# Memorable computer games you've never completed. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 19, 2005, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755 "2005-11-19T02:07:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Arien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arien)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/61 "2005-11-20T20:58:50Z")
I rented this super mario brothers game called Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars. I got stuck at this one part, Mostro Town. I knew from another game saved on the cartridge that a vine was supposed to grow up to the sky, leading to the next area, but I had no idea how to get it. Then I had to return the game. I never played it again but sometimes I still have dreams about. And I’m not really into video games as a whole. I just looked up copies on ebay, but it’s probably better in my memories than it would be if I played it now. I also never beat the first Super Mario Brothers. The poster who said they just completed fairly recently Oregon Trail made me remember that I never caught Carmen San Diego. ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/62 "2005-11-21T00:21:26Z")
> [@Arien](#): > > I rented this super mario brothers game called Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars. I got stuck at this one part, Mostro Town. I knew from another game saved on the cartridge that a vine was supposed to grow up to the sky, leading to the next area, but I had no idea how to get it. Then I had to return the game. I never played it again but sometimes I still have dreams about. And I’m not really into video games as a whole. I just looked up copies on ebay, but it’s probably better in my memories than it would be if I played it now. You should get it. It’s a great game that really holds up well. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/63 "2005-11-21T00:33:06Z")
**scottandrsn** wrote: > [@](#): > > Some really early Mac adventure game where you woke up in a bar with complete amnesia. I recall that walking into the restroom determined your gender for the game… (wasn’t my Mac)… > > Think film noir instead of sci-fi. I don’t know. It sounds to me like you might be conflating [Leather Goddesses of Phobos](http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3487), a text adventure in which you wake up in a bar and your gender is determined by your choice of bathroom, with [Deja Vu](http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=292), in which you are a private dick who wakes up in a bar with amnesia as part of a frame-up for a murder rap. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/64 "2005-11-21T00:45:11Z")
> [@Johnny Angel](#): > > **scottandrsn** wrote: > > I don’t know. It sounds to me like you might be conflating [Leather Goddesses of Phobos](http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3487), a text adventure in which you wake up in a bar and your gender is determined by your choice of bathroom, with [Deja Vu](http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=292), in which you are a private dick who wakes up in a bar with amnesia as part of a frame-up for a murder rap. Well, having never played nor even seen LGoP myself, I know I’m not conflating the two. I was never a big one for the Text-Based Adventures. But Deja Vu IS the game I was thinking of, thanks! And, appropriately enough, I have the strange sensation that a Doper has told me this before… :dubious: :eek: The bathroom thing wasn’t anything crucial to the game in Deja Vu, but I recall there were a lot of still shots of confusion swirling around the character’s head, and if you had walked into the ladies’ room first, instead of the men’s, as I did once after starting over for the umpteenth time, your character was female. I definitely remember it being a GUI game, not a TBA. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/65 "2005-11-21T02:05:10Z")
Somehow, I never finished _The Sims_. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/66 "2005-11-21T04:18:14Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Somehow, I never finished _The Sims_. 😃 Nor SimCity 2000. I wanted to see if i can grow a city from ground-up, and my definition of “completing the game” is to get the cool, “space lauchning” arcogoloy. Never matter how hard i zone and plan, I just can’t reach the population size. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/67 "2005-11-21T10:24:43Z")
_Elite_ - once I got up to “Dangerous”, I kept getting toasted by swarms of Kraits with military lasers, and I never found any of the special missions except the “Refugees” one. _Ultima Underworld 2_ - didn’t help that the machine I was playing on could barely cope with it. Too much trudging slowly around, though I completed lots of quests before I was done. _Doomdark’s Revenge_ - too much of a quantum leap after _Lords of Midnight_, which I’d cracked in two weeks. I had no clue where I was meant to be going or what I was trying to do. _Lotr - RotK_ - Gandalf has yet to defend the walls of Minas Tirith, and Sam is still stuck in Shelob’s lair. It can become divorced from the book only so much before I cease to really care, although some of the hacking, slaying and shooting was fun. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/68 "2005-11-21T16:06:31Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Morrowind and GTA: San Andreas. Both were fabulous games, but I never ended it. If you’re curious, here is a video of a guy who beats Morrowind in 7:30 minutes. Note: That’s minutes, not hours. You can download the file to your hard drive and see what you missed. [Morrowind in 7:30](http://www.archive.org/details/Morrowind_730) ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/69 "2005-11-21T17:07:33Z")
Off the top of my head… _Myst_ - Got stuck on the train puzzle in, um, that Gear-World place, gave up, started over and just got the “best” ending. _The Scarab of Ra_ - (old Mac shareware/freeware game where you go into a pyramid and try to survive the traps and the mummies whilst collecting treasure) Never got very far into that game. It gave me nightmares, too. _Secret of Evermore_ - Started on Emulator, never completed. _Link’s Awakening_ - Can’t remember if I’ve ever actually played through the entire game; I definitely remember tackling different parts of it at various intervals and saw the incredibly disappointing end sequence. _The Guardian Legend_ - (NES Metroid-ish game where there were two modes, a top scrolling shooter and a 2-D environment) Couldn’t beat the “TGL” mode, where you only fight through the top-scrolling levels. The final boss, already rather difficult in normal, was practically impossible here. I think I’ve pretty much completed every console game I’ve owned - at the moment, I’m still working on unlocking everything for the PS2 DDR game that I have, and also very slowly tackling _Unlimited Saga_ (ugh, what an annoying game). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/70 "2005-11-21T17:11:19Z")
_Privateer_, from the people who did _Wing Commander_. Unfortunately, unlike WC, if you screwed up a mission in Privateer the game was effectively over. One of the missions involved saving a “holo-artist” who was about to be attacked by fanatics of the crazy-religion. (It was 1993, so Salman Rushdie references were still acceptable, if a bit gauche.) Unfortunately, the artist’s spaceship was apparently composed of eggshells and gossamer, and you had to keep it from being hit by 8 or 10 super-fast megamachines on a kamikaze run. After failing in that mission about ten or twenty times in a row, then trying it with a different ship and getting the same results, I put the game aside and never went back to it. Likewise, I gave up on _GTA San Andreas_ in the plane tutorial. I could _not_ get that thing to handle even _close_ to what I needed to get through the later tutorial missions. Even the freaking “Fly in a circle and go through the hoops” was pretty much beyond me. So I never saw the Las Vegas city, nor did I get to see the end of the storyline, which will always piss me off. ---
**Author:** ![Tuco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tuco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuco)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/71 "2005-11-21T17:43:45Z")
Thought of another one last night - Flashback on the Acorn (Archmides thing). If anyone remembers it, it was a great game but I just couldn’t do the last part of the last mission - you were told to escape the planet, but I had absolutely no idea where to go! Must’ve tried a dozen different routes to escape but couldn’t work it out so I gave up. ---
**Author:** ![Lady\_of\_the\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@Lady\_of\_the\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lady_of_the_Lake)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/72 "2005-11-21T18:46:31Z")
**Thief** Right after my success with ‘No one lives forever’ I’d thought I’d try another first person running around type of game by raiding my husbands game stash. Why, a ‘thief’ will be like that dashing secret agent from Nolf, this shall be fun! _shudder_ Scary…zombies…shambling…after me… I remember that one clearly because I was afraid I’d have nightmares about zombies following me around. And I do. ☹ I could handle all sorts of scary things in Baldur’s Gate and Morrowind but not that. **Vampire the Masqurade** Stupid scary zombies again. I made it through that section with the lights on and the sound off (so I wouldn’t have to hear their…moans…)and I played up to the werewolf after this, but I was just turned off by the zombies and couldn’t get back into the groove I’d had. It just wasn’t fun anymore after I’d been freaked by the game. People said the hotel was scary, but that part was fun! There have been others, but mainly because the game was subpar. There is no shame in quitting a bad game. ---
**Author:** ![ninevah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/46a35a/32.png) [@ninevah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninevah)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/73 "2005-11-21T22:05:57Z")
\*\* Adventures of Willy Beamish\*\* \*\* Escape from Monkey Island\*\* **Grim Fandango** \*Loved \*these games but just somehow lost interest… for the latter two I think it was the whole 3D thang… Used to think Sierra games were the best until I discovered the walkthrus of Lucasarts… [happy sigh] ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/74 "2005-11-21T22:14:36Z")
Okay, I have one. ‘Clyde’s adventure.’ I picked that game up in one of the little shareware packs at the store with the diskette… spent so much time on it. But darnit, I never could get that last board - level 16, figured out. I explored a lot of it - was able to find several hundred gems IIRC. But there was a field full of floating platforms in a chessboard layout, far enough away from each other vertically that you couldn’t go upwards, just down ( not sure if you could jump across sideways or not,) and my attempts at mapping pretty much ended there. I think I caught a glimpse of the magic treasure for the board but couldn’t figure out how to get to it, (or maybe I was able to get to it ONCE and not again,) and I definitely never had any clue where the way out was. Does anybody else even remember this game? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/75 "2005-11-21T23:20:37Z")
FFX-2. I tried finishing it a couple of times, couldn’t and said screw it. Mostly because it annoyed the everlovin’ crap out of me. Fanservice is nice, but this was fanservice from start to end, and a lot of pretty pointless tasks. All in all, not enough to keep me plugging away at it. Beyond Good and Evil. I can’t remember why I stopped. I should pick it up again someday. Any number of interactive fiction games moldering on my PDA. 😃 I need to bring more graph paper on the plane with me. (ack, 7-8 hr flight!) ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2005, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/76 "2005-11-22T06:56:45Z")
Another couple of games that I just thought of: System Shock and System Shock 2. System Shock I didn’t finish because the only computer I could get a hold of that would play it wouldn’t play it well. I could get good graphics OR digital sound and audio. System Shock just isn’t worth playing without the spoken dialogue. Also, Citadel Station is a fucking labrynth. Incidentally, it’s kinda creepifying when you find the dismembered head of the person who’s personal logs you were just reading 5 minutes earlier. System Shock 2 I didn’t finish because it tends to just freak me out. It uses the Thief engine, and well, you have to listen for your alien-infested zombie crew mates as they scurry around in the hallways trying to hunt you down. Sometimes you’ll hear their footsteps just in time to spin around and see one about to bash you in the head. Sometimes they’ll announce their presence to you by screaming “JOOOOIN US!”, “RUN AWAY!”, or (my personal favorite) “PLEASE KILL ME!” (did I mention that some of your infested crewmates are apparantly still cognizant of what’s going on, even if they can’t control themselves?). _shudder_ Don’t even get me started on the first ghost you see. That just creeped me the frak out. And of course, that was about 30 seconds before the first zombie tried to attack me. Did I mention that some of these guys carry shotguns? ZOMBIES WITH SHOTGUNS. Long story short, System Shock 2 tended to have me ratcheted up to a level of tense I just couldn’t cope with. I think at one point my room mate walked in, said “Howdy” to me, and I just about fell out of my chair in shock. ---
**Author:** ![Rucksinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/77 "2005-11-23T00:13:40Z")
I loved Final Fantasy 7 (and did beat it, but kept playing anyway. I had the materia(?) linked up so well it was amazing), and couldn’t wait for FF8 to come out. But there must have been something that I was doing wrong, because in FF8 I couldn’t win a fight without summoning something, which meant that I was constantly watching the ~30 second attack videos over and over again. Finally I quit. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/78 "2005-11-23T00:29:14Z")
> [@scotandrsn](#): > > Well, having never played nor even seen LGoP myself, I know I’m not conflating the two. I was never a big one for the Text-Based Adventures. But Deja Vu IS the game I was thinking of, thanks! And, appropriately enough, I have the strange sensation that a Doper has told me this before… :dubious: :eek: > > The bathroom thing wasn’t anything crucial to the game in Deja Vu, but I recall there were a lot of still shots of confusion swirling around the character’s head, and if you had walked into the ladies’ room first, instead of the men’s, as I did once after starting over for the umpteenth time, your character was female. I definitely remember it being a GUI game, not a TBA. Nope. Nothing like that happened in either of the Deja Vu games. In the first one, you wake up in the men’s room of a bar with amnesia. You’re a guy. As you learn through the course of the game, you’re a private detective named Ace Harding, you’re a former boxer, and you’re the fall-guy for a murder you didn’t commit. You play the same character in the sequel, Lost in Las Vegas. I’ve played (and beaten) this game as recently as last year. There’s no option to play a different gender. [Here’s a walkthrough](http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/faqs/dejavu.txt) to back up what I’m saying. The only game I’ve ever heard of where your gender is determined by which restroom you enter is the aforementioned _Leather Goddesses._ ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/79 "2005-11-23T00:49:01Z")
I have never finished a text adventure - Zork, Adventure, HHGttG, that one I had that was about a haunted house. I have never ascended in Nethack. (Closest I came I got stopped dead by level 25 or so not having a path between the staircases.) Moraff’s Revenge always smacked me down by level 50. I have never, actually, finished a computer RPG of any type. I’m better with Console RPGs, tough. I’ve yet to finish any of the Warcraft games - although I’ve almost finished 2 and 3 (not the expansions) a couple times, and have all three (including the espansions for 2 and 3). ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755/80 "2005-11-23T01:02:27Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > I’ve yet to finish any of the Warcraft games - although I’ve almost finished 2 and 3 (not the expansions) a couple times, and have all three (including the espansions for 2 and 3). Heh. Maybe someone should start a thread about games we’re not ashamed to admit we cheat at, because I really, truly enjoy Warcraft but it’s never occurred to me to not cheat my ass off. Does anyone ever beat those games for realsies? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorable-computer-games-youve-never-completed/331755.md?page=5)