I’ve played it, but it’s pretty buggy on Win7. I’d like to see it go a step further and be full sandbox mode. Getting off the pathways altogether. Walking around the islands, climbing mountains. Sure, some of the puzzles would have to be reworked in order to make them still challenging when you get to see everything but it’d be a awesome new game.
Come to think of it, there’s gotta be ways to massively update Choplifter, make it 3D, flying over a richly-detailed Baghdad, picking up wounded Americans after they’ve been hit by an IED and such…
I should get to work on that.
I would dearly love to see Sword of the Samurai (1989, DOS) or something similar.
Autoduel would also be quite fun (I enjoyed the later Deathtrack as well, but I missed the depth that was in Autoduel).
Another underrated favorite would be DragonStrike, a strategic dragon-fighting flight sim set in the DragonLance universe.
Harpoon. The gratuitous modern warfare naval/air combat command simulator. (first person to mention Jane’s Fleet Command gets a boot to the head) Also, the SSI Great Naval Battles series.
And Jane’s Fighter’s Anthology. Jane’s always managed the perfect blend of realism options and shallow learning curves, and also had the single best flight sim multiplayer mode ever conceived.
XCom, X-Wing, and Wing Commander have already been mentioned, but I want to give a special shout out to Wing Commander: Privateer. (First person to mention the X series gets a boot to the head)
It’s been done any number of times, or tried at least, though as far as I’m concerned no one has really caught the same magic - maybe because they also try to fix what was wrong with it as they go. It’s not the same without lobstermen cargo ship terror missions.
FFFFFFFFfffff…
That being said, UFO:Extraterrestrials is close IMO, especially when modded (there’s a sequel due soon too, I think).
Anyway, what old games would be cool ? Well, Jagged Alliance 2 with Silent Storm’s engine would be awesome. I also wish someone would make new X-Wing/TIE Fighter games. The last one, X-Wing Alliance, was great, but it’s still over a decade old. New Privateer games would also be cool with me.
What’s there to modernize ? Harpoon was about looking at a map with lots of itty bitty NATO symbols on it. If you remake it today, it will still be just a map with lots of itty bitty symbols on it 
Also, re:Jane’s, Jane’s USAF was pretty nice IMO. Fucking shit up in A-10s never gets old.
Oh hey, looks like USAF got modded to hell and back too ! Damn, now I have to root out my CD…
As it happens, I fired FF7 up yesterday. It’s amazing how much graphics have improved.
My husband was asking me about games similar to those old games. Turn based combat is the only way we’ll play.
I’d love to see a remake of M.U.L.E. I had it for the Commodore 64 (I had a C128, but very few programs that ran in that mode) and for the NES or SNES, and I’d love to play it again. I used to use a china marker/grease pencil to write on the screen, to show where the Crystite deposits were. I’d even accept the old graphics. Man, that game was a lot of fun.
Planescape: Torment. The aged graphics prevent people from trying to get into this classic.
Turned based combat Western RGP’s are pretty much dead. the last decent one was maybe return to the temple of elemental evil.
But, I’d suggest you give pseudo turn based games a try. They are real time, technically, but they all allow you to pause combat at any moment to assign new actions to your characters, change strategies, etc. So it can be played at a very layed back pace, giving you plenty of time to consider tactics and micromanage to your heart’s content.
There’s a lot of great party based RPG’s like that out there which someone who appreciated the old gold box games really shouldn’t miss out on.
Older games like this:
Baldur’s Gate series
Planescape Torment
Ice-wind Dale series
Neverwinter Nights series
Knights of the Old Republic Series
Arcanum
Might And Magic (I like VI best)
Betrayal at Krondor/in Antara
Wizardry Series
Newer Games:
Dragon Age: Origins
Ehm… That’s it for new ones. Which royally pisses me off and it’s the reason I want to stab Dragon Age 2 in the heart.
Hell, yes. 
This thread reminds me, I need to give Oolite another try to see if it does measure up to the original Elite. First try ended in quick frustration of not having a joystick and trying to dock with the rotating station using keyboard controls.
My husband refuses to even consider pseudo turn based. Now, I’ve tried Fallout 3 for the PC, and while TECHNICALLY I can pause the game to take a targeted shop, it just doesn’t have the same feel. I have to be quick as lightning to get the game to pause. My reflexes are just not there any more. I wish that I COULD play these games, or that the game makers would remember that not every gamer is a teenager, and a male.
I’ve played the Baldur’s Gate series, and liked it very much. I think that Arcanum is wonderful…but I’ve moddeded it to allow my character to get 127 levels. I recently upgraded to a Win7 machine, and a lot of my older programs just won’t work on this thing. I’ve been trying to get Fallout and FO2 up and running, but they are sitting in a corner and pouting. I need to find my old Arcanum discs and try to load it and run it. And hope to find the old mods somewhere. My favorite character was a half-ogre, who had been confined to a mental institution but was actually fairly bright (I forget what the background was called).
I wonder if KOR would work on this machine?
For older games try dosbox, or pick them up from GOG.com
GOG gives you a version that runs on modern systems, sometimes even with popular mods built in.
Also, there’s a big difference in terms of “pseudo” turn based and real time when it comes to games like Fallout 3 and say Dragon age. Stuff happens in Fallout 3 a lot faster, so it is a bit difficult to use that pause button. Dragon Age origins is a lot more like BG though.
Final Fantasy VI was always my favorite of the series. I’d love to see it updated similar to the way they rereleased FFIV a few years ago - perhaps on the 3DS?
Count me as another “not only yes, but HELL yes!” A modern MOM be an awesome multiplayer Internet game. Get co-branding from eBay and/or Amazon to update the title, and you’re all set.
I don’t have a copy around, and your description doesn’t match memory perfectly, but was it “Idiot Savant”? The one where you could get all the funny low intelligence conversation choices, but not suffer with an actual crippled intelligence stat?
Or “Escaped Lunatic,” but isn’t that one just stats/reaction changes?
Well, there are the Spiderweb Software games (the Avernum series, the Geneforge series, and Avedon), which have twisty plots, huge maps, and turn-based combat but are also seriously old-school in terms of graphics (maybe comparable to Ultima VII or so). I find that although I am in theory in favor of games like that, in practice I am shallow and demand a bit more graphics than they deliver.
I don’t think Fallout 3 has this, but I know for a lot of those games (like NWN), there’s usually some list of checkboxes buried under the options menu to the effect of
"auto-pause:
On encounter
On party member death
After each combat round
etc etc"
In case you don’t have the reflexes to oh-shit pause.
Have you guys tried Temple of Elemental Evil ? It’s pretty awesome if you’re into tactical RPGing and D&D 3.5 mechanics fuckery.
It can get a bit repetitive I guess (not least because player characters are capped at level 10, which unless you’re bypassing quests and monsters and such you’ll reach around the first level of the titular dungeon - and there’s like 4 or 5 more to go, plus the elemental planes) but I liked it very much. It’s a shame the studio who made it went tits up shortly after, I wouldn’t have minded more such faithful conversions of old school D&D modules.
Different genre than the rest of the thread but: Risk with modern borders.