Games of yesteryear

[Despot of the English]

Lets move the clock back to those games you enjoyed years ago. What were your favourites? And on what gaming machine? I would post this in the Arena but not everyone can post there.

I'll go right back to 1985 and the Acorn Electron . Best game for that by far was Elite. Classic game and incredible it could run on a 32k computer.

Next up Target Renegade on the Spectrum 128k+2 (so-called because it had a tape-recorder built into it.) Great game for up to two players as they battle against mobsters. You could also pick up a variety of weapons to help you bludgeon your enemies to death: a hammer and a snooker cue spring to mind.

On the Atari ST 512k it was Elite. Similar to the Acorn Electron version but more spaceships and they were at least coloured in so they looked solid.

On the Amiga there were two great, great games: Hired Guns and Frontier. You could play with up to four of your mates with Hired Guns although you had to watch out for friendly fire. It was the first FPS I played, the graphics were great with the weapons and foes to match. Disappointing climax to the game though. That really let it down.

Frontier was just the best game ever. Excellent graphics and gameplay and the fact that if you were bored with your spaceship you could just sell it and buy a new one: perhaps a 2500 tonne freighter with up to four lasers and more shields on it than a space station? You could also be one of many things: a bounty hunter, a smuggler, a trader, a pirate, a miner, or a transporter (you could pick people up from space stations and take them from A to B for a fee) and work for the Federation or the Empire. If you underwent missions successfully with either one, such as assassinating someone, taking a photo of an outpost somewhere, or destroying it with a nuclear missile, you could rise up the ranks.

[Fragony]

MSX2, I have spend massive amounts of time with metal gear 1 and 2, but the best was SD-Snatcher.

And everything nintendo releases

[Louis VI the Fat]

A fellow Acorn user!

I used to have a BBC micro, played Elite to death on it. I got myself a good emulator a few weeks ago, and played all those old mid-80s games again.

They're still the best.

[Angadil]

I loved a really ancient game called The Art of War. Real time strategy (minus the resource gathering, to me mostly a plus), before the term was invented. Great gameplay, IMO, some depth to it.

[CherryDanish]

Harpoon (486 PC) and leisure suit larry (XT PC).

They got me hooked on gaming.

[Lucius Lucullus]

Pirates!
Har har, avast landlubbers, shiver me timbers.

or what really got me into the computer wargaming genre: Civilization, and later on: No Greater Glory.

[Despot of the English]

A fellow Acorn user!

I used to have a BBC micro, played Elite to death on it. I got myself a good emulator a few weeks ago, and played all those old mid-80s games again.

They're still the best.

Wahey! I was wanting to play Frontier but it had issues with Windows XP .

I forgot to mention Lords of the Realm on the Amiga!

[Tricky Lady]

One of the first games I really played for months (errr, actually years is more accurate ) was Colonization...
Before that I played Pirates! on Amiga at a friend's place or Boulderdash.

[eadeater]

Ahhh, the good old days! There are too many to mention in my opinion, but here are some of my favourites (all on PC - I'm not a fan of consoles):

Dune 2
X-Com: Enemy Unknown & X-Com: Terror from the Deep (I love the cheesy names)
WarPath (doubt anyone has even heard of this)
Digger (doubt anyone has heard of this either)
Syndicate
Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Goblins 2 (didn't like 1 or 3)
Battle Bugs

Hmmm, can't think of any at the moment but I'm sure there are plenty.

[Condottiere]

Who here remembers The Last Ninja? A great game, for its day, with excellent music, especially on my C64/128.

I just found a fansite: http://lastninja.lemon64.com/

[Despot of the English]

Who here remembers The Last Ninja? A great game, for its day, with excellent music, especially on my C64/128.

I just found a fansite: http://lastninja.lemon64.com/

Ah yes! I forgot about that one! Played it on the good ol' Spectrum. I remember it looked so much better on the C64 because it had more colourful graphics. Very hard game it was too.

[AssasinsShadow]

Original Doom and Warcraft I... 'nuff said.

[HicRic]

Asteroids on the Atari. Legendary! Pacman and Adventure ruled also. My childhood was lost to that thing. :P
A little more recent than that was Chrono Trigger and FF4 on the SNES. FF4 got me hooked on RPGs.

[Al Khalifah]

Fields of Glory on the Amiga was a great stratergy game based on the Waterloo campaign for the Napoleonic War. I believe they even brought it over to PC. Tower Assault was a good two player blast too.

Probably because I was too young to enjoy the earlier consoles, but my favourite had to be the Sega Megadrive/Genesis. Goldenaxe, Streets of Rage, Mortal Combat, Brian Lara Cricket (the best ever cricket game), Sonic 2. It even had Zero Wing - and everyone loves Zero Wing. Sonic 2 PvP has to be one of the most tense games ever, one mistake could spell anger, swearing and nipple crippling. Me and a mate played it the other day - I've never heard so much swearing at a TV (except during THAT Portugal game).

[Goofball]

Ultima: II played on my Apple 2+ back in 1984. Man, did I waste a lot of hours on that one...

[Sociopsychoactive]

Oh the memories, the memories...

Did no-one else grow up on a diet of Joust ? Play for endless hours trying to get to a higher level on River Raid than their older brother, who always seemed to be better at it than me?

Did we not love the simple minded traps and treasures of Montezuma's revenge in all it's incarnations? Did not Loadrunner give us endless hours of puzzle-solving platform fun, digging holes to fill with enemies, then falling down them ourselves?

Have we all forgotten Choplifter ? Which was way ahead of it's time, I mean, this thing had tree's that actually seemed to move! Your helicopter had a carry limit!

Oh for my mis-spent youth, playing computer games that seemed like magic, only to discover there was such a thing as a console that did nothing but play games....

Mariocart on the snes, marioworld, bomberman (though it was better on the megadrive, gotta love those little dinosaurs), and the none-stop kill-frenzy of Smash-TV, not to mention lemmings on the gameboy, that still has me even now.

Why, it wasn;t untill a good 5 years later that I got a real PC and got into XCom: Terror from the deep, Colonisation, civilisation (the original), magic carpet, command and conquer (though for years I only had the demo). Why even fallout could be considered retro these days, but I still hold it dear to my heart.

Since then of course I became a full on gamer, playing everything I could, but at the moment MTW still has me hooked every moment of every day...

[Colovion]

I loved old games - everything was SOOOOO diverse, now it's all regimented and anything new and fresh is very small and hardly anyone knows about them.

I loved Civilization .. the original. It really taught me so much and got me into war gaming. One game that I spent hours upon hours on was one that I think was called Oil Driller or something. Of course there was all of the classic Nintendo games. There was an RPG called Castle of the Winds that was surprisingly awesome back in the day, but so ghetto.

[ShadesPanther]

ahhh the Sega Megadrive.. was a very good console. I havead 47 games for it but alas the mega drive is broken so I can download roms legally. My favourite were the Sonic games 1-3(and sonic + Knuckles) and Streats of Rage.Now that was a very violent game but that was before all the hippies turned against videogames.

I also had the Mega CD which I thought was very good.

[Oaty]

Looks like the computer geeks are congregating. Ding Dong, Sorry guys have to come back later, as I have to hide my comp from my friends or I might be accused of being a geek just like you