Author Topic: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young? (Read 153,686 times)

Lashiec · « **Reply #100 on:** January 12, 2007, 09:57 AM »

Quote from: app103 on January 12, 2007, 06:19 AM

I forgot to mention this one...

Crystal Castles

For heaven's sake, what a port of such nice arcade game!

vegas · « **Reply #101 on:** January 12, 2007, 12:09 PM »

Quote from: app103 on January 12, 2007, 06:19 AM

I forgot to mention this one...

Crystal Castles

Wow, crystal castles! totally forgot about that game, with the little trees bouncing around. Nice call.

Renegade · « **Reply #102 on:** January 13, 2007, 04:37 AM »

Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99/4A.

The TI-99/4A was a great little machine, and had massive advantages over a lot of the others in the market at the time. TI dropped the line though. I guess Commodore and Atari were just too popular for TI to carve out much of a market share.

scriptedfun · « **Reply #103 on:** January 13, 2007, 09:25 AM »

Round 42!!!

That game was amazing

42 levels of Space Invaders-type gameplay - but the enemy types were different in each level - not just in the way they looked, but in the way they behaved, so you had to approach each level differently. And the graphics were nice! We had a CGA card back then, but I was really amazed that the game ran in 16-colors - which was probably made possible by the "Lores Toolbox" which the authors (Elven Software) also sold.

They indicated that the game was written in Turbo Pascal - one of the things that made me realize that games can actually be made at home with the right tools

I really wanted to learn Pascal back then to make a game just like that!

I think Borland even marketed "starter kits" to go with Turbo Pascal back then - I can't remember the exact term. They had a game pack, I think something like a spreadsheet pack, etc.

app103 · « **Reply #104 on:** January 19, 2007, 04:31 PM »

I am sure we will all agree that this was one of the worst games ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhU4GrdAMuI
(you can watch the full game being played and won)

What is funny is how many people actually bought it. Every time I buy out someone's full collection of old atari games, this one is almost always in it. (I buy old atari collections at yard sales)

mouser · « **Reply #105 on:** January 19, 2007, 04:51 PM »

i dont remember if i played that on our 2600 - but if i did i may have blocked out the memory - damn that looks boring. pitfall harry - now that was *the* atari 2600 game. I remember when activision started making carts for the atari - i wonder if that was one of the very first example of successfull 3rd party cartridge developers. It was exciting times when Activision started making games - they had a real quality to them.

Edvard · « **Reply #106 on:** January 20, 2007, 12:42 AM »

Personally, I'm torn between Zork and Lode Runner on the Apple IIe.

Then, fast forward to sometime in the late 90's (when I was youngER...) and there's no question. The first computer game I had played in years...

Hover!

This one kept my sister-in-law from clinical depression when she was unemployed.

tinyvillager · « **Reply #107 on:** January 20, 2007, 02:03 AM »

Quote from: app103 on January 19, 2007, 04:31 PM

I am sure we will all agree that this was one of the worst games ever.

[attachment 1 not found]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhU4GrdAMuI
(you can watch the full game being played and won)

What is funny is how many people actually bought it. Every time I buy out someone's full collection of old atari games, this one is almost always in it. (I buy old atari collections at yard sales)

It was the worst game ever and i bought it too,everytime i watch a documentary about video games,it was E.T. that marked the end of the videogame boom...then Nintendo and Mario revived it.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #108 on:** January 20, 2007, 04:51 AM »

Parsec (TI99-4A) Since I worked for T.I. I had access to games for the TI99-4A before they were available to the public and BEFORE the games were burned on ROM cartridges.

When Parsec first came out there was no cart. I copied the code into RAM (no offline storage) line-by-line for many hours into the "99" I borrowed from the assembly line (it was authorized by my boss) one weekend just so I could play the game for about forty mins. Talk about your law of diminishing return!

Oddly, the "Parsec" I coded and played was NOT this one below, even though they were both T.I. products. The "Parsec" I played had a space station in the middle of the screen and the aliens would come in from north, south, east and west with ever greater speed and frequency until you succumbed and you would eventually succumb!...

[attach]

Lashiec · « **Reply #109 on:** January 22, 2007, 05:38 PM »

GOD! That's the famous Atari 2600's ET! The game that caused the video game crash in 1983 and almost killed Atari altogether in the process. You know about the millions of carts buried in New Mexico, don't you?

Curt · « **Reply #110 on:** August 22, 2007, 05:13 PM »

Quote from: mouser on April 18, 2006, 09:20 PM

http://oldcomputers.net ...

Maybe you "oldtimers" would like to have a look at a lot of old computers as well?

http://www.vintage-computer.com/

[attachimg=#]

Quote from: Vintage Computer

Altos 5-15 A/D - Altos ACS 8000-2 - Apple II - Apple II Plus - Apple //c - Apple IIe - Apple IIe - Platinum - Apple III - Apple Lisa 2 - Apple Macintosh - ASR 33 Teletype - Atari 400 - Atari 800 - Bondwell 2 - Coleco Adam - Columbia VP - Commodore 128 - Commodore 64 - Commodore Amiga 500 - Commodore Amiga 4000 - Commodore Pet 2001 - Commodore PET 8032 - Commodore Plus/4 - Commodore SX-64 Portable - Commodore Vic-20 - Compaq Portable - Compaq Portable III - CompuPro 8/16 - CompuPro S-100 System - Dec Pro 350 - DEC Rainbow 100 - Dragon 32 - Eagle II - Epson HX-20 - Epson Geneva PX-8 - Exidy Sorcerer - Franklin Ace 1000 - Franklin Ace 1200 - GridPad 2050 Tablet - Heathkit ET-3100 - Heathkit ET-3200 - Heathkit ET-3400 - Heathkit H-11A Computer - Heathkit H-8 - Heathkit H89 Computer - HP-85 - IBM 5110 - IBM PC - IBM PC AT - IBM PC Convertible - IBM Portable PC - ICS SBC - IMSAI 8080 - Kaypro 2x - Kaypro 10 - Kenbak-1 - MITS Altair 8800 - MITS Altair 8800a - MITS Altair 8800BT - Morrow Micro Decision - NorthStar Horizon - Osborne 1 - Osborne 1a - Osborne Executive - Panasonic Sr. Partner - Processor Technology SOL-20 - Rockwell AIM-65 - Sharp PC-1251 - Sharp PC 1500 - Sharp PC 1500a - Sharp PC-5000 - Sinclair ZX81 - SWTPC 6800 - Telcon Zorba - Teletek S-100 Computer - TRS-80 Model I - TRS-80 Model I - TI 99/4A

http://www.vintage-computer.com/

ljbirns · « **Reply #111 on:** August 22, 2007, 07:08 PM »

i still have my Apple II e

Lusher · « **Reply #112 on:** August 23, 2007, 06:46 AM »

Started with Apple II as well.

Far from the oldest game I have played, but Master of Magic is a game that I still play occasionally.

There is no game like it, I prefer it to Master of Orion (though 1 & 2 were classics as well), Civilization , or pretenders to the throne like Age of Wonders (I,II,etc), Heroes of Might and Magic, Lords of magic etc..

Dominions is pretty cool, but isn't geared for Single Player and is I think overly complicated for my tastes.

If you have never played Master of Magic, you need to! The graphics are old (but I kinda of like the style), but the gameplay is among the deepest I have seen and yet engaging. (I think games like Space empires V, and Dominions are too complicated to be playable for all but 0.1% of players and I'm pretty hardcore!)

Deozaan · « **Reply #113 on:** January 03, 2008, 08:00 PM »

Quote from: Renegade on January 13, 2007, 04:37 AM

Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99/4A.

That's the one I was thinking of in one of my first posts, but I called it Dungeons of Doom. My brothers and I would play that one so much!

We played Parsec too, but we had the cartridge expansion so we could just plug in games and play.

Quote from: f0dder on May 20, 2006, 09:51 PM

Hmm, if it also had an "adventure" part, you're probably thinking of Full Throttle. I played the demo, which rocked, but never got around to purchasing the full game

My brother and I finally purchased the full version of Full Throttle in the late 90's, installed it, then took it back because we thought it was just the demo because it was less than 1MB completely installed!

CWuestefeld · « **Reply #114 on:** January 03, 2008, 10:04 PM »

My earliest favorite game was on the TRS80 Model 1, I can't remember its name. It was a space battle thing, rendered in characters. Remember back in that era when you stored things on cassette tape, and it was such a hassle finding each thing you'd saved on a big, long 60-minute tape?

The first computer I owned was an Atari 800. At first I played Star Raiders a lot:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/star_raiders.html

Later I got attached to M.U.L.E., a sci-fi game that might have been a precursor to Civilization in a way.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000306.html

and BallBlazer, a sort of futuristic 3D soccergame

http://www.electriceggplant.com/ballblazer.html

and Boulderdash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder_Dash

...and later there was Tetris, and Commander Keen I really enjoyed. And on into the modern era...

Veign · « **Reply #115 on:** January 03, 2008, 11:23 PM »

Did I spend a lot of hours playing Boulderdash. I still play it every now and again through Mame32.

RedPillow · « **Reply #116 on:** May 16, 2009, 05:15 PM »

ahh, ofcourse!

My favourites were totally:

Raptor The 2D flighting game!!!!
Lemmings The 2D Puzzle game!!!!

Shades · « **Reply #117 on:** May 16, 2009, 06:19 PM »

Myself, I was always amazed about the quality of Turrican (C64) and R-Type (C64). I Spend a lot of time playing those. There was also one game on the C64 that allowed you to command a team of persons (each with different spec's) and fly away into space. Ships you encountered could be fought/traded with/entered etc. Planets and it's cities + houses could be entered and could result in trade, fighting, missions etc. Besides, you could also (strip) mine planets for resources.

40hz · « **Reply #118 on:** May 16, 2009, 10:58 PM »

I could never narrow it down to just one.

M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Elite, and Ultima III Exodus on the Commodore 64

[attach]

widgewunner · « **Reply #119 on:** May 18, 2009, 03:24 PM »

My first game was in 1975 as a freshman in college: "Moon Lander" (numerics only) which ran on my friends HP-25 programmable calculator. In 1981-82 I spent a lot of time playing "Dungeon" (text only) on the PDP-11 at my first engineering job (it was then that I discovered that I had an addictive personality - and then swore off video games). I had a relapse in 1985 with "Star Glider" on an Atari 520ST and again in the early 90's with "Sim City" and "Wolfenstein 3D" on the PC. I then stayed "clean" for quite a while.

But in 2000, I got a new system and the video card came with several free games. One of these was "Deus Ex". It took a year before I finally got around to installing it, but once I did, I was floored. What a cool game! Spent a couple months inside that world. Currently I'm playing the recently release DX mod: "The Nameless Mod" (its almost as deep and wide as the original). Another cool (underrated) game is "SimCopter" - my favorite second only to DeusEx.

Cool thread!

wraith808 · « **Reply #120 on:** May 18, 2009, 04:02 PM »

Glad this got resurrected

Led me down memory lane a bit...

My first computer was an Apple (Actually a Franklin Ace- a clone, but I digress). My favorites were Earth Orbit Stations, Wasteland, Racing Destruction Set, Mail Order Monsters, Castle Wolfenstein (and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein), Adventure Construction Set, Archon (and Archon Adept), Autoduel, Bilestoad, Ultima Series, Windwalker, Wizardry Series, Bards Tale Series, Drol, The Might and Magic Series... I could just go on... there were some really good games back then- and a lot of them were by EA!

If I had to choose, I'd choose Earth Orbit Stations. It was so open ended, and engrossing! I'd love it if someone made a good remake.

PC Gamer · « **Reply #121 on:** May 29, 2009, 11:06 AM »

Definatlly STREET FIGHTER was the best! We were even paying for the COINS to play these games outside on the game machines.

I used to play with either Vega or Blanka and beat everyone!

I have recently wrote a review about the new version of Street Fighter 4.

Innuendo · « **Reply #122 on:** May 29, 2009, 04:17 PM »

I played a lot of games when I was a kid, but there were two that stick out in my memory that when I got home with the games and loaded them up that was it. I stayed up all night playing them till I got them beat.

Elite on the Commodore 64. Elite is one of those rare games that there were many different versions of the game with many different features. It's a game that has been done for nearly every computer platform in existence & each one of those versions has varying degrees of features. The Commodore 64 version was one of the most feature-packed or the most feature-packed as was revealed in a review I read with the original programmer of the game.

It was one of the largest, most complex games ever. Definitely for its time period and in some ways even today it is unmatched. You started out with a small modest spaceship at a random space station in a galaxy full of hundreds upon hundreds of planets. Each of these planets had its own background and economy. You could decide to haul goods from port to port for trade to make your fortune or take on missions such as escorting ships and tracking down criminals. That's if you wanted to be a good guy. If you wanted to be evil there was plenty of contraband to smuggle from drugs to slaves. Or if you preferred the gimme approach you could just load up your ship for bear and take to piracy on the space lanes blowing up ships and taking their cargo by force.

If you by chance got bored with all those planets or wore out your welcome there you could later buy a hyperdrive and travel to seven other galaxies each with just as many planets as the first one.

You started out with a ranking of Harmless and as your exploits progressed you could become Mostly Harmless, Dangerous, and a bunch of other rankings all the way up to the ultimate ranking of Elite. Once you became (in)famous enough the military comes looking for you and you get the opportunity to do top-secret military missions and get access to military hardware for your ship.

There was even an alien race for you to fight. They'd attack at random times or sometimes your hyperdrive would misfire and you'd land in a nest of them. Destroy them and you'd get alien artifacts to sell and alien gear for your ship.

And finally there was the easter egg. The mother of all enemies. There was a ship from an unknown alien race that was traveling the galaxies that you may or may not ever run into. The cool thing about this ship was it was cloaked. Invisible. Track down that ship, manage to destroy it, and the cloaking device was yours!

I managed to achieve the ranking of Elite which was not easy. You had to literally kill something like 100,000 ships or so to achieve it, but I never did grab that cloaking device.

The second game was Dungeon Master on the Amiga. People who played in on the Atari ST had a similar gaming experience, but the PC version was crap due to limitation in graphics and sound on the PC platform at the time.

There's not as much to say about this game as Elite. Not that it wasn't as good, but it was not as complicated a concept. It was an epic dungeon crawler with state-of-the-art graphics and sound for the time. Take your party of four down 25 (I think that was the number) levels and defeat the Evil Bad Guy at the bottom. Inventive monsters, traps and puzzles made it an instant classic at the time. I replayed it a few times with different party combinations and tactics to make sure I didn't miss any secret areas or items.

Like I said, I played many games, but those are the two that stick in my mind as being instant play-till-dawn obsessions.

wraith808 · « **Reply #123 on:** May 29, 2009, 05:01 PM »

So many of the new games just really blow- there are a few gems, but in the days of yore, graphics were not a big selling point, so they had to have the gameplay. I don't see why they can't take some of these classics and update them and re-release them!

I spend a lot of time trying to find games that are just as fun as those late nights; as a point, I just bought X2 off of Steam, and I'm hoping that's elite-ish. Privateer was one that was very similar to elite, but I agree that elite was a pretty rare gem.

But there are so many old games that could be tapped for great resurrections!

Innuendo · « **Reply #124 on:** June 02, 2009, 09:39 PM »

I loved Privateer as well. I just didn't play it until sleep deprivation stepped in...I actually stopped to sleep with that one.

The problem with so many of the older games and why they haven't been re-done is that either no one knows who owns the intellectual property anymore or, in the case of Privateer, the IP is own by total asshats like Electronic Arts.