When it was new, I played the 1990 edition of Balance of Power at work when there wasn’t anything better to do. Yeah, I ended up playing that game quite a bit until they finally decided they didn’t need my services any longer. I still remember the best game I ever played, I can’t remember what the score was anymore but I did so well even China decided that Democracy isn’t so bad after all!
Reminder: please don’t post links to sites that have copyrighted games available for download, our Mods don’t like the potential for copyright violations.
I remember back when Blake Stone came out, soon after the original Wolfenstein 3D. We thought that game was the bee’s knees, what with all the laser guns and funkalicious stuff. In fact, looking back, there was still something intriguing and interesting about it… maybe because I never got past the first episode (I only had the shareware version).
What about the black and white joy of the original Archon?
Anything by Infocom-Planetfall, Enchanter, Zork
Forbidden Forest- I finally beat this game on Commando difficulty level. The sounds and sights of a dying spectre remain one of my favorite things in any video game ever.
Sigh… If only I could get my Commodore 64 to work.
I played the original Star Control a lot in my high school Pascal class. There was another game I can’t remember the name of where each player picked a caricature of a world leader (Tricky Dick, Ronnie Raygun, etc.) and tried to nuke the other countries before they nuked you. If one player “won”, it showed the leader smiling in front of a blasted landscape, but if everyone killed each other at the same time, it showed the Earth cracked into several molten pieces. As for Commodore 64 games, I liked the ones from Compute! magazine that you had to type in.
My first computer games were <i>Lode Runner</i> and <i>Castle Wolfenstein</i> for the schools’ Apple II.
My first home computer was an Atari 800, which I played a lot of <i>M.U.L.E</i>, <i>Star Raiders</i>, and <i>Pinball Construction Set</i>. I had a ton of games for that thing and didn’t learn a damn thing about computing other than how to hook up accessories.
Of course, the all time #1 PC game imo is <i>Civilization</i>. The first piece of software bought for my first IBM-compatible computer, <i>Civ</i> has been there from the beginning of my PC days. I also played a lot of <i>Master of Orion</i> in those days too, as well as the <i>Cloud of Xeen</i> series.
Remember dicking around with your autoexec’s and config.sys’? Before I migrated to Windows 95, I had about 40-odd different configurations for each of my games to optimize my memory. I also had batch programs written so that I could automatically overwrite my current autoexec.bat and config.sys files with whatever game I wanted to play next.
God, what a pain in the ass! XMS, EMS, EMM, MSCDEX: AARRGGHH!
That would be Nuclear War, sturmhauke, released by New World Computing in 1991. You can buy it at that URL for $14.95.
And Doc, in my sweaty little hand I have a 5.25" of Archon. I hated hated HATED playing as black, and having a puny little AI knight stab my dragon to death as I tried to flame the little bugger. As white, though, I never could manage to kill the dragon as a knight.
Loved fire elementals, though …
So, how are we defining classic computer games? > 10 years old? Pre-Windows95? Anything that doesn’t require a 1Ghz Pentium IV to run?
Hunt the Wumpus was the first video game I had at home. Played it on the ol TI-99. Thank god I got Tombstone City shortly afterwards.
To play hunt the Wumpus you move around trying to find the Wumpus. An empty room means there’s no basty creatures in the first room out of any of the 4 doors. A green circle means there’s a deadly slime pit in at least one of the first rooms out one of 4 doors. A red dot means the Wumpus is within 2 rooms from your current room. When you know which room the Wumpus is is get close to the room press the space bar to arm your arrow and the press the direction of the room. If you guessed wrong he’ll eat you.
The game I loved before that was Aztec. I played it on the computers while my dad worked in the computer lab. That and Choplifter. Who has played Choplifter without falling to the temptation of shooting the men you’re supposed to rescue? Or flying so low you knock their heads off? I submit that nobody has remained pure.
So many good times.
[ul]
Apple II<x>
[li] Robotron 2084[/li][li] Hard Hat Mack[/li][li] Moon Patrol (great, now that damn music will be in my head all night)[/li]
Apple III
[li] One-on-One: Bird vs. Dr. J (With the “break the glass rim and have the guy sweep it up” feature)[/li]
Mac
[li] Mac Playmate. 'Nuff said. (“ooh ooh ooh…oh yeah.”)[/li][/ul]
On all the 8bit machines Amstrad CPC 464 (Best by a mile, but I may be biased, it’s what I had), Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum.
3d isometric adventure game, absolutely brilliant, got myself an emulator just to play it again. If you look around you can discover that most games, if they’re old enough have had the copyright restrictions removed by the original authors and can be played with a clear conscience
I played a lot of Apple Cider Spider but was seriously hooked on Short Circuit, eventually getting an Apple II emulator for my PC just to finish the damn thing. It turned out to be anticlimactic. Same deal with Evolution.
As for arcade games, I clearly remember wasting many a quarter on Space Invaders, and when that got boring, I moved on to Cosmic Avenger, Wizard of Wor, Frogger and a whole lot of other incredibly crappy looking but-at-the-time-awesome games.
By the way, Championship Baseball was a fucking cheater!
