Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

3w ago

What's the oldest video game you still find yourself playing?

Modded skyrim is dangerous

328 comments

Currently replaying A Link to the Past (1991). It's not even that old.
- 1991 was only like 20 years ago. Right?
  
  You are correct
  
  1991 was 34 years ago according to my birth certificate, so no :(
- Highly recommend checking out the Link to the Past Randomizer if you haven't. It shuffles all the chest contents while ensuring you can complete the game. It's different each time and even gives you a cheat sheet if you get stuck.
  Check it out here
  
  Thank you for the recommendation. This is great. Here's what I got on a quick first try lol
- Thats only an 8 year old game man. I think they meant something old like SpaceWar!
- This was mine, my most replayed game of all time.

These.
- This looks so much like my collection! Very cool
- Nice tape collection
  
  Thank you! I've fallen in love with physical media again... Fuck Netflix
- Dang, how do you keep all those gameboy carts from toppling over every time you launch your controller at your TV?
  Edit to finish my thought after accidentally sending prematurely.
  
  3D printed cart holder I got from Etsy. Pretty nifty and very stable. Unfortunately the spacing is such that you can only read the GBA labels stacked. The GB/GBC carts obscure the one behind. The rumble carts hang nicely on top though!
  I also do not throw geriatric technology. Would sooner rip my own arm off...

Tetris, the original GameBoy cart.
- Yesssssss; still one of the best implementations of Tetris ever, imo.

I go back to play some nethack pretty regularly.
- I'm not alone!
  Never ascended once. Somewhere in the late midgame the inventory juggling becomes just too complicated and it feels like the last few turns of Civilization 4.
  Tried fiqhack but it flakes on me a lot, can't figure the reason, won't find assets et c. I do dynahack now but it changes too much for my taste, and it doesn't help the inventory problem when you have hundreds of items and try to make sense of it all.
  And yet 30 years on something about it still tickles me pickle.
- I sometimes play "Beneath Apple Manor" (1978) and similar-era games via Apple emulator. Believe it or not, it's a "roguelike" that actually predated Epyx' Rogue (1980) and NetHack (1987).
  But I'm also thankful that Epyx' Rogue happened to become used for the overall genre name. "BeneathAppleManorLike" is just too much of a mouthful!
  
  Oh my god that game art! <3 <3 <3
  I don't know what it was about Apple II games, they just had an other-worldly quality to them.
- Is it worth getting into it now? Without rose tinted glasses I mean. Or are there better alternatives? (Shattered Pixel Dungeon for example). I have tried Shattered Pixel but found it too nonsensical, having to learn tons of mechanics that don't seem to make sense other than trial and error and huge RNG (which I am not a fan of).
  
  To be fair trial and error and RNG are just par for the course with classic roguelikes, but learning how to manage all that is part of the appeal. Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are probably the two best-supported old classic roguelikes out there. Honorable mentions for Dwarf Fortress, which basically abandoned its roguelike mode in favor of a fortress simulator, and UnReal world, which is a weird outdoor primitive survival game that's a testament to one man's obsession.
  There are also more modern offerings like Tales of Maj'Eyal, Caves of QUD, and Dungeons of Dredmor that are fully faithful roguelikes with either more modern graphics or QOL upgrades.
  
  Yes. Its still awesome. And I never got to play it in the heyday.
  Its just an engaging game for me.
  Nethack.org
- Angband for me, high five my fellow older roguelike enjoyer
- Hell yes!! And you can play it on the nethack site through terminal. So awesome. And wat others play it too

Age of Empires 2
- Isn’t that the wolololo game?
  Aye! Wololo
  
  Technically No 1 is the Wololo game. Monks don't Wololo in part 2.
- Does DE count?
  It's crazy that new expansions are still dropping, and the ranked community is thriving.
  
  I think it does. It's pretty much the same game (including the engine) with just a new coat of paint on top.

Every so often I'll have another run at the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure from 1984.
You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't.
It is pitch black.
_
- penis_
- I slapped myself, and died.
  Most satisfying death in a video game I can remember
- Adams also wrote the game ‘Bureaucracy’, similarly rather difficult. And later ‘Starship Titanic’, which is a 3d adventure with textual conversations.
  
  Heard of ST, but not Bureaucracy, will need to check that out, thanks! 👍
- turn on the light
  get out of bed
  open the curtain
  As you part your curtains, you see that is a bright morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the meadows are blooming, and a large yellow bulldozer is advancing towards your home.
  Must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of those.

Playing regularly? Minecraft.
There are a few games I revisit as my kid grows up and gets to experience them for the first time, but Minecraft keeps coming back.
- That one hits close.
  I started Minecraft because my kid talked me into it. I bought him the last Alpha version, then bought myself the first Beta so I could play with him. At the time it just felt like blocks and wandering around, but it stuck.
  Now I play with my grandsons.
  Last weekend was my oldest grandson’s eleventh birthday. Along with a Steam gift card and probably some Robux, all he really wanted was to spend the day playing Minecraft with his grandpa. So that is what we did.
  Not my oldest game, but definitely the one I play most consistently. At least once a week.

Super Mario World every year or two. The soundtrack alone cheers me right up.
Would Tetris count if its always whatever new Tetris Ultimate Reloaded DX etc etc edition? I feel like it shouldn't but its basically the same game just polished up.
- Super Mario World is peak Nintendo. I still come back to it on occasion just to remember what games were like when things didn't seem so corporate.
- Super Mario World and Shadow of the Colossus are my timeless games! I will replay them every few years.

Super mario 64, the acrobatics is so fun
- I've been following the sm64-psx project.
  Yesterday I even got the game to compile, AND show the SM64 splash screen on real PS1 hardware
  
  Holding out hope for that GBA port.
- The natively compiled version?
  There's videos from Kaze Emanuar which are quite interesting about it:
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ

Technically Team Fortress 2. Though not often.
I'm playing through Final Fantasy 2 right now but the pixel remaster version which came out in 2021 which is why I say technically.
- I started TF2 about a year or two back and still play because my son loves it. It's a fun game.
  
  It's a great game to just hang out and have fun. I play it once or twice a year with college buddies across the country. Fire it up, start a server, get drunk, pyro everything

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)
- I had a sony viao pc (200mhz) that came with mech warrior 2 on cd r.o.m.
  played the shit out of that
  
  Such a good soundtrack on the CD
- With a sidewinder joystick?
  That thing is made for torso-twist in MW2.
  
  Yeeeess!! I was trying to remember the name of that! Thank you!
  
  Loved that joystick, especially with A-10 Cuba!
- “We are clan Wolf…”
  
  "It's got a lock on me! It's got a lock on m-" BOOM

Half life and Unreal Tournament
- GoldSRC HL? Love those gibs.
- Unreal Tournament is so good. I wish it had more assault maps out of the box.
  
  I know! I had so much fun playing that game!!! Headshot! Unstoppable!

Diablo 1 (it runs really well with the devilutionx engine reimplementation)
- I've been looking for a download of Diablo 1. I must have put thousands of hours in as a kid. Where'd you find yours?
  
  It's on GOG.
  
  I actually own it on cd. I just had to boot up an old laptop that has my only cd drive.
  But I just checked, you can find it on archive.org.
  
  https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/
  Web version!
- I remember being scared of the music in diablo 2 as a kid

I play retro games I missed growing up so I’ll soon be starting final fantasy 6
- Best old school one. You're in for a treat
  
  ...old school. mf'er I still play III (us version 3)
- Currently playing FFVI myself. It's a treat.
  Bit easier than other Final Fantasy games, I'm finding... at least in the early game, Edgar and Sabin are ass-blasting everything in the game with very little resistance, those boys probably don't even need the rest of the Returners squad. I know that will probably change later but the duo are definitely the MVPs of act 1.
  I'm also of mixed opinion about the ability to teach every party remember every spell in the game. It's obviously not the best idea, that I can't stop myself from doing. Does Edgar or Gau need to know how to cast Bio or Slow or Rasp? No, not at all, and they're probably better served leveling up with magicite that gives them useful stats. Will they learn those spells? You betcha.
  
  I’ll be playing this version, no idea how it will compare to the original
  https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1386/

Probably half life 2

OpenTTD (2004), which traces its roots to Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (1994)
And there's a community of players who have modded the everloving fuck out of the game and the engine itself, one of these patch packs is OpenTTD JGR and we play it like it's a model railway simulator

Deus Ex 1. Still holds up after all these years and there are plenty of mods to keep things interesting.

Darklands - a cRPG released in 1992 by Microprose. It's set in medieval Germany; you are a party of fledgling adventurers looking to build fame and money, and somehow you get pulled into a battle against the forces of the apocalypse. Instead of magic, you invoke saints and use alchemy to craft potions. I loved it when I was younger, and I still, somehow, enjoy it today.
If you hate the following things, then I highly recommend checking it out!
great graphics
good music and sound design
easy to understand game mechanics
stable, bug-free game play
yourself
- I was skimming your comment then i was intrigued with the great graphics, bug free… i was like, what is this amazing game? Maybe i should try. Then i read it again!

Sometimes I'll pop open Mega Man 1 when my blood pressure is too high to focus on anything. I plan to no-hit it one day (without major glitches)

Balder's Gate.

osu!. Despite being made in 2007, it still holds up as a good rhythm game.

River Raid, Atari game from early 80s. Play it on analogue pocket currently
- This was my favorite on commodore 64

breakout. I think it's the oldest 'playable' game. It feel ahead of it's time for the late 70's

DigDug on MAME

Just booted back up chrono trigger

Mario 3, though these days I get tired of it after a World or two and haven't completed it in a while.
Also Xenogears from the PS1 is still one of my favorite games and I replay it every few years.

I recently picked up Diablo 2 again, that and Doom which I play off and on. I really need to find a copy of Wolfenstein now that I'm thinking about old games.

World of Warcraft, but to be fair, it’s just about the only game I really play. I dabble in a few others on Steam, but I always end up back in wow.
I bought a Nintendo 3DS this year and I’ve been trying to play that more but my books are so distracting lol

Streets of Rage 1&2
- Who do you pick?
  
  typically Max, sometimes Skate. in french there's an auditory hallucination that makes his special attack sound funny
  you ?

Every so many years I fire up a King's Quest or Space Quest.
- A fellow space janitor approves.
  
  Don't take any wooden buckazoids!

Warcraft 3 custom maps still drag me back sometimes.

I dunno if it really counts, because these days I play Diablo 2 Resurrected instead of the real OG, but god I still love Diablo 2. I was playing a Druid Maul build a little bit just last weekend in anticipation of Path of Exile 2 adding animal transformations. It's just one of those classic Blizzard titles I go back to at least once every year, alongside Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. They're like the triumvirate of my childhood nostalgia.
Wish the company wasn't so awful.
- Loved D2. Came back to it after decades of being away. Got really confused by things like runes and the reclassifcation of cast rate for items as a percentage. I missed snickering every time I'd encounter an item with "fastest cast rate"

I play lots of games from my childhood. Even though it was before my time, Super Mario Bros on the NES is probably the oldest game I regularly go back to. But I love retro games, so I'll play even older games on occasion.
- Me too. I would say Pac-Man or Galaga, but Super Mario Bros. 1 is the oldest one where I'll sit down and dig into it for a while. 40 years later, the character's weight and momentum make it feel better than plenty of modern games.
  
  Oh, Galaga is another good one!

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Doom II Super Mario Bros. Metal Slug

Portal. It's older than you think, but still solid.
- A couple of years ago I got my wife to finally play Portal and Portal 2 for the first time. Its been long enough she was entirely unaware of any of the memes about the game so she immediately fell in love with the companion cube and cried when she realized she had no choice but to incinerate it, even going so far as trying to find a bug to exploit to bring it with her

Knights and merchants

I still regularly play PS1 and SNES games. They're just better too me.

Thief: Gold
The Dark Mod scratches that itch very well most of the time, but the OG had better story telling across multiple missions
- Just started playing this again for the first time in years. Trying out the texture upgrades from tfix, and they seem pretty good. Still feels very retro!
  
  yeah, I remember the first time I played The Dark Mod and thought: Holy shit, they really nailed the fidelity of the original! Then I was finally able to get Thief: Gold running and realized that TDM actually looks leagues better than the original lol
- Thief VR just came out. I havn't played it yet but I havn't been so excited about a new game in years.

I had to check my library to make sure which one is the oldest, but it's fallout 1 :3
- Still a great game, especially with mods.
  The atmosphere is absolutely unique and haunting...
  
  Any mods you enjoy/recommend for it? :3 I haven't done too much modding tbh

The barcade near me has a Sinistar (1982) cabinet and I play it every time I go. I’m not even that good at it, but I love it so much.
Also I love those Lucasarts point and click adventure games. Grew up playing Monkey Island and play it again every once in a while.
- How appropriate. You fight like a cow
  
  I had my cat laminated 🤺
- Same. Also broken sword.

I'm on a retro game kick lately. I am currently playing Pokemon Leaf Green and Chrono Trigger (for a fiesta event) and will likely move on to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night afterward.
- Contra still holds up very well, really fun to play with a friend.

Wing Commander on the ol' Dosbox.

1991's arcade hit and genre creating game, Street Fighter 2

In my possession is a c64 with an actual c64 monitor. Doing know if it even works. Needs a good home

Twisted Metal 2. I still play it on my PS4

About once a year or so I go replay Morrowind, the chaddest of the Elder Scrolls series.
This past year I replayed Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt tacked onto it, which has been extremely cool and fresh. TR really feels like official content a lot of the time, it's quite good and the love that's been put into it is very apparent.

Heroes of Might and Magic III
Worms Armageddon
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

Anarchy Online (2001) is a game I play frequently.
- Man I tried to get into it but it would barely install and was so buggy I never could play it.
  I reall wanna.
  
  You may have been using the new/beta engine. This engine is known to crash frequently. I use the old engine and never have any problems.
- I was one of the original beta testers! Never actually played it very extensively though since I was really into Asheron's Call at the time.

On the regular I still fire up Zork 1-3, Ultima 4, StarTropics, OG Metroid, and Maniac Mansion.

Jak X.
- Love this game
- Underrated from the jak series. I unfortunately as a kid had an early copy that had a bug that would corrupt your save so bad you couldn't delete it.

On a regular basis, probably classic DooM / DooM 2.

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