Submitted 2 weeks ago by catty@lemmy.world to retrogaming@lemmy.world
Are they the ‘epics’ of their time, or some things that are less well known?
Half-Life 1 (and expansions)
SimCity 3000, SimCity 4
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Deus Ex
Zoo Tycoon
Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail
Morrowind
Industry Giant 2
Fallout 1/2
Arcanum
SimTower
Great list. I think I will replay about half your list at some point over the coming years. And might first time play Love For Sail as well.
I still play through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at least a couple times a year though it’s usually with the randomizer these days. It is objectively the best video game ever made, which helps.
What do you think of the other Zeldas in the same style, like Link’s Awakening, the Oracle games or Minnish Cap?
All good to great games that build on the foundation set by ALttP. I’d gladly play any of them if you put it in front of me but nostalgia demands that I push the one I played when I was like 9 years old or whatever.
I’ll still crack open any one of the Age of Empires series from time to time.
You just reminded me I have the first version of that game around somewhere, I might dig it back out one of these days soon.
The original and Rise of Rome are great. If you don’t have Rise of Rome it’s almost mandatory, it runs a lot better and has a lot of quality of life improvements, like a higher population cap.
Half-Life 1
One mod specifically (Sven-Coop). Been playing almost daily since 1999.
I still fire up Duke 3d and Quake mods from time to time as well. There are lifetimes of user-made content in some of these older games.
DOOM.
The old game got way better when they open sourced it and Quake 3d code was backported to make zDOOM. Its one of the largest modding communities that has ever existed. If you want to see what it can do, try Brutal Doom. That same engine is behind a new release called Selaco.
I got back into doom in the last few years and there’s a huge number of amazing maps people have made over the years you can play for free. I had no idea about the total conversion wads, where it doesn’t even feel like doom because everything has been changed.
If anyone’s looking for a good place to start you can check out the yearly cacoward winners
My_House.wad has been making the rounds on YouTube semi-recently as an example of the sort of fuckery that has been made possible by the progression of doom modding.
If you’re not familiar with it, do yourself and go in blind for an hour or so and then only look up a video when you’re stuck.
Cool!
Guild wars 1. I don’t play it often but every once in a while I get the itch. It’s honestly still really compelling.
Fired it back up recently and went to one of the main hubs. There was a few other people running around, but it was pretty dead.
But yeah, the pre-cataclysm area was gorgeous at the time. The soundtrack is AMAZING. One of my favorite gaming experiences.
Wasn’t that all online? How is that still going? Ya, I spent a lot of time in guild wars back in the day. Running people to the next stop.
Because they have ai controlled party members (and have since the beginning), it’s actually completely playable solo to this day.
You might be surprised how many people still play though.
Final Fantasy 6 but, back in my day, it was call Final Fantasy 3.
The Pokemon games on all of Nintendo’s handheld consoles emulate really cleanly on a smartphone.
I’m a sucker for the Gen 1 nostalgia every now and then.
Tales of Maj’Eyal; all the old scumm games, daggerfall, toejam & earl.
Ayyy ToME oldhead gang represent. Been playing since about 2014 myself.
The modding community is what really kept breathing life into that game for me for so long. I’m hoping once we finally see the next (final?) DLC expansion that the modders will pick the game back up again. It’s been very stagnant for a couple of years now, presumably waiting for DG to release his expansion like a sudden kraken as is tradition. But it’s been 2 years now since the last update (which was primarily a scaffolding update for the Lost Lands content to come) and I imagine everyone who would be otherwise interested is now hanging in a limbo of not wanting to start work on a project when DG might drop a major update at literally any time and invalidate a bunch of your work.
Even just the regular base game kept me playing for years and years though. Solid 10/10 freeware game. I used to bounce between ToME and DCSS (also freeware, also recommend, this one actually gets regular updates) pretty regularly and that kept me covered on dungeon crawling roguelikes for the better part of a decade. I still keep coming back to them on occasion though, I’ve played a bit of both of those games within the last 2 weeks.
Quake. Still hold up, modding community makes tons of maps to play so it stays fresh.
Dungeon Keeper - keeperfx is a modern update of the engine / bug fix that makes it easy to play on a modern system.
Here goes:
pc:
megadrive:
Wow Cannon Fodder. I felt so bad for the guys that got wounded and just stayed there suffering.
I actually felt real sadness when I’d been progressing with a name for several levels and then they get blown up by my own doing. Actual sadness when their name appears in the roll of honour!
What’s special about EA hockey 2?
Best way to play this these days? I have a disk from the early 2000s, but iirc the last time I tried to use it, it just prompted an update that led to a blizzard launcher… idr if it wanted me to buy a new digital copy or what, but I ultimately decided it was more work than it’s worth and gave up.
…these days I don’t think I even have a CD drive lol.
All their games launch through their “Battle.net Launcher” now. It’s not the same as Battle.net was back then. I play on Linux via Lutris (add Battle.net launcher to Lutris).
I think if you have your cdkey on there you can sync up for a digital copy on their website. Same account needed for the launcher. It’s all annoying, but that’s how it works now. Plays flawlessly though.
Apparently the original game and Brood War expansion are free to install through the Battle.Net launcher these days.
If you have the original discs, the later official patches added the ability to copy the “mpq” files from the CD into the game’s directory, so you no longer need the disc in the drive. Of course, you’re still going to need a drive for the initial installation. That should work for single player (it’s been a few years since I last did it) but I don’t know about online multiplayer.
Super Nintendo:
PC:
The music in the SNES Megaman X series is magic.
There are a lot of great mods for BG2 as well to keep the game feeling fresh. Even moreso if you don’t mind adding some fanfiction material, though I typically don’t.
I sunk hours into NetHack, and I still occasionally dive into the dungeons. I also have a NES emulator on my phone, but it’s just not the same. I’ll play Zelda or Metroid for the nostalgia, but it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with friends.
not the same as sitting on the couch with friends.
That’s the biggie that the young kids of today just will never experience!
If I could I’d still be playing wow but it’s just not the same without the plentiful free time for it.
Private servers with boosted rates can scratch that itch while severely reducing the grind. Every couple years I’ll poke my head into one, level to endgame in like a week, do some raids, do some PVP, then completely forget it exists. Couple years later, rinse and repeat.
I tried retail again last year in a similar way, they’ve actually built so much mechanics now to catch up. But it still felt like a massive task to catch up to actual active players. Private server is a good shout, I’ll take a look next time I get the itch.
Ascension is the best. Look it up. Free to play and offers a better classic experience with a cool twist
My DnD DM talked about this constantly for like a year straight, so I haven’t played it but I can vouch for it being a good time for old wowheads.
Every time Final Fantasy Tactics comes out again, I’m all over it.
Age of Empires
Age of Mythology too <3
Fallout 1 & 2, Final Fantasy 9, Elite
Heroes of Might and Magic III
HOMM3 is like a warm blanket when you’re sick and tired.
Worms Armageddon was a classic
I didn’t have video games in my youth, so I’m just catching up now.
Solitaire.
Syndicate Wars. I honestly haven’t seen anyone emulate that gameplay as well as SW did it since then.
I’ve been on a Doom kick for a bit, although it’s modified to retain some more current gen flair. Just finished Going Down Turbo with Project Brutality. Is it faithful to the OG? Not quite, but it’s truly amazing how far the the engine has come despite being heavily modified in its own right.
Major mix of eras and platforms, but here is my list.
AoE2 NFSU2 Halo MCC Sim City 2000 Streets of Sim City Roller Coaster Tycoon Mario Kart 64 Perfect Dark Goldeneye Battlefield 3 Super Mario Bros Deluxe Mario 64 Overwatch Half Life 2 +eps Gary’s Mod
I forgot simcity 2000 - that is one hell of a classic!
Yoshis island
Super mario world
DKC 1, 2 & 3
Pokemon gen 1&2
Banjo kazooie & tooiee
TLoZ A link to the Past, Ocarina of time & Majoras mask
Warcraft 3 + frozen throne
Command & conquer 2 + yuris revenge
Rayman’s saga Especially Rayman 3 and Rayman 2, I am so excited for the upcomming fan-remake Rayman 2: Redreamed
Quest for Glory series! Betrayal at Krondor
Yeeeeah! I haven’t played these in forever but Hero’s Quest was my first Sierra adventure and holy shit was it magic. And Krondor - Raymond freakin Feist writing games!!
Both absolutely epic!
Love to hear it! I read and reread Feist’s whole series as a kid, I remember always being so excited when a new book came out. I cut my teeth learning to read novels on Magician in 3rd grade!
You’ll be interested to learn that Feist didn’t write anything for the game, he just licensed the world and the characters. Neal Hallford wrote the story and dialogue which were brilliant, and Feist later adapted the story into a novel.
I just replayed QfG 1-3 last week on a family vacation and the magic is still strong. Something about these games ignite mythic perspectives in me that nothing else seems to.
I have replayed Baldur’s Gate 2 more than any other narrative game, and will probably do another playthrough in the coming years. So it’s most likely that. Oh, and Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven multiplayer on the PS2 whenever I am over at one specific friend’s place. That was our go-to couch game growing up and it’s still nostalgic.
bonegakrejg@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I still love all of the 90s FPS games like Doom and Quake.
truxnell@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Same. The rise of the boomer shooter was fun but you can’t beat OG.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Have you tried playing on a lower difficulty level?
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Half-Life 1 was the peak of this genre for me