Nostalgia Alert!
For many people computer games were their first experience of the gaming world, specifically PC games. Despite my first computer being an Apple IIE, and my first games played were educational national park games on floppy disks on said IIE, I have some amazingly fond memories of old PC games. Herein, I say we jump on the nostalgia train and ride the rails back in time to remember fondly these classics. I'll start:
No thoughts on games I played on the computer early on would be complete with out giving a shout out to these early education gems in my gaming career:
Treasure Mountain
Number Muncher
As for other gaming classics I enjoyed:
King's Quest
Tie Fighter - Best Star Wars Game Ever, this is not opinion, this. is. fact.
Discuss!
Posts
it was a platformer, you were an explorer who went inside some ruins, you had a little mirror on your hat you could use to shoot rays of light at bats that would attack you, and every once in a while you had to solve a puzzle that would show you some ancient artifact, like the sculpted figures in Hammurabi's code.
can't for the life of me remember its name though
My favorite of those games was... Challenge of The Ancient Empires, I think it was called?
edit Oh fuck you Moriveth :x
edit again wow time on these forums is really wishywashy
I played and beat every Space Quest, King's Quest, Quest for Glory and Police Quest (okay, not every Police Quest I admit) without the help of a guide
I was
Sierra Nerd
With the power to type commands into the parser really fast
I was a Lucasarts kid
I think we have to fight.
I definitely loved their design philosophy more than Sierra's, but I liked finding all the ways to die in Sierra games
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffQ_Uw55S3o
Coran Attack!
Dying in an adventure game was bullshit.
Meh
It was a slot machine for whether or not you caught a disease before you won
you'll always have the B drive of our hearts
Well now, it really depends
At a certain point a player deserves to die if they're doing something hella dumb
Like if there's a big laser fence that says, "YOU WILL BE KILLED BY THE LASER FENCE IF YOU TOUCH IT" right there, and the player walks into it, yeah you deserve your cute little death animation
But there are some really egregious deaths from that era, I admit
(Yukon Trail, also totally awesome.)
Well both the needless deaths and just generally poor design:
Some of this shit you won't realize you did wrong until several hours of gaming later, especially that fucking Custard Pie.
I never even played it
I hated Sierra games.
Why am I suddenly lost in a desert?!
I loved Betrayal at Krondor.
Then I went years later and worked at Big Fish Games and my boss was the guy who designed it.
Pretty badass.
Oh wow, that is awesome. I just loved how much depth and scope the game had, but the writing kept it from feeling generic like the early Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall games.
The whole goal of this game is to get this magic fruit that only grows in a swamp that's across a mountain range from you, so you need to go through these caves to get the fruit. You need a magic crown to turn into a frog to get through the waterfall to get to the caves that lead to the swamp that has the hillocks that lead to the magic fruit. But you're not told any of that; it's just, "Cross mountains, get fruit, make your way back home somehow -- oh, and the fairy who teleported you here is too weak to bring you back, so yeah better heal her before she dies or you're stuck."
So anyways, you get the crown you need. Marvelous. You get through the waterfall, sweet. Now you're in the entrance to the caves. Oh man, it looks dark in there. Well, whatever man. We gotta make our way through somehow and there's no way to get a torch or anything bigger than a tiny little light so on we go.
Nothing but darkness in these here caves... tum te dum
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!"
What the fuck!?
You're dead!
So here's why you died:
There's a troll in the caves, but you are not told this before you go in. The troll has a random chance of appearing on any screen in the dark caves, and it's a maze (oh joy). So you walk into the caves, and you save if the troll does not appear. You keep moving and saving every step of the way until the troll shows up, and then you desperately try to flee the screen before the troll gets to you. Which is a crap shoot, especially if the troll shows up on the screen you are fleeing to and you are not prepared for it. So you basically have to save and walk and save and walk and save and AHHHHHHH I'm dead, load, save and walk and save and walk and AHHHHHH ad nauseum.
Okay, wow that was a nightmare but you're past it now. So you get to the swamp and you get the fruit (which is it's own little bit of bullshit but I won't go into it because this post is already way longer than I wanted it to be originally).
The only way to get back to the rest of the game is... you guessed it... back through the caves with the troll still in them.
Save and walk and save and walk and AHHHHHH I'm dead, load, save and walk...
The rat/cat/boot got me in KQ5 back in the day.
The worst example of this ever is the plant from Return to Zork, and if you don't know what I'm talking about I will be happy to explain to you just how lucky you are in this age of generally comparatively high standards for video games.
Yeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
really the entire desert was trial-and-error mapping as your character died over and over again while you frantically clicked the mouse button
it was still better than the maze at the end of the game, which you can't even map since your perspective shifts with each screen
roberta williams you are shit at designing games
fucking
COM
<micdrop>
Dear satan I wish for this or maybe some of this....oh and I'm a medium or a large.
Also the voice acting was laughably bad in that game
LOOK OUT GRAHAM
A POOOOOISONOUS SNAKE
he just got his useless ass in trouble and told me I was going to die AFTER I WAS ALREADY DEAD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pruf8aLV45Q
Are you coming back from this one? Who knows!
CEO: Ok, what classics haven't we looked at lately.
Design Lead: Well, we do have X-Com, widely regarded as one of the best games ever made.
CEO: Hmm, looks boring no one will buy it, hey Call of Duty practically creates money, why don't we do it like that?
Design Lead: You mean turn a classic strategy game into a dime-a-dozen fps?
CEO: That sounds like a great idea! Make it happen!
Design Lead: Sir, I really think you should reconsider...
CEO: Nope, it's brilliant! Call of Duty makes millions, this is foolproof. Now get to work, I need to go violate some other treasured classics...
Design Lead: (Darth Vader Noooo...)
SSi: You pretty much know it's going to be completely awesome
This game, so many hours.
Also this gem.
Does anyone else miss getting Shareware games for a fiver at a carboot sale?
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO