RetroGaming @lemmy.world Anonymoose @infosec.pub 2y ago

What are your favorite retro PC games?

For me, it was the game Rocket Jockey released by Sega Soft in '96. It was perfect. The game featured a surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale. The entire premise of the game was to ride around on rockets and using long cables to yank your opponents off theirs. Referees were also fair play. I don't think I've met anyone else who has played the game, so if you have, let me know!

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Jazz Jackrabbit, and all of its versions and the sequel. Banging soundtrack too
- Jazz is the DOS Game Club game of the month in August, which is exciting! Been waiting for them to cover it ever since it launched.
- https://youtu.be/TPM5I2u8ZWQ
- Also monster bash
I was a big LucasArts graphic adventure game fan. Maniac mansion, Zak McKracken, Indiana Jones, Loom, Monkey Island Then all the Sierra games: leisure Suits Larry, Police Quest, King’s Quest, Camelot…. Good times.
- ahem you forgot to mention full throttle ;)
  
  Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen.
I really loved Tie Fighter from 1994. The music was pretty cool because it changed based on the state of the mission you were on and star wars music was a cheat code to my feelings.

I also thought it was so cool when you'd complete secret objectives and they'd bring you in to the emperor's secret order and tattoo your arm. I thought that was just fucking great. Those cut scenes were so cool.

Also thanks to all of you who posted cool older games im going to try some of these. I'm thinking about trying fallout I've never played any in that series.
- Lucas arts was so strong at that time. I loved dark forces(?) the FPS
- Honestly Lucasarts of the early-90’s to mid 2000’s had such a high batting average.
  
  Tie Fighter really captured the feel of the original trilogy that only a few games have actually done, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight both did the same.
- Wait, you forgot to mention that he tattoes your arm with FORCE LIGHTNING.
one must fall

anything from apogee

Ultima underworld

wolf 3d / doom
- Doom, total classic. In that same vein, did you ever play Hexen? I recall it being a pretty cool medieval/ magic Doom.
  
  And of course, unreal tournament. Although that was later. It had a Linux port which is why I played it.
- Excellent list
Star Control 2 is the one I still come back to every now and then.
ID games of course (Keen/Wolf3d/Doom), Sim City series. Raptor, Warcraft I&II, LucasArts games.
- Raptor and tyrian, 2 great tastes that taste better together.
Fallout. Astonishing bit of work. I wish there were more isometric RPGs of that style.
- Loved the older fallout series but wow that gameplay was unforgiving. I remember dying constantly, though I was probably just bad.
  
  Yeah, the unfortunate downside to the Fallout games is that it gives you a wide variety of potential character builds, but unless you're somewhat proficient in combat, your odds of survival are slim. Which, I suppose, would be accurate to a real-life post-apocalypse scenario
Theme Hospital I still go back to on occasion. I’ve seen Two Point but it’s not the same.
- Have you tried corsix th? It lets you play the original theme hospital on modern systems.
  
  https://corsixth.com/
  
  Oh this looks amazing. Thank you!
The Commander Keen series.
Unreal Tournament '99!
I always go back to Castle Adventure as my warm-fuzzy nostalga hit. Was the first game I played on PC, and yes, I know I'm old.
Scorched Earth Worms UT2K Quake 3 Arena Tribes Descent Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries You Don’t Know Jack Where in the World is Carmen San Diego
- MechWarrior 3 was where I got into the franchise. Those were awesome games.
  
  When you load into a mission and the mech boots up… titanfall really scratched that itch
I keep playing Total Annihilation. I play it at least once a day.
- Sometimes that's me an Supreme commander: forged alliance.
  
  You'd think I'd be better by now.
  
  I've tried both Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation.
  
  I think what mostly bothers me about updated versions of the concept is that there are too many "this type of unit counters that type of unit" pairs. You'll start a campaign level, build yourself a nice mixed bag of versatile units, and then an enemy will show up with a horde of some specific unit X that completely overwhelms you, because you didn't have enough Z artillery which is like the only effective thing against X.
  
  I rarely had that problem in the original TA. Generally, all units are vulnerable to all other units, so you have to use geography and consistent resource-denial strategy to your advantage.
- Oh heck yeah, nothing beats the original Total Annihilation. My dad would play LAN against each other and online. We would absolutely destroyed cause we sucked, but it was fun! Nothing beats picking off the enemy command with a Big Bertha!
Star Control 2 Starflight Civilization Railroad Tycoon SimCity Pirates! King’s Quest Space Quest Telengard Lemmings

My childhood! :-)
- I loved Lemmings but man, oh man did I send a lot of those poor things to their death by mistake.
  
  Only by accident? :-) I recall setting up the lemmings in a pattern that would produce pretty confetti/fireworks from the nuke button was half the fun of the game. Or at least it was after I got very frustrated with a particular level!
The Moraff adventure games. Moraffs World and Moraffs Dungeons of the Unforgiven.

Also Castle of the Winds.

It's either tough or impossible to get purchased copies of any of them now, but that means there are sites willing to host the full unlocked versions of them now. As far as I know, the creators of both are still alive though. So I suppose if you tried really hard you might still be able to get money to them.

In both cases they were games I played when I was a kid and they stood out as games I wanted to come back to when I was less bad at stuff. And in both cases I did, and little me was right.
- I remember the death messages of Castle of the Winds: RIP Killed by Huge Ogre or RIP Killed by Kobold. I had never seen or heard of an Ogre before and thought it was "org" so I pronounced it that way too for the longest time. Until Shrek was released.
  
  I vaguely remember the death message said "another one bites the dust" and I had no idea what that meant.
- I recently played through Castle of the Winds again, works great in DOSbox with Win98. Still a great game.
- I played one of the Moraff games (I think Dungeons of the Unforgiven) and remember it being like an acid trip. In retrospect I probably didn't have the colors set up right.
I played the shit out of Rocket Jockey. We only played it once together at a Lan party because I kept tying my friends together. Fun for me, not for them!
- Never got to play LAN, I bet it was a blast though. That gameplay was made to torment your friends!
Does Bubble Bobble through an emulator count?
X-COM UFO Defense
- So good!
Me and my sister were crazy about Zoo Tycoon, but we weren't super good at it. We would run the zoo into the ground and then release the T. Rex.
- Releasing the T. rex and plopping guests into the shark tank and removing the ladder were important parts of a successful zoo. I wish the Zoo Tycoon series kept the same level of freedom the original has, the new one was depressing to play.
  
  I didnt know there was a new one. We played the 1st and 2nd ones.
  
  I feel like anything new would lack the magic from back then.
The original "Master of Orion" was great, and I also spent countless hours playing "Archipelago"
So Im a Star Wars nut, but here goes:

Episode 1 Racer

Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight

A couple other Lucasarts games:

The Curse of Monkey Island

Grim Fandango

There are so many more, but those are my choices for least talked about entries
Does Simcity 4 count as retro? It’s ridiculously good.

Also Doom, of course.
Rollercoaster Tycoon
I remember having a blast with Rocket Jockey - I think we had it on a demo disc? Otherwise I always loved Sim Copter.
Arcanum

I was totally sucked into the world when I first played it as a kid. The balance and trade offs between tech and magic are awesome and the incredible dialogue and (OK from what I remember) story makes this one I come back to every once in a while.

I don't think I ever actually have beaten the game though -- but I do that with nearly every game.
SimAnt holds deep reverence with me since I remember playing it at my friends house all the time as a kid.

Lands of Lore, Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander, and Master of Orion, because I played them with my brother all of the time.

And Police Quest and Number/Word Munchers because they were some of the first I played in school.
- Oh and King's Quest V (and really all the Sierra games, for that matter) have honourable mention because I played it ALL THE TIME at my dad's and I miss those days.
Lords of the Realm 2 - I still come back to it regularly. Holds up pretty well (though battles were kinda easy to cheese).
Mental Omega, a total conversion mod for Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge.

Age of Empires 2.
Digger.

I found a Win version the other day... and it still kicks my ass - just like it did when I was thirteen.
For me personally, that has to be Broken Sword 1 and 2. There’s always been something about those games that keep me coming back on yearly basis - there’s few games that can do that for me.
FX Fighter, Enemy Engaged: RAH-66 Comanche vs. KA-52 Hokum, Sim City 3000, Descent, and Carnivores 2. Just love the janky 3D, complicated keyboard bindings, goofy UIs, and crunchy textures.
So there's this old DOS game called 'Archipelagos'. You just wandered around this weird checkered liminal space looking for obelisks. I dont remember much more than that but it was just such a weird and different game and I loved it.
Settlers II is the one I go back to from time to time (though nowadays I'm playing the "History" version on uPlay). And of course, all those old Lucasfilm/-arts and Sierra games.

Also there was this 3D-ish platformer called Sky Roads I used to play a lot back in the day. But I haven't played that in ages. I don't even know who developed it.

Oh, and Wing Commander 3 and 4. Both really good games.

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