Oops, forgot one. Sundog for the Atari ST. Another massive space exploration game.
(Looks up) Oops. Sorry about the mess…
It’s nostalgia and you don’t remember the dogs, tanstaafl. I remember Ultima 6 as one of the finest games of all time - but when I go back to play it again, the interface is clunky, the graphics are worse than I remembered … rose-colored glasses, and all that.
I’m just going to brainstorm some of the games that I played to the hilt.
Starflight etc, Wizardy etc, Bard’s Tale etc, (name the Sierra game) Quest etc, Ultima etc. I never got into Might & Magic other than #2.
Pirates! made me wet my pants with glee and I bought Sea Dogs the day it came out, just praying it’d be great. It was good, not great, but still fun. I recommend picking up Sea Dogs if you have an opportunity to do so on the cheap - it came out in fall 00, I think.
Master of Magic just grated for me, but Master of Orion was classic. Civ and Colonization … Moebius. The original Wolfenstein games.
Nethack, nethack, nethack. I play that at work during slow periods.
Pick the Infocom game of your choice.
Llamapoet, you talk about the two sequels to Phantasie. I played Phantasie I and Phantasie III, but never ever ever saw Phantasie II, despite hunting for it for years. Was there really one?
Dragon Wars, Touchdown Football, Darklands, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks’ Inception and Crescent Hawks’ Revenge, Mechwarrior 1 …
Wing Commander 1 and 2. I got a Soundblaster just for the voice in Wing Commander 2 and sold my AdLib to a friend.
Early Monkey Islands. LOOM! Prince of Persia. Wizard Wars.
Sheesh, I wasted way too much time in front of a computer …
Impossible Mission for the C64 has burned itself into my unconcious mind. “Another visitor…stay awhile…stay FOREVER!” Man, that was corny.
As for MS-DOS games, both Prince of Persia and Might and Magic III kept me up way too late. I still play Might and Magic III occasionally, even though I can’t get the sound to work under Windows ME.
And of course, I still play Nethack almost religiously. I’ve ascended a Valkyrie and a Tourist, and I’ve got a promising orcish
Ranger on the go right now…
Impossible Mission
If it wasn’t for this game, I wouldn’t be where I am today, killing time on the boards instead of fixing computers. Great game.
Zeliard
I loved this game. Great levels.
Lemmings
Can’t believe I’m the first to mention it. I’ve seen it lately issued on CD-ROM. And it’s the original game, less than 1.4 megs worth, on a CD-ROM. Of course, I bought it.
Sundog was a wonderful, wonderful game. I made it all the way through to the last planet. I remember there was supposed to be something there that I was looking for, but it was in some place – on a mountain or something – that was inaccessible. I spent days trying to get there. I even broke down and asked for hints and finally read a walkthrough, but I could never get there. I finally decided that my floppy disk had become corrupted. That was amazingly frustrating. I could see where I wanted to go, but whatever vehicle I had wouldn’t go there.
Aarrrrgh!
Lotsa good memories in this thread, though.
RR
Yeah, I spent quite a bit of time with that game and still have mine somewhere. These days, I play with a cheat to give my wizard all the magic books and abilities I want. 
Same thing happened to me, I was playing on my 64 and finally cleared the whole ship only to find my robot on another ship! Does this game ever end?
I did great with the C64 version of Pirates! but never got very far in rank with the PC version. I discovered Elite through the wonderful world of C64 BBSs. With all the discussion concerning the game, I decided to find what all the fuss was about. I was floored! I spent many a late night fighting pirates and bounty hunters, after a while I became too good. One of the first PC games I ever bought was Elite+ and I also recently became the proud owner of Frontier: Elite II via eBay. Even though I never finished it, I loved Autoduel. That’s one game that really should be updated for today’s computers and incorporate the Car Wars Second Edition rules, and allow the player to eventually drive a 10- or 18-wheeler! ::whonk, whonk:: 
Taipan for Apple II.
Eonwe - I forgot about Lords of Conquest, though I cannot imagine why. I LOVED that game, and made sure I had beaten it on every difficulty level. I would always use random generated maps, then close my eyes so I could ‘randomize’ how the resources would start out. The best part would be when the computer would take its turn. It would have the ‘bip bip bip bip’ noise to indicate it was thinking, then, when realizing it was beat would give you a pithy message like ‘I didn’t really want to win all the time anyway’ and then congratulate you. Fantastic, yet simple strategy game!
I loved Pirates too, but having tried to play it again recently, I found I didn’t have the patience to be constantly fighting the wind. With a smaller ocean (like in Ultima 4 and 5) it was less painful, but here it was a constant.
Free Lunch - I beat you to the punch on Wasteland. It, like Dragon Wars, came with the ‘paragraph’ book (as did many of the gold box games). I particularly remember the first paragraph in Dragon Wars describes a woman slowly getting out of a steamy bathtub, looking at you in a sultry fashion, then pulling out a gun and telling you to quit reading the paragraphs before you are told =)
Ino - Phantasie 2 did exist, it just never got ported to the IBM pc. You can theoretically play it today using a C64 emulator though. It is odd to think that in its day, the C64 (and arguably the Amiga) were technically superior machines to their IBM counterparts, at least from a gaming geek’s perspective.
Oh, and my favorite adventure game out there, though ** Maniac Mansion**, Monkey Island, and Loom are certainly up there was easily Neuromancer. It had an audio clip from Devo while the game loaded. It started out graphically similar to Maniac Mansion and its ilk, but as the game went on and you purchased computer equipment, you were able to enter cyberspace. I remember earlier in the game, when you could not afford top deck equipment, you had to jack into ports near where you wanted to hack, and having pulled off social engineering earlier, break into accounts and transfer the cash to you so you can buy better goods. They were supposed to make a movie based on it, but that never happened (I guess Johnny Pneumonic beat it to the punch).
Lastly, my favorite of the Infocom games were Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Heads or Tails Out of It and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. The first came with a booklet filled with one panel comics based on wordplay, the second came with a 3-d comic book AND a scratch and sniff card that you referenced at various points in the game. Infocom, like Origin, included enough toys so that even if you were into copying games, you wouldn’t want to (I still have my cloth maps from Ultima 4-8).
I could talk about this stuff for days =)
Eonwe - I forgot about Lords of Conquest, though I cannot imagine why. I LOVED that game, and made sure I had beaten it on every difficulty level. I would always use random generated maps, then close my eyes so I could ‘randomize’ how the resources would start out. The best part would be when the computer would take its turn. It would have the ‘bip bip bip bip’ noise to indicate it was thinking, then, when realizing it was beat would give you a pithy message like ‘I didn’t really want to win all the time anyway’ and then congratulate you. Fantastic, yet simple strategy game!
I loved Pirates too, but having tried to play it again recently, I found I didn’t have the patience to be constantly fighting the wind. With a smaller ocean (like in Ultima 4 and 5) it was less painful, but here it was a constant.
Free Lunch - I beat you to the punch on Wasteland. It, like Dragon Wars, came with the ‘paragraph’ book (as did many of the gold box games). I particularly remember the first paragraph in Dragon Wars describes a woman slowly getting out of a steamy bathtub, looking at you in a sultry fashion, then pulling out a gun and telling you to quit reading the paragraphs before you are told =)
Ino - Phantasie 2 did exist, it just never got ported to the IBM pc. You can theoretically play it today using a C64 emulator though. It is odd to think that in its day, the C64 (and arguably the Amiga) were technically superior machines to their IBM counterparts, at least from a gaming geek’s perspective.
Oh, and my favorite adventure game out there, though ** Maniac Mansion**, Monkey Island, and Loom are certainly up there was easily Neuromancer. It had an audio clip from Devo while the game loaded. It started out graphically similar to Maniac Mansion and its ilk, but as the game went on and you purchased computer equipment, you were able to enter cyberspace. I remember earlier in the game, when you could not afford top deck equipment, you had to jack into ports near where you wanted to hack, and having pulled off social engineering earlier, break into accounts and transfer the cash to you so you can buy better goods. They were supposed to make a movie based on it, but that never happened (I guess Johnny Pneumonic beat it to the punch).
Lastly, my favorite of the Infocom games were Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Heads or Tails Out of It and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. The first came with a booklet filled with one panel comics based on wordplay, the second came with a 3-d comic book AND a scratch and sniff card that you referenced at various points in the game. Infocom, like Origin, included enough toys so that even if you were into copying games, you wouldn’t want to (I still have my cloth maps from Ultima 4-8).
I could talk about this stuff for days =)
Eonwe - I forgot about Lords of Conquest, though I cannot imagine why. I LOVED that game, and made sure I had beaten it on every difficulty level. I would always use random generated maps, then close my eyes so I could ‘randomize’ how the resources would start out. The best part would be when the computer would take its turn. It would have the ‘bip bip bip bip’ noise to indicate it was thinking, then, when realizing it was beat would give you a pithy message like ‘I didn’t really want to win all the time anyway’ and then congratulate you. Fantastic, yet simple strategy game!
I loved Pirates too, but having tried to play it again recently, I found I didn’t have the patience to be constantly fighting the wind. With a smaller ocean (like in Ultima 4 and 5) it was less painful, but here it was a constant.
Free Lunch - I beat you to the punch on Wasteland. It, like Dragon Wars, came with the ‘paragraph’ book (as did many of the gold box games). I particularly remember the first paragraph in Dragon Wars describes a woman slowly getting out of a steamy bathtub, looking at you in a sultry fashion, then pulling out a gun and telling you to quit reading the paragraphs before you are told =)
Ino - Phantasie 2 did exist, it just never got ported to the IBM pc. You can theoretically play it today using a C64 emulator though. It is odd to think that in its day, the C64 (and arguably the Amiga) were technically superior machines to their IBM counterparts, at least from a gaming geek’s perspective.
Oh, and my favorite adventure game out there, though ** Maniac Mansion**, Monkey Island, and Loom are certainly up there was easily Neuromancer. It had an audio clip from Devo while the game loaded. It started out graphically similar to Maniac Mansion and its ilk, but as the game went on and you purchased computer equipment, you were able to enter cyberspace. I remember earlier in the game, when you could not afford top deck equipment, you had to jack into ports near where you wanted to hack, and having pulled off social engineering earlier, break into accounts and transfer the cash to you so you can buy better goods. They were supposed to make a movie based on it, but that never happened (I guess Johnny Pneumonic beat it to the punch).
How dare I forget about the Epyx series of ‘Games’ as well?!?! In addition to owning the vastly superior Epyx 500J joystick, which lasted forever and likely still works, I had Summer Games 2, World Games, and California Games (yay Caber toss and hacky-sack!). A friend had the first Summer Games as well as Winter Games, and we (at times up to 5 of us) would occasionally have ‘Olympics’ that spanned them all, running a huge point total across all events. My favorite event was the barrel jump where you would skate, jump at the right time, and if it was a particularly lengthy jump, the skater would look to the monitor and wave while in air.
Speaking of waving to the monitor, how about Little Computer People where you had the guy and his dog living in a house on your tv? Now vastly entertaining, but was a great precursor to the Sims series of games, and watching your dog sulk and cry if you never fed it provided a sadistic sense of pleasure.
Lastly, my favorite of the Infocom games were Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Heads or Tails Out of It and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. The first came with a booklet filled with one panel comics based on wordplay, the second came with a 3-d comic book AND a scratch and sniff card that you referenced at various points in the game. Infocom, like Origin, included enough toys so that even if you were into copying games, you wouldn’t want to (I still have my cloth maps from Ultima 4-8).
I could talk about this stuff for days =)
Grrr, lousy double post… at least the second one had some additional stuff in it.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned California Games for C64. IMHO it was a lot more fun than either Summer Games or Winter Games, but made by the same people. I ruled in hackey sack!
For early Macs, Dark Castle was a great arcade style game with very cool sound and graphics. I never beat it although it did aquire the Invisibility Shield and Fireball Power. Its still pretty fun but it only knows how to display an image the size of the original mac screen. Sadly, I only have a copy I made in like 1989, and its hosed. 
Finally, Eonwe mentioned Epyx’s Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics! Loved them on the Commodore 64. Also got a kick out of Break Street, the break-dancing game.
Surprised no one has mentioned Jumpman. That was an old Atari 800 game, and extremely addicitve.
The original Castle Wolfenstien rocked, even if it took about six months to load.
I remember an integer basic game for the Apple called Odyssey that required to you to roam around a large island and battle monsters, get treasure, hire additional men, etc. If you played long enough, it would crash because your “party carrying capacity” (10 * men + 100 * horses, or some such) would eventually exceed 32,767.
A later game based on a similar premise was King’s Bounty which I still have since I won it in a radio trivia contest in 1988 or so.
Renegade Interceptor was a very accurate version of the Battletech board game. I played it a ridiculous number of times. I had pilots in my squadron with four or five hundred kills.
One of the key indicators of pre-Win95 PC games is the question “CGA or EGA/VGA”.
Pong rules.
Damnit, bordelond, I rushed back from lunch just to mention Jumpman. I found a copy of that and gave it to my younger sister as her birthday present last year. I think I got off cheap – she had asked me to find it and said she didn’t want anything else. I didn’t complain. 
LucasArts’s The Dig surprised me at how poorly it was received. I adored it. Good gameplay, a little dark story, not just your typical “find the foo and take it to the bar” game.
Agreed, fighting the wind in Pirates! is punishing, but I recall with fondness a game in which I single-handedly turned the entire Caribbean into French colonies. Sack 'em hard enough and the governor flees - and then install one with the nationality of your choice. The post-game percentage score chart, which Civilization appropriated, was a very nice touch.
Castles and Castles II. Defender of the Crown. Merchant Prince. Jinxter. Guild of Thieves. Mean Streets.
ZYLL! A multiplayer text-adventure. Two people played side by side, each got half the keyboard, the monitor was divided down the middle, and you simultaneously explored the castle of the evil wizard Zyll either cooperatively or competitively. Oh man … has anyone else ever played that one? I have such fond memories …
Temple of Apshai, which was programmed in BASIC, and which I dared to edit and resave with some minor changes of my own. Had I been more ambitious, I would have had an Apshai mod.
And I’m the first to say Oregon Trail, it seems. The best part about that is finding four other friends who played that in elementary school and then playing the Oregon Trail Drinking Game.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll sayi it again – for classic computer games, nothing, but nothing, beats
Star Raiders!
A perfect blend of arcade action and strategic planning, with thousands of decisions that have to be made, any one of which could cost you the game. And getting good enough to get a rank of “Star Commander - Class 1” consistently is a rare feat.
But to name another awesome game that nobody’s mentioned yet, about about Epyx’s Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! It was a turn-based strategy game, where you play a gigantic movie monster and wreaked havoc in one of four major cities (Washington DC, New York, Tokyo, or San Francisco). You ate humans, obliterated helicopters, fought off the US Army, and made a mess everywhere you went. You ultimately lost, but the fun part was seeing how much of humanity you could take down with you. I remember hacking the BASIC portions of the game and making my own cities for even more fun…
Needless to say, I’ve got both games running on emulation these days. Ahhhhhhhhh, classics!
Rad Warrior-The Earth is ruled by alien overlords. Your tribe sends you to recover the sacred armor(actually an anti-radiation suit) and free the human race.
There’s nothing quite like a screen flashing and the message “your people are free”
Movie Monster Game-You picked Godzilla, Spidrax, Glog, Mr Merringue, Sphectra the Moth or a giant robot. Then picked a mission-escape, lunch, berserk, destroy landmark, or rescue.
The monsters had different levels of strength, speed, toughness, healing and different special attacks.
Not once in all these years have I been able to rescue a baby monster.
Dark Lord-a great adventure game. You discover that your uncle’s mirror is a portal to another world. The evil Nequam has returned from the dead and only you can stop him.
Demon Forge-by Mastertronic. One of the all time great adventure games! You must enter the tunnels of Demon Forge and return alive. One highlight is a library of 100 books. None of them are in a language you understand except one- “This book is the story of a foolish man who wasted his life reading all the books in a strange library”.
Adventure-the first text adventure ever. Last time I played this, it was just as fun.
The Fool’s Errand. The elation at winning that one and seeing the final movie… whoa.
I can’t believe people here haven’t mentioned Seven Cities of Gold. Remember when ‘negotiating with natives’ meant being quick enough on the joystick to avoid accidentally killing off suicidal kamikaze warriors? Heart of Africa was fun, too.
But, yeah, Pirates! was the biz-omb. Yeah, the wind could suck, but that’s why you knew when to fight and when to run away. And there was no feeling quite as enjoyable as taking over a Spanish Treasure Galleon with your little Pinnace. Except possibly taking out the War Galleon that inevitably came after you in revenge.
Oh, Demon’s Forge … I had gotten stymied on that one until I got fed up and scrounged up a copy last year. The fond memories of “>FOLLOW MAN” and “>GIVE FOOD TO MAN” …
And Ed, the Fire Elemental. Dig where X’s are and are not. The damn thief with the crossbow. “>N. The thief shoots you with a poisoned crossbow bolt! >DRINK VIAL. Ok, the poison is cured. >KILL MAN Ok, the thief is dead.” Clearly that crossbow takes a long time to reload.
Borrowed Time was similar to Demon’s Forge except in more of a detective noir style. I lost my copy and haven’t been able to find a replacement. I really miss that game. There was another one, set on a deserted tropical island…
GATO, a fun submarine simulation. On the easy difficulties, your mission objectives were given out as text. In the hard one, your computer just beeped Morse code at you. I learned Morse just to be able to one-up my friends. Of course, there were only eight or so different missions, so after a while, I only needed to hear the first few sentences to know what I needed to do. So many wasted hours of sitting in front of a PC Jr that just kept beeping at me with my parents wondering what the heck I was doing…
Strike Commander was scheduled for a Christmas 1991 release but ended up showing up around summer 1993. Phenomenal graphics engine for the time, decent flightsim, but Falcon 3.0 held my heart.
LHX Attack Chopper, and the fond memories of firing a Hellfire antitank missile at a man with an AK-47.
Rescue Raiders! I can’t be the only person who played that one. In fact, I think I’ll go play it now. Don’t tell my boss.