Wizardry for the Apple II was my first game (loved it).
Remember it, heck, I still play its successor, NetHack, occasionally. No, I never did manage to get the Amulet out of the Dungeon.
But I’d still take the ASCII characters over a hundred games with better graphics (OK, any graphics) and less gameplay. If I were stranded on a desert island and could only bring one computer game, it would be NetHack.
Master of Magic. This is a truly awesome game and there has been no game like it that has come close to the same level of depth.
The game plays a bit like Civilization, but is much cooler. You start out creating your wizard (I never used the pre-made ones). There were 6 schools of magic, 1 that every wizard had access to plus Black, White, Red, Blue, and Green magic. You spent points buying books in the different schools, the more books you had in a school the more spells in that school you had access to and the easier it was for you to cast spells from that school. You could also use some of these points on one of over a dozen traits. Some of these were truly nifty, like Alchemy that allowed you to change magic points to gold or vice versa on a 1 for 1 ratio (you could do this without the trait but it cost you 2 gold for one mana or vice versa), Warlord which made all your troops more experienced, Myrran which caused your wizard to start on an alternate plane which had more magical power and more powerful races (most wizards couldn’t get there until later in the game), Artificer which allowed you to create magic items and artifacts from the beginning of the game…lots of traits.
Once you created your wizard you chose which race he or she ruled over in your starting city - there were a wide variety of fantasy races, each with their own special units and special abilities and drawbacks. You were not limited to just that race, though, there were neutral cities you could take over which would allow you to build units of that race once you conquered them. You start with one city in a mostly blacked out map that you have to explore. You can build a number of structures in the city that gave you access to new units, more magical power, etc. You sent out your little armies to explore the surrounding regions.
Exploring was a lot of fun because there was so much variety to what you could find. There were ruins and caves that sometimes had monsters, sometimes had money, mana crystals, magic items, or heros to rescue. Often they had both monsters and rewards. There were mana nodes of various colors that gave you lots of magic power once you defeated their guardian and bound a summoned spirit to it. There were arcane towers that often had books that improved your wizard’s character or powerful magical artifacts, but were usually guarded by powerful monsters and therefore were inaccessible earlier in the game. Once you cleared a tower you could use it to swap over to the alternate plane of Myrror which had new races and where everything was generally more powerful and dangerous. There were neutral cities you could take over as well, although you could build settlers and create new cities usually there were enough neutral cities that this wasn’t usually necessary.
Instead of researching new technology as in Civilization you researched new spells. Many of these were summoning spells that allowed you to summon monsters to do your bidding (the magic in the game was very reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering). There were also global enchantments that effected the entire world, combat spells, and enchantments to improve your military units and monsters, by doing things like giving them magical weapons or the ability to fly. There were even spells that altered the very land.
Combat was much more involving than in Civilization - whenever an army encountered hostile forces it switched to a turn-based tactical screen where you could manuever your units around. The combat was a lot like miniatures gaming, it had a random element but the most important factors were the strength, defense, magic resistance, and number of troops in each unit. There were lots of spells you could cast during combat, summoning spells, unit enhancement spells, direct damage spells, etc. The further the battle was from your tower the more mana it cost to cast spells yourself (this was reduced if you chose the Channeler trait). If you had any units or heros in the battle they could cast spells at the normal cost.
There were lots of heros that you could find, hire, or capture. Though most were stronger than the troops in your military units even at the beginning, they usually didn’t stant up well against military units that were usually made up of 4 to 8 troops. As they gained experience they got much more powerful, though, and could also be enhanced with magical items you found or designed.
This game had tons of replay value, there is so much more that I don’t have time to describe. Certain magic school/race combinations were more powerful than others, if you wanted to play an easier game you could specialize in white magic and use halflings as your starting race (halfling slingers with holy weapon and heroism enchantments on them were deadly). If you wanted more of a challenge you could specialize in black magic and use gnolls or lizardmen for your starting race.
This is an old DOS game but I managed to get it to run in Windows 98 perfectly, though many people report problems getting sound to work. This isn’t a big hindrance as the sound effects were unnecessary and the music was strictly MIDI. If you like strategy games and you can find a copy I recomend getting it, ESPECIALLY if you liked Civilization and/or Master of Orion 2 (which it resembles in many ways).
By the way, this game is considered abandonware and though I can’t link to it I managed to find a downloadably copy with one google search just now.
Gotta agree with Hack…also Paradroid for the C64. Still play it all the time on my emulator. Also remember playing the first version of Tetris on an Apple IIgs. The pieces didn’t fit together exactly right, they were kinda close, but not exactly. Ah fun. Hmmm…Hardball on my IBM PCjr. Pinball Construction Set. Also, there was a great game that was on the Amiga called MUDS, that was kinda like Soccer, kinda like Rugby, and played with a living creature as the ball. Anyone remember that? I loved that game. Used to waste my time at the Amiga lab at school tearing that thing up. Luckily, Amigas and 64s used Atari controllers.
Paradroid! Paradroid! I used to play that for ages on my Commodore. Heck, I even got a C=64 Emulator to finish it on the PC and was more than disappointed to see the ending (second verse, just like the first).
Loved Archon on the Commodore, but hated it on the PC. Mainly because on the C=64, the phoenix was immune to damage while flaming, but on the PC it was just a Circle o’ Damage like the banshees used.
Anyone else play Adventure Construction Set? Or rather use it? You could either have it create the lamest adventures known to man or make your own. I’d spend days and weeks making intricate adventures and then watch my friend sit and play them. How lame was I? There’s an SSI program that allows you to do much the same with the SSI AD&D Gold Box engine but I never finished my epic on that one.
Other older games I remember playing…
The first game I can recall playing was the original Might & Magic. Hell, I must’ve been five or six when we got that. Also, I remember the first Space Quest and the Black Cauldron game. That one was my favorite for a long time.
Dungeon Master and Dungeon Master 2 on my old Atari ST. I haven’t been able to get an emulated copy that works. I have one- but the sound is screwed up, and you kinda need the sound to play.
There was a version for one of those made for one of the 16-bit consoles, either SNES or Sega Genesis, can’t recall which. It would probably be easier to find a working emulator for those and a ROM for the port.
Wow, someone else remembers M.U.L.E! My brother and I were (still are) addicted to that game. I’m still tempted to set up one of my old Commodores just to play that. Dig that theme song …
Also grew up on Bard’s Tale, Gauntlet, Aztec Challenge … Hell, I remember playing Frogger in the good ol’ days, when it wasn’t just a freeware download for your graphing calculator.
On my high school’s Apple II:
Lemonade Stand
That old ascii Star Trek game
On my C64:
Adventure Construction Set
Archon
Zorks I and III
Ultima IV
On a tangental note, a coworker recently was required by his SO to clean out the garage, and I inherited (free of charge, no less) both a Commodore 64 AND a 128, both in fine working order, both with 5 1/4 floppy drives, both with monitors, and a printer to go with the whole mess. Now I’ve got to find all my old disks…
Just a quick vote for Sid Meier’s Colonization, a DOS game which is similar to Civilization but the focus is on creating viable American colonies and achieving independence. I recently got hold of the old DOS disks and installed it on my home computer and it still plays well.
CJ
I play NetHack, too. I used to play Rogue on my brother’s AppleII, and was floored to find out that the game was a)still around, and b) so much improved!! 
I play the “tile” version, where the ASCII’s are replaced by little pictures. But it still has effectively no graphics, because the little pictures just move around like the ASCII characters.
Oh, man, you guys are bringing back memories!
Here’s my list (for the Commie 64):
Archon (the hands down winner)
Mail Order Monsters
Zac McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Maniac Mansion
Rocketball (a Rollerball-type game.)
4th and Inches
Pirates
The Last Ninja
Or, if we wanna go back even further, for the Vic-20:
Omega Race
Centipede
Cripes, so many games, so many memories:
M.U.L.E. (multi-use labor element) - I loved playing with my brother, and charging the food stores early and buying them out so he would have no time to develop on his turn. That and buying out all the MULEs and releasing them into the wild. I’d end up losing, but it was fun ticking him off. Dani Bunten had another game, which mixed computer and board/card game called Robot Rascals (I think). It was a scavenger hunt where the items you needed to find on the computer world were determined by what you drew from a real-life deck of item cards.
Mail Order Monsters - The crappiest critter in the game was the walking fern named ‘Boston’. Creating the monsters was a blast, but the ‘mini-games’ were weak.
Adventure Construction Kit - It came with two or three adventures (I think one was based on Alice in Wonderland), but there were two outstanding standalone games that came out created by the kit: Ali-Baba and another I forget, though it was vastly superior and took place in Rome and Greece.
Moebius - Most (well, all) of Origin’s early RPGs were amazing. Moebius stood out for having ‘Mortal Kombat’ type fights when you encountered a foe in the realms before MK ever existed. It also gave you a new animal-based haiku every time you levelled (the animal giving was dependent on whether you were on the earth, fire, water, or air realms). Other outstanding early Origin games I loved were Autoduel (taking place in New England where I lived was a bonus), Space Rogue which combined RPG with fantastic space flight/combat, and of course the Ultima series, back when it was GOOD.
Bard’s Tale - Of course its two sequels need to be included (though I never played with the construction kit). The only weak point in the series was the series of timed puzzles set up in the second game, forcing you to complete them in time or die.
Dragon Wars - Similar to Bard’s Tale, but had a few puzzles that had multiple ways of solving. The best example was in the early stage of the game, you could try to fight your way out of the arena, or you could find bags and get tossed over the walls, acting like corpses (Monte Cristo anyone). Other outstanding RPGs I loved were Wasteland (precursor to Fallout) and of course the Gold Box Games. I owned all of them, and unlike Bard’s Tale, I did carry my characters over between games. I was saddened only that there were not more of them made.
Bruce Lee - Part action, part platformer, part strategy, all fun as you had to get past the black ninja and the green Gazoo(?). Like Goonies (the adventure one, not the arcade based one), spent many many hours trying to get to the end of these.
Archon - Loved the original, but could not get into the sequel, which was based on the four ‘elements’ rather than the black and white of chess. The remake for the IBM pc, Archon Ultra is definitely worth checking out, which each creature having two different attacks.
Phantasie - And the two sequels. I was not keen on the individual body damage introduced by the second one, but I loved the dungeon design and the size of the worlds (for the time).
Questron - It had one true sequel, and also spawned some amazing games: Legacy of the Ancients and Legend of Blacksilver. The combat system was simple, the worlds were huge, and there were mini-games aplenty when it came time to gamble or improve your stats. Each one also invariably required you to enter a good king’s castle and loot every chest/kill every guard. The first one especially stands out for the GREAT ending and fanfare.
Well, that’s a small dent in the C-64 games. I’ll hold off for another day the early IBM pc games (mmmm… Ultima 7 was my first with Civilization soon after). It’s GOOD to be a geek =)
“Pirates!” and its Japanese counterpart “Sword of the Samurai” were awesome.
The old Lucasarts WWII games “Their Finest Hour” and “Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe” were terrific.
Before the terrible movie, “Wing Commander” and “Wing Commander II” were masterpeices.
But the greatest of them all was the old TI-99/4A game “Tunnels of Doom.” Loved it, loved it, loved it.
ELITE for the Commodore 64 - OMG.
Shoot-em-up in space, but years ahead of its time.
Vector graphics, 3D radar, trading and docking and fighting pirates, scooping fuel by diving close to the sun…
Surviving a 45-minute dogfight with the meanest space pirates and then messing up docking (games could only be saved when docked)…
Finally, finally getting my spaceship the rassum frassum auto-docking computer - and then listening to “An der schönen, blauen Donau” each time I docked. Took me weeks of lost sleep to eventually graduate from “Harmless” to “Elite”.
Amazing game.
And Civ I for the PC rocked my world for months. I dreamt about small unit icons battling each other.
Ahhh, those were the days…
LlamaPoet
Mail Order Monsters was one of my all time favorite games on the C64, but the #1 spot goes to Lords of Conquest, a risk-like strategy game.
Other great games from the C-64 (trying to remember… I never even owned one of 'em, it was a friend’s):
**
Racing Construction Set
Winter Olympics
Summer Olympics
Bards Tale
Gangfighters** (I think that was the name of the game)
and so so many others.
As for the PC, well, there are zillions. I’ve got to second most of what everyone here’s already said especially King’s Quest and Space Quest. I think I could play right through both of those now, I remember every bit of 'em. Another game I liked quite a bit was Starcommand, a role-playing type game set in space.
Also, and I don’t know how old these games are; I didn’t get a hold of them until the early '90s, the Kroz games. ASCII games that were a lot of fun.
Oh, and Flightmare, and… well, I’m done for now… maybe we should be compiling a more formal list of games here. That’d be a fun project. In fact, I think I’ll do it a little later. Organized by platform? Date of release?
Wizardry One. Oh how I loved that game.
No one has mentioned Wasteland yet? In many ways the prequel to the Fallout series.
Star Saga One: Beyond the Frontier. A multi-player space RPG with a computer “game master”. You had to look up information in a book when prompted but there were several hundred pages of information!
**Starflight[/b/] and Starflight II. Two of the best space exploration games ever made.
Anything by Infocom.
Why do the games from the '80s and early '90s seem so much better than what we have now? Or is it just a combination of nostalgia and the fact that we don’t remember the dogs?