one, make sure you have an extra pair of clean pants handy:
Wow cool! Thanks!
Tongue of the fat man.
Robocop.
Death race.
Ivan Stewart’s super off road.
Hard drivin
Thexder
Turrican 2
Shadow of the beast
Strider (arcade)
Snow brothers (arcade)
Gauntlet (arcade)
Double Dragon (arcade)
Summer Games
Bubble Bobble
Wonder Boy
Rastan Saga
The Space, Kings, and Hero Quests.
Etc, etc
Quake III Arena. It came out in the 20th century, which sounds crazy to me. It was about 10 years ago I last played it or its remakes.
I got into Q3 a few years late, but there was still a fairly healthy local community for it back then. Quake 4 came out and then Quake Live, which I played for a while, but the local community was missing by then.
Sure I could still play it, but I’m guessing there aren’t even enough people to fill a 5v5 capture the flag match anymore, Q3 or QL… a shame. But at least I have good memories of it.
Q3A was a big deal in the late 90’s - I played it all the time on my college’s LAN.
Sadly today I have only one person I know to play this with, and every time I check online servers they’re just bots
I guess I should mention 4 more. Most of these are playable in some form or other too, but still.
- Dune II - I didn’t understand any English when I was playing this as a kid, but had lots of fun with it either way. Open source remake (needs original data files): https://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/index.html
- Golden Axe - This one was somehow memorable to me out of all the cheesy beat 'em ups. https://store.steampowered.com/app/34276/Golden_Axe/
- Stunts - The first racing game I played. Very nice map editor too. I even remember the bug where if you hit a peak between two ramp edges you’d fly straight up towards the sky! A brief search didn’t give me any faithful offline remakes, but here’s the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)
- Secret Agent - I’m fairly sure this or Dune II was the first graphical game I ever played on PC. https://store.steampowered.com/app/358350/Secret_Agent/
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SimAnt. I spent way too long guiding my ant colony to the kitchen. SimEarth gets an honorable mention here, although I don’t remember playing it for nearly as long.
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M.U.L.E. , it’s funny how much time I spent playing a economics game.
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Lords of Conquest, it was an 80s strategy game that was kind of RISK jr.
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Impossible Mission, I had a hacked copy and didn’t have any instructions so I just guessed at what to do
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Project Space Station on the C64. I remember playing that and thinking how far away the 2000’s seemed. I thought we’d have more space stations by the 2020s. It turns out all we have is more memes.
Sheesh, now I need to find a good C64 emulator
Edited to add: OG Railroad Tycoon was 1990 and RRT 2 was 1998, those were a lot of fun, too. I think I bought RRT2 from GOG at one point for the nostalgia
Wow, I haven’t seen a MULE fan, like, anywhere.
SimAnt is a really good one! I never had SimEarth, but I played SimAnt and SimFarm to death
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I’m pretty sure you can play my entire list now, but frankly nearly every game worth playing is playable. My list are games that are better than modern games.
Master of Magic - Civ with magic that hasn’t been done as well since. I haven’t checked out the recent remake, but this game was miles ahead of the competition and still stands up as better than most fantasy civ games.
Dune 2000 - basically a Command and conquer reskin, but the factions felt different and balanced.
Dragon Warrior (quest) III and IV - the best RPGs on the NES. III was the finale of a trilogy of games, very customisable and satisfying. IV changed your perspective repeatedly across the story, and I had never seen that in a game before.
SimCity 2000 - probably the best city builder. Newer games looks nicer, have more systems and are generally more nuanced and detailed. However those newer games tend to get bogged down in details and it becomes more difficult to get into them. For me this hit the right balance between complexity and ease.
Shingen the Ruler - for some reason I am convinced that it was called shingen the conquerer, but can find no evidence of this. A sengoku period grand strategy game on the NES. I always want the total war games to be more like this game, but instead the real time battles feel far less satisfying and tactical that a turn based version.
And if you include Arcade games, the original Gauntlet.
Also, someone else posted Bubble Bobble and that was an awesome game.
Thanks to the Internet Archive I played the original Streetfighter 2 and Outrun arcade games, I’m sure Gauntlet and Bubble Bobble are on there too ;-)
