Gaming often fetishises the new but many great things exist in the past, so let's strap into our time machines and talk about our favourite games released before say 2010?

Just as with books, movies, plays etc the past holds a treasure trove of amazing experiences. Unless you have a lot more free time than I do it’s unlikely you’ve played anywhere near the majority of the classics. Let’s get out those pink sunnies and compare notes on some of our favourite releases.

I’ve recently been going back in time a little on the retro pi and looking at console games I never had.

  • I have to say Chrono Trigger blew me away with it’s stunning art, puzzles with surprisingly little moon logic, and beautiful music.
  • Mario golf on the SNES is very simple but for tired evenings cuddling on the couch it’s been a winner in our household.
  • The n64 Zelda games are surprisingly great too although that awkward period of 3d had some unusual controls. Even the gameboy ones are a blast although the water temple in oracle of ages it a bit frustrating.
  • Heroes of might and magic 2 and 3 hold a special place in my heart and I can still dump hours into skirmishing with those (32167 for when hom2 gets too frustrating amiright?)
  • I loved neverwinter knights as a kid but recently tried to check it out again and just… idk the magic wasn’t there. I think now I’d rather just play some actual ttrpgs instead of sprawling CRPGs

PS1 is a mystery box to me so I’d love to hear some recommendations from that old thing. All I ever played on it was time crisis at my mates house (which was and is soooo coool, RIP lightguns).

What about you folks? What games hold a special place in your heart? or what have you checked out for the first time recently and found it’s actually pretty good?

graffitiworthreading,

In addition to the many amazing games already mentioned, I’ll throw in the 1995 gem “Ascendancy” from The Logic Factory. The user interface is a bit rough by modern standards but, for its time, it was a fascinating 4X turn-based strategy game (despite the broken “AI”) with an impressive array of alien races with unique art and music for each. It’s been in-and-out of the “abandonware” classification over the years, so there may not currently be any legitimate way to acquire a copy of the game–which is a real shame for those who might want to experience a nearly 30-year-old game that I think was groundbreaking for its time.

insurgenRat,

It is deeply tragic that the IP is being tossed about like a pirate ship on stormy seas. Things like this really keep fans at bay.

Trashbones,

This game is actually a bit before my time since it was released two years before I was born, but the original XCOM game (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown) is still one of my favorite games of all time. And it’s just gotten better over the years with fixes and modding through OpenXcom.

I like the modern Firaxis games a lot too, and Xenonauts even moreso, but nothing has quite hit the same as the OG.

thekerker,
@thekerker@beehaw.org avatar
  • Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth
  • Choplifter
  • Duke Nukem 3D
  • X-Wing
  • Quake III Arena
  • MechWarrior
  • GoldenEye 007
  • Rogue Squadron
  • Shadows of the Empire
  • Metal Gear Solid
  • Siphon Filter
  • Ein Händer
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
  • Colony Wars
  • Colony Wars II: Vengeance
  • Counter-Strike
  • Half-Life
  • Oni
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert
  • Total Annihilation
  • Dune 2000
  • Star Control III
  • Delta Force
  • Deus Ex

So many great games from my childhood.

TheSkoomaCat,
@TheSkoomaCat@beehaw.org avatar

Quake III but no I or II? I see you’ve got DOOM on your list, I’m curious, did you not like the first two quake games or just didn’t play them? Otherwise you’ve got my list down pat (plus a few extras).

thekerker,
@thekerker@beehaw.org avatar

Nope, I only ever played Quake III Arena.

EremesZorn,

All the old MechWarrior games, starting with MechWarrior 2. That was my childhood. PGI didn’t have what it takes to recapture that with MechWarrior Online or MechWarrior 5.
Shout out to Half-Life 1 and Team Fortress Classic (1.5). THAT was my teenage years. I played an insurmountable amount of TFC, adminned a couple servers, and took zero interest in TF2, because it just wasn’t the same without concs, throwable frag nades, etc.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a gamechanger though. That released when I was in college. Fell in love with the hopeless atmosphere, good gunplay, and the eurojank. I still play the various S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods to this day and am eagerly awaiting the release of number 2 (slated for December, but we will see. Devs have been through a lot).

Toxic_Tiger,

I played the first STALKER at uni as well and loved it. Along with Red Orchestra that a mate was a play tester for.

All games paled in comparison to how much time I sunk into WoW between 2006 and 2011 though.

EremesZorn,

I know a lot of people that played WoW back then, and their experiences were largely the same. I didn’t get much into MMOs beyond Guild Wars 1 at that time. Final Fantasy XIV was good for a time, but Elder Scrolls Online blew me away after they basically redid the game. That was obviously much later in life, though, and that’s a very different framework of MMORPG than classic WoW and its early expansions.

alea,

Civilization III. Still undoubtedly the best from me, every subsequent change to the series has been negative.

jay2,

In my old party days circa 2000, I had a nice party house in the hood. The neighborhood wasn’t all that great, but it was a nice big house for cheap rent. Lots of rooms and space. I was young and had more knowledge of computers than money, and this meant I could bus to work instead of driving and paying to park.

I worked at a large engineering company. They upgraded their computers for the Y2K bug. This left them with an extraordinary amount of old PC’s they had to actually pay to dispose of properly. To save money, they yanked the hard drives and raffled them off to the employees. We’re talking nearly 400 PCs. 386’s, 486’s and even some (then highly coveted) 486-dx2’s.

A few people that won just gave me their PC. They didn’t want it since it wasn’t usable without a hard drive but knew I did. I cashed in a few favors here and there to get a few of those choice 486-dx2’s from those that won them where I could. In all, I made (6) pretty decent Dell PC’s and set them up in various rooms in the house. I also had my cadd workstation and my roommate had his PC as well. I put Windows 98SE, VNC and Twisted Metal 2 on each.

I lan’d together all (8) PC’s into a home network using a partial reel of CAT6 cable that I got from another friend in exchange for devising and assembling his wife a new PC for her birthday. He was in the IBEW and the cable was scrap surplus from construction at a major airport. He gave me some speaker wire as well. In hindsight, it was for a public address system and was not the best for musical range but it did work. I borrowed a crimper and helped myself to some RJ45 connectors from our IT department. I ran the lan cables to network the PC’s. I placed a speaker in every room and wired them into the home stereo. Mono, but I only had so many speakers. I then converted my workstation to more of a home theater, running a video out to the TV. PC audio was outputted to the home stereo as auxiliary.

It made for a kick ass home theater system for the year 2000. In it’s day, it was pretty hip. We had some great multiplayer games for years to come and nearly everyone had their own room to play in. TM2 was really neat in that it could take up to 8 players.

VNC gave you control over any computer from any computer. You could watch a movie on the Home Theater in any room you want to, or all of em even. Kick on winamp with milkdrop and just jam out. Put on ‘The cat sitter’ and get the cat all riled up. Ahh, good times.

In all, and not accounting for any time spent or software licenses, I may have invested 30 dollars for a new corded drill (which I still have today). Beer was probably the highest total expenditure for the project. There were some wire coat hangers that got away fishing the wires through the walls that are probably still there.

Also, I totally agree with you on Chrono Trigger. It has another title set in that same world that can be tricky to find called Chrono Cross. I personally think Trigger was the better of the two titles but Cross is play worthy.

argv_minus_one,

Why’d they have to get rid of the hardware? Y2K is almost entirely a software issue.

Those old machines did have an issue with the real-time clock not handling post-Y2K dates, but that doesn’t matter much as long as the machine gets the correct time over the network once it’s booted.

jay2,

At that time, no one knew what was going to happen. They didn’t want to chance it so they upgraded nearly everyone.

Whatever the reason, it made my decade. I experienced no problems at all on any of my machines.

Confused_Idol,

Baldur’s Gate II is and will always be the most influential and important game of my life.

LassCalibur,
@LassCalibur@beehaw.org avatar

Wesnoth is a GPL turn-based strategy game from 2005 which has been installed on every computer I’ve owned since its debut. The pixel art, sound effects, music, and gameplay depth are wonderful yet it’s very easy to learn! There are hundreds of campaigns available for solo play and it has both local and online multiplayer. Team based multiplayer with friends against AI’s is a lot of fun and no one gets their feelings hurt if they lose!

Right now I’m playing the white chamber which is a freeware indie horror point and click adventure game from 2005 with a female protagonist. So far it’s doing really well at creating a creepy, suspenseful mystery in a foreboding environment. I haven’t finished it yet but it’s been fun!

As others have mentioned, Neverwinter Nights from 2002 is still unchallenged for community created storytelling and worldbuilding! If you haven’t played it then take a look at what’s available on The Neverwinter Vault and some of the online realms. A Dance with Rogues is my favorite module and would on its own be one of my favorite games!

Thank you to everyone else who’s shared some of their favorites!

fuzzywolf23,

My god, how could I forget about Wesnoth? I just re installed it and look forward to another 100 hours into it.

LassCalibur,
@LassCalibur@beehaw.org avatar

Yay!

0nyxee,

I definitely have a lot that really get me feeling nostalgic. Couldn’t even count the hours I spent playing games as a kid lol but here’s a random list of a few:

  • Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (My favorite of all time)
  • Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age
  • Dragon Warrior VII
  • Final Fantasy: Tactics
  • Chrono Cross
  • Phantasy Star I and III
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Minish Cap
  • The Sims 1
  • RuneScape
scribblemacher,

Putting DQ7 on here is almost a bit spicy, but I think it’s one of the best representations of the series in terms of scope, pacing, gameplay, and storytelling. It’s absolutely slow, but that was sort of the point.

0nyxee,

I definitely have a few controversial choices. But DQ7 is legitimately my favorite DQ game and I always thought it didn’t get the attention it deserved. It was a long one to get through though.

I’d argue that having Chrono Cross and not Chrono Trigger is even spicier lol. But I think it’s really just nostalgia since that’s what I sunk a lot of hours into back then. I remember hunting everywhere for Final Fantasy Chronicles because it included a copy of Chrono Trigger, but I could never get my hands on it.

scribblemacher,

I can get behind the CC vs CT take. I finished CT first circa 1998 but found it pretty boring (I have a better appreciation for it now). CC was a lot more enjoyable to me–combat had a lot going on, and the music is an unmitigated masterpiece.

sculd,

The original Red Alert is still one of my favorites! In the expansion you can even fight Giant Ants!!! (Not sure how many people knew)

iamhazel,
@iamhazel@beehaw.org avatar
  • OpenTTD
  • Puzzle Pirates
  • Mario Golf on GBA
  • Bike or Die, Space Traders, and Fish Tycoon on Palm
Cavemanfreak,

TimeShift came out in 2007, and that game was the bomb. Loved the concept with the suits that can control time, and the game play felt really smooth. Nothing beats freezing time and grabbing the enemies’ weapons from them and shooting them with it.

drewdevorcula,

Eternal Darkness

Silent Hill

Resident Evil 1+2

Call of Cthulhu

Quake 1-3

Doom 1+2

Chrono Trigger

Final Fantasy 3, 7, Tactics

Metal Gear Solid (all of them)

Shadowrun (SNES)

Castlevania 1-3, SOTN

I could go on…

chahk,

I loved the bullet time in OG Max Payne game (2001).

I was addicted to EverQuest since I started playing it in 2001 for at least 10 years. They don’t call it “EverCrack” for nothing. No matter how I feel about it now, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I also played PlanetSide MMOFPS for at least 4 years since it released back in 2003, and it was so great. I hear both good and bad things about its successor, PlanetSide 2, but haven’t tried it for the fear of it ruining my nostalgia of the original.

Starsiege: Tribes was an awesome game too. I was a beta tester for that one way back in '98, in the days before broadband was a thing. I still have an installation CD hand-signed by the devs that they had to ship to all the testers, because downloading 500+ MB over dial-up was not feasible.

Earthsiege 2 was the game for which I went out to CompUSA and bought a joystick that had swivel function (MS SideWinder 3D Pro).

MrEUser,
@MrEUser@lemmy.ninja avatar

My response to this will look like a who’s who of Dreamcast games. The Dreamcast was the first console I bought myself, so I have lots of fond memories.

  • Soulcalibur I & II
  • Sega NFL 2K1 (and I was NOT a sports game person)
  • Shenmue I & II
  • Jet Set Radio
  • Phantasy Star On-Line
  • Quake III arena
  • Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2
  • Hydro Thunder
  • Fur Fighters
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