Let’s say we had some kind of magic machine that would update modern games for present-day hardware. By this, I just mean it would make them run, not that it’d add new graphics or anything. What would you play again?
North and South for the NES. One of my favorite all-time games and one I couldn’t even find on emulators when I looked a couple years ago.
The Wing Commander series for PC. Is it as awesome as I remember it being or has time and nostalgia warped my outlook? Plus, Mark Hamill needs to return to the PC!
I’m assuming you mean “update older games for present-day hardware” not “modern games”.
X-com: UFO defense. The last few iterations of hardware I’ve gone through, it’s gotten more and more unplayable (even with moslo). At one point, I just had a few more game days to finish construction of the “Avenger” ship (the one that takes you to Mars) and suffered a massive hard drive failure. I was depressed for weeks. I’ve still got the install disk around somewhere, maybe I’ll go pick up a 486 from a thrift store.
Tie Fighter. Did the repackage of it they put out a few years ago work in Win9x? As cool as X-wing was, going through the “secret” missions, eventually earning the title of “Emporers Hand” beat it hands down.
Return to Zork. This might still play on current hardware, but I lost the first CD in one of my moves. “Want some rye? 'Course ya do!” That was the first game I used the Internet to look up walkthroughs, of course it involved scanning newsgroups to get a link to a plain text file on an ftp server. World Wide Web? What’s that?
The last release version of Tie Fighter works just fine under W95 and 98. Can’t speak to anything more recent than that, though. And yeah, flying wing for Darth Vader was second only to being assigned to Grand Admiral Thrawn’s task force.
I’d have liked to see the Tie-Fighter missions released as an add-on for the X-Wing: Alliance game engine.
As for older games, most of the gaming I do anymore tends to be either console emulation or Win9X releases of older stuff, anyway. The X-Com Collector’s Edition works well on my 98 machine, sciguy. You probably can’t find it outside of EBay anymore, but it might be worth tracking down. UFO Defense, TFTD and Apocalypse were all on that one.
And I still go back to Ultima V every once in a long while.
Speedball II - I wore out joysticks playing this. Was anyone else addicted to this game?
Sometimes I actually beat Super Nashwan!
I have a version that worked under Win95. If/when I replace my dead PC I guess it will have XP who knows if it’ll work then. I suppose I can get the old Atari of the loft and see if that fires up…
Wings - can’t remember what system it was for. Kinda a WWI plane thing, you got strafing missions, bombing missions and dogfighting - not to mention excellent training missions. Sigh.
Nintendo has started releasing some of its old Famicom/NES games for GameBoy Advance. I’ve been happily playing the original Legend of Zelda for the past few days.
…but for the fact that I don’t remember where anything is anymore…
Right. Like with, say, Wing Commander, I could probably get it to work on my XP rig with a lot of tweaking and some software, but my Magic Machine would make the install a matter of putting the CD in the drive. In WC3’s case, this’d be easier than its original install, which required hours of tweaking to get working, if I remember right.
Looks like a good place to remember old games
M.U.L.E. One of the earliest co-operative games around.
Llamatron, Jeff Minter’s own take on Robotron, and the best simple shoot em up ever IMHO.
The Temple of Apshai series, dungeon crawls in 8 bit with good graphics for the time.
Masters of Magic, Civilisation with a fantasy theme, still the best Civilisation type game ever (but it did have some unit power ballance issues, hobbit sling men were the greatest military unit available).
I seem to remember Wing Commander shipping on 3.5" floppies, which means that my current computer would not be able to run or install it unless you copied all of the floppies to one CD.
Oh, and since I purchased M.U.L.E. for my dad’s Atari 800 back in the day, I would be absolutely ecstatic if the Magic Machine (can I call that machine the “old software updater,” or perhaps the “old hardware emulator”, or should we stick to “Magic Machine” here?) could make me a copy of my old cartridge.
And while I’m wishing, I’ll wish for a copy of Blue Max, a WWI isometric biplane scroller with bitchin’ sound effects. The bombs were a high-to-low pitch slide followed by a surge of white noise. The machine guns were staggered white noise bursts. I just can’t describe its majesty.
But copying software, even if you own it and you’re just doing it to make the software run on your new hardware, even if the old software is not available in the new format because the publishers didn’t have the foresight to burn 8-bit games onto CDs, is totally illegal and you can go to jail for it, mmmmmkay?
I was actually speaking of a rerelease of the software, updated through my Magic Machine, though I’m not going to muster up sympathy for publishers who obviously don’t want my money.
I played Wing Commander on the SNES, of all places, and played WC3 on my PC at the time: 75MHz of PENTIUM POWER!
Armor Alley. Best. Realtime. Ever. You play a helicopter in a 2-d sidescrolling world (with a look much like “Choplifter”). Your purpose was to get a communications van to your opponents base, at the other side of the “map” (about 20 screens long). In between were bunkers that could house barrage balloons.
Yet into this sidescrolling 2-D were packed much much strategy. You see, in 2-D it is possible to send out armies without having to micromanage (since there is only one place to go.) So you can buy combinations of armor, AA, infantry, and comm vans and send them out without having to worry about them…ever! At the same time, you hunt down your opponents helicopter and convoys.
I used to be addicted to Commander Keen. The joy of finding a yellow key or a teddybear… the horror of confronting the wolf… those annoying one-eyed aliens…
this wasn’t that long ago, so maybe it would be compatible with my PC now?..
You know you may be able to get hold of some of these PC games on [link deleted] and a lot of them do actually work on modern hardware. I think there are some emulator sites on that ring too which may have your old console games on them too.
As for old games I’d like to get hold of again - all the LucasArts adventure games, particularly those that run under SCUMM. Monkey Island 1 & 2, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis. Man, I loved those games.
World Wide Web? What’s that?