What's your favourite "old skool" game?

[Andara Bledin]

Nowadays you can probably find the answers to the questions in a list online or something.

Back then you could usually find the list on IRC or a BBS somewhere. Not much has changed, really.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

You had Oregan Trail... well, we had Granny's Garden to play at school. -.-

Prepare to be fascinated.

XXD

[lordlundar]

You know someone made a hacked version of the game where you can shoot the dog.

Yup, and the arcade version had that by default.

[blas87]

Many, many hours were spent trying to beat Mario, Mario 2, and 3 without cheats. But we were never able to do so without.

Die Hard was also fun.
Paperboy is impossible after Thursday.

[Andara Bledin]

I used to love Paperboy at the arcade. I couldn't do squat with it when I tried the crappy PC port back in pre-Windows days. For some reason, it came with the junky little computer my middle aunt had way back in 1988. That machine also came with an even worse port of Dragon's Lair. >_<

^-.-^

[MaggieTheCat]

How did I miss this thread? I guess it's not that old.

Let's see. I know we had an Intellivision but I didn't play it much myself since I was so little. I do remember my brothers and my dad playing the Dungeons and Dragons game and Nightstalker. Nightstalker was scary as shit when you're 2 years old. That heartbeat noise? And those robot things that want to murderize you? Scary to a 2 year old.

I guess the NES was the first system I really started playing. I like a lot of NES games, but there is one game that ranks far above all the others: The original Ninja Gaiden. I've logged easily over 500 hours into that game (despite the fact that it only takes about 15 minutes to beat it without dying or continuing.) Of course there are the classics, Zelda, Final Fantasy, the Mario games (especially 3), Dragon Quest (originally Dragon Warrior) 1-4, all the Megaman games, but the original Ninja Gaiden is still one of my favorite games ever and I still play it regularly (on the Wii now) when I get bored.

SNES is and always will be my favorite system. Final Fantasy 4j/2a is my favorite game of all time, ever. FF 6j/3a is not far behind, along with Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire I and II, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, the Megaman X series, the Lufia games, The Lost Vikings, Ogre Battle...I'm sure there are more. I played a lot of games on the SNES.

I didn't play as much of the Sega Genesis, but the Shining Force series and Phantasy Star series are both excellent and among my favorite from that era.

If we're going as far forward as the original Playstation, there's the Megaman Legends games (fuck you Capcom for cancelling MML3), Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Breath of Fire III, Parasite Eve...again, probably more than I'm forgetting. I had a lot of PS1 games too.

I'm definitely an old school gamer. I'd rather replay an old SNES game than play most of the new games that are coming out. There have been a few recently that I've watched my husband play that I really enjoyed (Nier is breathtaking, and Catherine is just twistedly fun) but most of the time, give me Ninja Gaiden or one of the SNES era RPGs.

[Gravekeeper]

Oh man, Carmen Santiago, that bitch <shakes fist>. When I was a kid there were a couple years where we lived a fair ways out of town so the school bus started rather early and dropped me off at school like half an hour before class even started. So the teacher just let me play Where in The World and Where In Time was Carmen Santiago on the classroom C64. >.>

God I played those so much <sob>

I'm going to concur with Maggie. It was the NES that made me a gamer, but it was the SNES that was the pinnacle of the gaming industry hey day.

On that topic, here's a new question: What game sold you on a console and what game was the moment you realised you had something awesome on your hands? IE, what game did you see at the mall or a friends place that made you throw that console on your Christmas list and after you got it, what game made you think it was the greatest damn thing in the world?

For me, it was


NES:
Sold Me:
Mario Bros of course. This mesmerizing me as a kid when I first saw it at the mall.

High Point:
Legend of Zelda. When I first got that for Christmas and unwrapped that gold cartridge? Holy shit.



SNES: - Very tough call. Serious hours were lost here.
Sold Me:
Gotta give to Mario again the fat bastard.

High Point:
The opening sequence of Final Fantasy 3/6 ( The "mecha walking in the snow" credits roll ) was the moment I knew I was onto something truly awesome.



N64:
Sold Me:
Dammit, Mario.

High Point:
Ocarina of Time. No contest. Any gamer alive in the 90s can hum at least one Ocarina tune from memory. Right this second. Do it.


PSX:
Sold Me:
Resident Evil. First time a game had really scared me. Something graphics up to that point hadn't managed to accomplish.

High Point:
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. AKA Metroidvania. Great game, fantastic music, delicious Metroidness.


GB Colour:
Sold Me:
Much as it shames me to admit. God damn Tetris. Like crack in your pocket.

High Point:
Just for more shame. Pokemon.


GBA:
Sold Me:
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. Castlevania I could bring on the Skytrain? Fark yes.

High Point:
Gotta hand it to Metroid: Zero Mission.


3DS:
Sold Me:
Portable Mario 64? Yes, please.

High Point:
Elite Beat Agents. So good I hunted down the two Japanese versions ( Ouendan 1 & 2 ) as imports just to get moar.



PC:
Sold Me:
Command & Conquer. Up until then I'd seen Wolfenstein, Doom, etc and while they were cool. They weren't "Get your mom to drop $1400" cool. Then C&C hit and that kick ass music in the first level. Awesomeness.

High Point:
Countless at this point since its still around as a platform. But looking back at its haydays? There were two things I played the hell out of: Diablo and C&C: Red Alert. Then Quake hit and it was pretty holy fark.

[Lachrymose]

Ocarina of Time. No contest. Any gamer alive in the 90s can hum at least one Ocarina tune from memory. Right this second. Do it.

Haha...I did the first one that came to my mind and it was the Song of Time, which kind of surprises me. I'd think it to be Saria's song or something...hmmm...

Maybe because it spans multiple games....

Edit: Nevermind. I guess they all kind of do.

[blas87]

I almost forgot...Battle Toads.

Never got very far with that one. But it was fun trying.

[Gravekeeper]

I almost forgot...Battle Toads.

Never got very far with that one. But it was fun trying.

Battletoads was pretty unforgiving. Especially those god damn racing levels. Playing it with a friend was even worse because of the friendly fire.

[Andara Bledin]

Any gamer alive in the 90s can hum at least one Ocarina tune from memory. Right this second. Do it.

I've never actually played any Zelda game beyond the first, and I played that when it was new. I played about 15 minutes into Ocarina before I got distracted and never went back.

Much as it shames me to admit. God damn Tetris. Like crack in your pocket.

Everybody in my family has been addicted to Tetris at some point. Every. single. one.

In my case, I actually made money (well, dealer dollars, but as good as money) from playing *tris tournaments.

As for the platforms, I can't say that I was sold on any of them prior to the XBox 360, as I never bought any of the ones that came before, and none of them were bought for me. The Atari 2600, the NES, the SNES, the Gameboys (we went through half a dozen of the things), the PS1 etc were all bought by some combination of my mother and my youngest aunt. The rest were bought by my brother.

By that point, however, I was deeply into computer games.
Sold: Rogue
I remember hanging with my computer geek friends in the high school library on one of the two computers there, watching them play this and thinking it was the most awesome thing ever. This was back in 1985/6 or so, not long after it had been ported from UNIX to PC.

High Point: ... where to begin? MMOs, would have to be my ultimate love. Though I keep returning to Rogue (yes, I still play the original) and many of it's descendants (Diablo, Din's Curse, Torchlight, Dungeons of Dredmor etc). It's hard to resist a good, or even mediocre, dungeon crawl.

^-.-^

[Gravekeeper]

Everybody in my family has been addicted to Tetris at some point. Every. single. one.

The original Tetris on the NES was the first time I realised, as a kid, that grown ups liked video games too. >.>

High Point: ... where to begin? MMOs, would have to be my ultimate love.

<twitch> I like the idea of MMOs, but hate MMOs, because no one has done one 100% right yet. Drives me insane. Current hopes are on Guild Wars 2. TOR looks awful.

[Rapscallion]

Not keen on what I've seen of GW2 - sort of more intense graphics and more ... cluttered. GW1 still looks pretty good, graphically, but the gameplay is now limited.

Been pratting around with AoEonline of late. RTS, and while there are many things wrong there are many things done right.

Rapscallion

[Salted Grump]

Current hopes are on Guild Wars 2. TOR looks awful.

TOR looks like the XB version of KOTOR, only with more people hopping around spamming 'Gief Republic Cred for neked dance on Mailbox?'

Also, who wants to bet that GW2's banning system will once again make use of Dhuum, God of Eternal Death, as their Banhammer?

[Gravekeeper]

TOR looks like the XB version of KOTOR, only with more people hopping around spamming 'Gief Republic Cred for neked dance on Mailbox?'

TOR looks like a WoW mod with worse animation. It's so by the numbers looking that its kind of embarrassing from a studio like Bioware. But its developed by Bioware Austin, which was founded just to develop TOR and isn't led by the same two dudes as Bioware Edmonton/Montreal. So its not being developed by the ME/DA crew whose work we're more familiar with.

The more I saw of it the less and less I was looking forward too it. Now I just view it with total apathy. I frankly would have perferred KOTOR 3 to TOR.