Skeezix,
you can find emulators for nearly any old console system. Zsnes is what I use for old Snes games.
Finding legally abandoned games (I assume that’s what you’d be interested in 
) can be a pain though.
I have no problem getting MOM and X-Com to run on my Pentium 4 3.2. And you mean Halfling Slingers, which were indeed awesome, especially when enhanced with Warlord, Crusade, and adamantium weapons. But they’re not quite the best until they’ve gained a few levels; Dwarven Hammerhands are better mele, especially when adamantium and giant strength enhanced, and dark elf warlocks are the best ranged attackers.
Of course, the biggest imbalance is Torin. Put all twelve books into life magic, take Incarnation as your rare spell, summon Torin right off, trade to get enchant object, and send him off on a one man rampage. You can finish the game with literally a one man army.
X-Com also plays just fine on my system; these are easily my two favorite games.
Hmmmm…
Baseball Simulator 1.000 for the NES; Defender for the Atari 2600; Shadowrun for the Genesis; Super Breakout! for the Atari 2600; Donkey Kong for the Colecovision;
My list could go on forever and ever and ever. At a former job, where I was allowed to use my computer for whatever I wanted except for surfing porn, I had a Genesis and SNES emulator, and had tons of games taht I played during down time.
Sorry, I should have actually said, but everyone else has cleared it up for me now. There are emulators for most old computers, abandonware games* for them and of older PC games, utilities that slow down a modern computer to make old games playable. A google can find most of that. I can’t see any good reason why there’s not a nice DOS emulator for XP, but I’m not aware of one, but if you wanted to you could install a win95 partition.
*A quick summary of the legal position as it is commonly explained to me, disclaimers etc. If you have the original game you are morally and possibly legally allowed to download a copy of it converted to a PC file. If you don’t and the game is still sold, you are morally and legally obliged to buy it if you want to use it. If you don’t have the game, and the company won’t sell it, you’re still not allowed to download a copy of it, but many people think you should be, and game companies are split into those who prohibit this, and those who don’t care, or don’t mind. I would link to an abandonware FAQ, but since that’s likely to be in proximity to a abandonware, I suspect the Reader would be happier if I didn’t.
Master of Magic - Can’t get it to run on my current system. I always favored Paladin units though… immunity to magic was pretty sweet.
X-Com - I only wish X-Com 2 had been as good.
LucasArts has been rereleasing a lot of their games, so you might be in luck. I got Monkey Island 3 for about 15 dollars, and it came bundled with Monkey Island 1 & 2 on a seperate CD. There is also, I believe, an updated (read: on CD-ROM instead of five floppies) LucasArts Classic Adventures, which has Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island 1, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom, and Zak McCracken. If not, you might be able to find the one on five floppies on eBay or something, and they all run just fine on my XP box. Heck, I just found one.
Yay! Nobody ever seems to mention ColecoVision. And I loved mine!
Donkey Kong! BurgerTime! Q*bert! Frogger! Even Smurf Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle!
And it was a freakin’ awesome day when my Dad took me shopping for the steering wheel/gas pedal accessory for the racing games.
As far as what I might like to see updated: a better looking/better everything version of Joust (Atari) and maybe an update or a sequel to **Beyond the Beyond ** (Playstation).
I’d like to see and expanded, updated, and upgraded (Second Edition rules) Autoduel for PC.
I’d love to be able to play:
Tie Fighter. As good as X-Wing was, Tie Fighter was a thousand times better. And becoming Hand of the Emperor… what a great feeling.
Wizard. Old Commodore 64 game. Basically Jumpman with the main character able to cast spells. I played that incessantly.
Impossible Mission. Another C64 game. I just wanna play it to see if I can figure out what the hell that game was actually about.
Gladiator. Arcade side-scrolling swordfighting game.
X-Com. As crappy as the graphics are by today’s standards, I’d play it in a heartbeat if I could get it to work on XP.
Defender of the Crown. Nothing like lobbing dead cows into your opponents’ strongholds to give them the plague.
Okay, I think I got it. We got miscommunication here. In my intial post (that Shade was responding to) I mentioned that most of my current gaming is console emulation. Meaning, I’m hip to C64/Amiga/console/arcade emulators, and the dubiously legal ROM files to use with same.
IOW, y’all are preaching to the choir.
(I thought someone had done the other bit I mentioned, updating the Tie Fighter campaign missions to run on a newer game engine, and I’d missed it.)
What I’d really like to see is a functional Sega-CD emulator, so I can waste a couple hundred more hours slogging my way through Dark Wizard again. And to finally get to finish Night Trap or whatever that was called. My actual hardware Sega-CD has given up the ghost on me.
And I’d also like to add that trying to play WarGames on a Colecovision emulator, without that dual button controller and the keypad overlay is a royal bitch. I used to play it for hours at a time, and now I keep getting my ass handed to me by that friggin’ game.
I used to play River Raid on the Atari 2600 for hours. It’s amazing that such a simple game, with no ending, could keep my attention, and I get bored before I get to the end of a lot of today’s quasi-RPGs. (I’m still kicking myself for getting rid of my Atari in a yard sale.)
My best friend just reminded me of this game last week. I could never get very far, but it was oddly fascinating. (This friend also had the good insight to buy an old Atari before they became “collectible”, and now has about 60 games as well. Unfortunately, he lives halfway across the country now.)
Stay awhile. Staaay forever!
That was the first game I ever beat on a computer. An old Tandy 8088, if I recall correctly. That was fun, even though I finished it at 2am and had nobody to brag to until the next morning.
Aha! Sorry, yes you did mention emulators in passing, I had missed that. Is your problem that you can’t find an emulator for the system you wanted, or that no-one has converted the game yet?
I really wish I could get Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers to run on my current system. Even on my last 'puter the timed puzzles were nearly impossible to complete, but on my new one it won’t run at all.
Anything that required expanded, extended, extruded, exoskeletal, ex libris, or other special memory.
OTTOMH
Alone In The Dark 1,2, and 3
Dominus
I don’t usually like rts games. But Dominus is great. You can set traps for opposing armies, torture captured monsters for information, merge monsters in your lab, etc.
Bureau 13
Imagine X Files meets Get Smart (though the B 13 books and rpg predate the X Files by a decade or so). It’s a fun game, filled with subplots and smart writing. Fer example, while you can smash things and kill people, you get better results thinking your way out of problems.
Archon Ultra
Remember Archon? (For those who don’t, remember the game of chess C3P0 playes with Chewie?) Archon Ultra was the expanded and enhanced version-Flying creatures could pass over others, every piece had 2 powers instead of one, dark squares had toxic swamps or magma pools.
C 64 Gameso
Darklord
One of the greatest interactive fiction games ever made. The atmosphere is marvellous.
Movie Monster Game
Pick a monster (Godzilla, Robot, Spider, Hornet, Blob[technically Glog], Staypuft Marshmallow Man[technically Mr Merringue]) and a mission (escape, beserk, lunch, destroy landmark, rescue offspring) and go to town.
Future Knight
The music was great. Plus, it would be nice to finally beat this thing (I could never get out of the ship)
Rad Warrior
Great music. Great setting. You are the strongest warrior in your primitive tribe. The elders have sent you to find the magic armor (actually an anti-radiation power suit) and free the human race.
Bruce Lee
Get the magic lanterns. Do a lot of jumping and running to avoid killer lights on the floor.
Syndicate. Absolutely great game. The last mission was virtually impossible.
SimCity 2000. I know that they have Simcity 4 out, but it’s just not the same.
Asteroids. A classic. I loved this game so much, I wrote my own version of it for my grade 10 programming class.
What do you want to know about Impossible Mission? I used to beat that game regularly. Let’s see what I can remember…
The hero was trapped in an Evil Scientist’s Lair. This lair had elevators and rooms. The rooms had robots and various items in it. The robots could be stationary or mobile, and sometimes would shoot sparks. The robots were sometimes programmed and sometimes would react to the presence of the hero…the player had to observe to find out which kind of robot each one in the room was. Touching a robot was fatal, so timing was essential. The items in the room would always include at least one computer station, where the hero could input something to temporarily immobilize the robots if he’d found it in an earlier room. Often the room had other items in it, as well. Damned if I know why the Evil Scientist had so many candy machines, but he did. Maybe he got tired of providing free snacks to his minions. Maybe the robots had a sweet tooth. The hero was looking for pieces of punchcards. After he got them, he had to fit them together, rotating and changing their color until he could match them up. I think that there were at least two cuts for each unit. At any rate, after he’d found all the puzzle pieces and solved them, he could obtain the password, and win the game.
The hero had a deadline, and could call up headquarters for a hint on a puzzle piece, but each call had a time penalty attached. The hero had an infinite number of lives. I can’t remember whether or not losing a life also cost some time, other than hearing the “drop” sound.
Damn, it’s been too long since I played that game. It was a GREAT game. I loved making a new high score.
Probably I shouldn’t admit this…but I didn’t have a legitimate copy of the game. All I had was a copy of a copy, with no instructions. I figured out the game without any oral instructions, either. I’d pay for a legit copy that I could play on my PS2. I’d be wary of running it on my current computer, as I’m sure that it would run either way too fast or way too slow.
I’d buy a copy of M.U.L.E. for my PS2, also. That game was absolutely addicting. I’m not just blowing smoke…I’ve got several “Museum Collection” disks of old arcade and early console games.
Lynn - I can solve your problems two ways, with a site I know - Home of the Underdogs. Essentially, the site provides old, no-longer-sold games for free, and it’s perfectly legal.
M.U.L.E. is here, along with a C64 emulator - just run the batch file that comes with.
Subtrade is essentially a MULE re-make with better graphics. It’ll run (barely) on a modern PC, you just have to run it under DOS.
MULE, Of course F1 Challenge 99-02 and other related racing games go without saying, Monkey Island (2 especially), Maniac MAnsion, Crusader: No Remorse.