I replay old games fairly often. I was just replaying Grand Theft Auto III today. And I recently started with Oblivion again; I noticed my last save was in 2006 which surprised me.
When you say “replay” GTA III, do you actually go through and do the story missions, or do you just sandbox it? That’s one of the appeals of games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row: it’s fun to get a bunch of people together and splatter things.
I never realized there were people who never went back and played their old games. Sure, you have to wait a while, or it will be boring and tedious (like losing your saved game is), but it’s fun.
Still, I must admit that it’s usually more fun to cheat after a bit, skipping parts of the game you didn’t really like (in my case, usually because they were tedious the first time). I do have a “play it once and you’re done” attitude for those. Heck, I’ve been known to cheat first, and go back and play the tedious parts later. It only sucks when it breaks the game doing things out of order.
I’d love to play Myst I and Myst II (Riven), but apparently the Quicktime stuff is not backward-compatible so it’s virtually impossible to play today.
I’ve gone back to play Fallout 1 2 and 3 more times than I can remember, and Oblivion as well. But the games I always go back to are the roguelikes, to go back to play with a different character. That’s the key, I think: when you can play as a different character, it’s a different game.
Even if it’s exactly the same, if it was good the first time, a lot of the time, it will be good again. Particularly if given some time in between.
It’s a poorly designed game, IMHO, that’s only entertaining to play once. (It’s also a poor business proposition, because that game will end up in the ‘used’ bin quite a lot and undercut your sales.)
I figure it’s only a matter of time before it shows up on Steam. I’ve never even played it, and I’m still looking to get a copy. I like CivIII, I like science fiction, and it’s gotten great reviews.
I always play old games through at least a 2nd time. With RPGs, I get through the first playthrough by making choices that I would make in real life, and leveling until I get sick of it. Then for the 2nd playthrough, I get a 100% file.
There’s something about mastering a game that I love, and I love the challenge of dominating every aspect of the game. I have NES and SNES emulators, and old games like Star Control 2 and Monkey Island.
Plus, whenever a sequel to a game comes out, I try to play the prequel first. I played through The Longest Journey again before I bought Dreamfall, and Master of Orion 1 and 2 before I was going to get Master of Orion 3, then I found out it sucked so I didn’t get it. StarCraft 2’s coming out, so when I buy that next week I’ll probably run through Starcraft 1 and Broodwar again.
All the time. Many of my favourite games are from the SNES, Zelda a Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, FFVI, and Chrono Trigger are all still the best in their respective franchises in my opinion, and I play through them a couple times a year to once every couple years.
And then theres games like Diablo, SimCity, or pretty much any competitive or sandbox game which I come back to every so often but don’t really count it as replaying. Since you never really finish the game.
I saw a couple days ago SimCity IV just came to Steam. I’d been hoping for that for months as I’ve been wanting to play it again. I wish they’d make a SimCity 5.
Me too, just installed it yesterday. It’s so hard going back to Broodwar though after playing SC2 throughout the beta. The controls, pathing, and pacing are just so terrible by comparison and most of the hotkeys are different. But I want to reacquaint myself with the story.
There are some excellent games that I have trouble replaying, such as Planscape: Torment. I just can’t recapture what it was like to play it through the first time.
Often, I’ll partially replay a game right after I beat it, then I’ll move on. I need time to be ready to replay it. And I rarely try it with a different kind of character.
Nothing for me held up to as many replays as Morrowind. Oblivion was prettier in some ways, but somehow substantially less visually impressive and less immersive.
I admit I am a bit of a sucker for the “achievement” system, now that it has come to the PC. I replayed Mass Effect more times than I really needed to just to get all the achievements. But it seems like there are so many potential achievements for Dragon Age that I don’t know if I really want to bother.
And I too did the grand tour of StarCraft to refresh myself on the story before the new one comes out. I took the shortcut of cheating my way through to maximize the speed of advancing the story, and it generally still takes a couple of hours per mission with the money hose turned on, or half an hour with invincibility turned on. You can just do the instant win, but then you’d miss scripted events and dialogues. Here’s a summary, for those in a hurry:
Bad guys win! See ya in 12 years! Feel free to hold your breath for Loom 2 while you’re at it.
That’s good to hear, because once I beat Munch’s Oddysee, I have Morrowind in my stack. It’s a game I bought but somehow never got around to playing, so I’m definitely looking forward to it. (There are several games in this thread i think I may need to check out, since they are clearly good enough to be enjoyed again and again.)
And on a broader note, it’s neat to see how many people here do replay games! I really thought I was going to be in the minority. Then again, I have exactly one friend who plays video games, and i don’t own a PS3 or 360 (yet), so other than my subscription to Game Informer, I’m pretty out of touch with the “gaming community”. And I may never know the joys of multiplayer!
Not only do I replay games, I sometimes have several different active saves for the same game. Like one save for each character in Diablo II, including several different flavors of the Barb; played all through Normal at the same rate for each.
I just recently replayed the high-res enabled Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 fully loaded with fanmade character and quest mods…it was glorious.
I still dust off my old copy of Wasteland. (Okay, not really, since it was bought for an Apple II compatible.)
But I have the Interplay RPG collection from back in the day, and it has Wasteland among a lot of other old-school Interplay RPGs.
I’ve replayed Baldur’s Gate once, but other than that, no, never.
You too, huh? I was most of the way through a campaign on a friend’s computer before I bought my own copy, and it still probably works out to less than £1 per finished game. 
VII ain’t bad either. I never bought VIII and I’ve only completed IX about twice, and may possibly never be bothered to try again.
Pretty much I don’t, I save them and think I will some day, but I never do. By the time I think to pull one out, it will no longer run on my new computer
Pff! You’re obviously just not waiting LONG ENOUGH. 
It won’t run on your computer? I recently have run games on my computer dating back to the 1980’s.
What games don’t work for you?
Some games just suck that way. For instance, the latest incarnation of Bard’s Tale doesn’t work on Windows Vista; it’s a known issue and not (last I checked) going to be fixed.