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Games Entertainment

Old Games that are Still Alive and Kickin'? 85

Posted by Cliff from the they-keep-going-and-going-and-going-... dept.
Lord Grey asks: "Recently I was killing time while debugging a long-running program and decided to fire up a copy of Shanghai II -- a Mahjongg game for the Macintosh. I've had this game for years, faithfully moving it from computer to computer while keeping pace (more or less) with the newer hardware. I started wondering if there were other people out there that just hold on to those old games and, if so, just how old are they? It would be interesting to see what the oldest game that still runs on current hardware is (my Shanghai II dates from 1991). Or am I the only one that's clinging to the past?"
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Old Games that are Still Alive and Kickin'? More

Old Games that are Still Alive and Kickin'?

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  • Old games (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrunNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday September 25, 2001 @07:21PM (#2350251) Journal
    Pirates! - 1987. Covert Action - 1991(ish) Sword of the Samurai - late 80's/early 90's (see a pattern forming yet?) The various Gold Box AD&D/DragonLance/Buck Rogers games - C64 days. Leisure Suit Larry/Quest For Glory/Space Quest
    • I think you have much the same tastes as me. I loved all those old Sierra/MPS games. I think Sword of the Samurai is my all time favorite game :)
    • I find the gold box games to be virtually unplayable due to their poor interface. It was great at the time, but I can't play for hours without getting frustrated. They also demand the game manuals to complete. Good luck getting them to run under Windows.

    • Sword of the Samurai (Score:2, Informative)

      by danox ( 232017 )

      Sword of the Samurai was one of the first games I ever played, I loved it then, and I love it now. I still play it, at least once a month. There is nothing like conquering the whole of Japan to make you feel damn good about yourself. I even got it to run on win2k, I expected it not to work.

      This game is truly awesome, it has a great deal of complexity and an engaging story. You have many choises as to the way in which you acheive your goals. Even the graphics have an excellent retro feel. I would recomend this game to anyone, even today. I introduced some people in my office to it, they were dubious at first, but after a while, I found them playing instead of working. They were addicted

      By the way, it was published in 1989 by Microprose

      • What is it about this game that makes me love it so damn much 12 years after I first got it? I guess part of it is that it's so open-ended; you're never driven from one place to another, and while you can react to events that happen, you can also make a number of those events happen. There's a real sense of a living world, as the computer players form and break alliances, betray each other, etc. even if you just sit at home. There's just enough in terms of the events that lets you spin a story around it for yourself. And the action, especially the multiple-enemies fights, was great for the time and still holds up today in terms of excitement and challenge. Even 12 years later, I take a deep breath before I raid the bandit fortress to rescue a relative. Microprose's team also did a great job with the sound and graphics polish, giving an excellent "far east" flavor to the game (the "pause for loading" quotes were especially clever). The one thing about the game that I never liked was the army battle sequences - I always hated that there was no mouse support, since the keyboard is so clumsy there, and I never had much success in using any sort of "strategery" there. Still a fantastic game, overall.

        • The one thing about the game that I never liked was the army battle sequences - I always hated that there was no mouse support, since the keyboard is so clumsy there, and I never had much success in using any sort of "strategery" there. Still a fantastic game, overall

          Here is what I do, if attacking, I always use the katana approach. I take a set of footmen to each side of one of their units, but not too close. The I get the archers to fire on them, and draw them forward, in between my two teams of footmen, who then proceed to close in on their flanks. This is exceptionaly successful, and if you can pick of one team at a time in this way, you can win a battle where you are greatly outnumbered with hardly any casualties.

          I like to take this approach to win as many of the assigned battles as I can, with each victory, you get a piece of land, and if you do it over and over you end up a rich rich man.

          Man, I dig this game. It just hits the right balance and continues to interest me each time I play it.

    • I can't believe no one has mentioned Bandit Kings of Ancient China yet. That game ruled all in stunning EGA glory. Courtesy of Koei 1989. It's about the only game I play semi-regularly, and, along with Stars! and Scorched Earth, the only one I've kept on my systems over the years.

      I know everyone one must be desperate to know who I play. Wu Song, the hairy priest, who else?

  • Old Mac Games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lightman7 ( 524419 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2001 @08:15PM (#2350486)
    Milles Borne (1000 miles) which still runs on my G4 laptop. This creation date is Jan 14, 1987 - my other copy which is called 1000 Miles (same program, different name - too long ago to now why) is creation dated May 18, 1990

    I also have ColorizedGunShy 1.2.1 creation dated Dec 20, 1998, Daleks 2.0 dated May 18, 1990 (can you see a pattern? I must have done a recovery of some kind on May 18, 1990). I have a dungeons of doom dated May, 1986, but it doesn't seem to run anymore.

    WAIT - I think I just found my oldest one that still runs - StuntCopter1.2 creation dated November 7, 1986!

    So, no, you are not alone, I am a packrat too!

  • More great games (Score:3, Informative)

    by solendril ( 415296 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2001 @08:16PM (#2350491) Homepage
    Some of the best games ever are the truly dusty ones. PCGamer released a CD not too long ago with some fantastic oldies that run well on todays hardware. Here I'm thinking Wing Commander, XCom and The Secret of Monkey Island among others. I spent money for The Ultima Collection awhile back and it was the best $30 I have ever given up. Even if you have mem or hardware problems, remember that there are some cool people who have reprogrammed games to run on modern hardware (Ultima 7 for example can now run under WinME) and one can always grab MoSlow or an emulator if you're desperate.
    • Use Exult [sourceforge.net]. It basically rebuilt the engine to run on modern systems. You'll still need the data from the original Ultima7 (and SI if you want it) though.
    • For what its worth, the publisher of the Ultima series has officially released Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, as freeware. That means that it can be freely and legally downloaded off the net. A google search for Ultima IV will turn up a number of download sites.

      In addition, there are graphics and sound patches that upgrade it from 80's style ugliness to early 90's style ugliness.

  • like old games? (Score:1, Informative)

    by zonker ( 1158 )
    get into emulation! a good site to start out with is VintageGaming Network [vg-network.com]. Enjoy! =)

  • Oldest game on every PC I have is (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SNIPES! and from the days of IPX, NSNIPES.

    Yes, I install IPX on every PC I use so I can still play Nsnipes.

    (snipes is an MDA compatible game - circa IBMDOS and/or IBMDOS 2.0)

    lh_ - who cannot remeber his login id and pass.
    • I can't believe it. I haven't though about Snipes in years. In one particular place where I worked (when people actually sat in offices with walls and doors), they put all the engineers on one corridor. Somebody would step out into the hallway and call out "Snipes!" and the game would be afoot.

  • Planetfall (Score:3, Interesting)

    by matthewd ( 59896 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2001 @08:31PM (#2350559)
    I played this one last year for old times sake when I downloaded a Z-machine interpreter for Windoze... but I actually have a copy in the original packaging ("Official Documents File") for CP/M on an 8" disk. Dates back to 1983. Nice to have all the original junk from the package. I had the C-64 version when I was in high school and actually signed the Stellar Patrol Special Assignment Task Force card and carried it in my wallet. Geez, I was a loser!

    I guess I keep it because someday it may be valuable! (Or maybe my dad might someday piece together one of his old systems for his "computer museum" and we could see if the disk is still readable.)
  • it's not very old by comparision to some of the other games mentioned here, but i was just playing master of orion 2 a few minutes ago..

    any game that puts an autosave in, you _know_ it's going to be unstable. I'm hoping moo3 will be better. works ok under win98, just that damn council.lbx that comes up and crashes it now and then.. and once in a while it'll crash, and take something in the system with it, and my command.com won't work anymore.
    • Hah, I've got that beat. Just yesterday I was playing the original Master of Orion. :)
      • Me too... :))



        Actually MOO2 would be a bit better for its automation possibilities - but nevertheless MOO1 is a great classic. It doesn't really lack very much graphics, the VGA interface is ok. The technology tree could be longer...

        • Both moo's seem to suffer from that.. I stick to three or four systems, and just research the fuck out of everything.. build up some automated factories, and then through everything in research into those research lab type things.. once i see something's going to be headed my way, work on battle stations and weaponry, whlie still researching the fuck out of it.. once i have doom star and stellar converter, i go build myself a fleet of death stars and just vaporize every planet the enemy is on.. he can't rebuild when there's nothing to rebuild on.

  • Many of them are being re-released on new hardware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Controlio ( 78666 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2001 @09:50PM (#2350804)
    I about wet myself when walking through a Meijers just the other day. I walked through the video games, and found a cartridge from Namco that absolutely had to walk out of the store with me.

    Namco has released NamcoMuseum, a game cartridge for Gameboy Advance that has four of my all-time favorite legacy video games... Pole Position, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac Man, and Galaga (Galaxian too, but who cares). Combined, these four games probably took the majority of my childhood quarters. This cartridge is fantastic, because even though I used to own the consoles to run these games, as of recently I can't find anything older than my SNES. This more than makes up for my loss.

    I had purchased my GBA to play all of the Gameboy games I hadn't played in years (due to a fried gameboy), so I had legacy titles in mind from the start. I only own two GBA titles... F-Zero, and the NamcoMuseum pack... and I can honestly say I haven't touched F-Zero in weeks. Merely turning on NamcoMuseum and hearing all of those familiar sound effects and songs from years ago gave me chills. I can't put this game pack down.

    New games come and go... but those legacy titles never die. Hopefully in a few years I'll have enough dough to start collecting the actual arcade units... but multi-game packs like these will more than keep my attention for the time being.
  • My first game was Adventure [xyzzy.net] back in the 70s. Almost 30 years of gaming latter, and I still play it! Had to set it up as a green screen game.... my old age I guess.

  • The best games are the most primitive (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man give me:

    Apple ][: Wizardry, Choplifter, Sabotage, Pirate Adventure

    Amiga: TURBO (if you don't know, don't even bother asking)

    Telnet: Genocide (geno.org:2222)

    3D FPS are for pussies with no imagination like you.
  • Personally I am in love with lode runner. I have never played lode runner 3d for the n64, but I have a copy of the mad monks revenge, which I originally played under windows 95. I played and beat it under win95, and twice under win98 (I ran 98 for a long time, and that OS made it through two or three of my main machines). ANYTHING by lucasarts is fair game (day of the tentacle and indiana jones and the fate of atlantis are two that I own and have played frequently). The original warcraft and then warcraft two got more play from me than starcraft plus every FPS I ever played. I just reinstalled warcraft II on my machine yesterday, actually.

    Check out some of these truly excellent abandonware sites for some good games:

    The Underdogs [theunderdogs.org]

    BumbleB [bumbleb.org]

    The Abandonware Ring [abandonwarering.com]
    • "Now that's a name I've not heard in a long, long time." - O. Kenobi

      Man, I'd nearly forgotten about LodeRunner. I bought LodeRunner returns from Sierra, but like a great many of their products, it's been effectively orphaned. That and they messed with the gameplay a bit in that you had to get keys to unlock doors to access certain areas of the map and there were "sticky" spots where your walking speed was halved. The appeal of the original was the simplicity of play and the simplemindedness of the enemies. Man, I burned some hours on it.

      I also wasted scads of time on Wizardry (1-3) and several of the Eamon text adventures. Mmmm, might have to bust out the Apple II emulator and rerun some of these classics. Sleep is for mortals!

      For those interested in Eamon, there's a good page available at http://www.lysator.liu.se/eamon/ [lysator.liu.se].
  • Time to build a Mame Cabinet and play all of the old classics again.

    Still love Donkey Kong JR & Centiped

  • Empire (Score:2)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    I still play empire. I think that is from 1978 or even earlier. There's a Linux version now.

    • I also play empire. I'm even considering writing it in Java so that it will be portable. The Linux version is called 'vms-empire' for those that want to seek it out.

      Wayne
  • Ooooh, let's go back to the C64 days (daze?):
    • Choplifter - on the Apple ][, too (1982)
    • IMPOSSIBLE MISSION (1985 - shite on the Apple :)
    • Iridis Alpha (1986... Minter was *GOD*... this one's getting ported to the PC!)
    • Citadel (1989)

    Yes, I still fire up my '83 beige box (or one of my creamy C128Ds) to play games such as these...

  • Current, and much older... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @12:07AM (#2351229)
    I've kept around my Master of Orion game. I still love it. (And MOO3 is to be released soon!)

    I think, however, the "oldest game" list is best satisfied by retrocomputing. Mind you, I have some Atari home computers in my closet, with cartridges and software on disk/tape.

    I've also played them, now and then, on my Atari home computer emulator. I've also used the serial port on my PC to emulate an Atari disk drive (!) and played some favorites on a hybrid Atari/PC combo.

    And even in another form, classic arcade games sort of fit the bill. But my oldest ones are all from 1981: Gorf, Pac-Man, Wizard of Wor, Zaxxon. Still running on original hardware and still quite playable.

    Yeah. Those classics are staying around for as long as they generations who played them are still on the earth. And probably just a little bit longer.

    I'm just happy that I don't collect rotary phones. Heck, kids today probably don't even have any idea how to use them! ;)
  • ... to the PC sometimes.

    I could play Tempest and Omega Race for days... i still have fantasies of finding the old cabinet games someday. And I loved Battlezone...
    • I believe Coin Op Warehouse [coinopwarehouse.com] here in northern Virginia had a Tempest cabinet in stock (at least the last time I was there a few weeks ago).

      Hope this doesn't sound like an ad for them. I don't work for 'em, but I did buy a pinball machine there, and they let me skulk around the showroom playing classic pinball / video games for free during my lunch hour :) Great guys.

  • C64 Cartridges (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lish ( 95509 )
    Still occasionally play the old classics on the Commodore 64...PacMan, Donkey Kong, QBert, etc. Sometimes, the simple games are still the best. The clunky joystick reminds me of how far we've come with peripherals. We had Wheel of Fortune too on disk, but it was broken such that you could never get to the final round, it just hung. Always wondered if the programmers just hadn't finished it.

    The oldest PC game I've got floating around is probably Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (DOS), my parents still have it for my brother. Runs too fast even on a slow pentium tho so you can't see the animations (it used to be on an old IBM 286).

    • > The clunky joystick reminds me of how far we've come with peripherals.

      As someone who grew up with the C64 / Atari 2600 joystick, I have yet to find anything better. I'm right handed, so I like to control direction with my right hand. Why has nearly every joystick or joypad since that time delegated directional control to the left hand?

      (Yes, before someone suggests it, I do own a first-generation Gravis gamepad which has a "left-handed" mode that allows you to use your right hand for directional control.)

      • I've got to put in a vote here for the Slik Stik [geocities.com]. (I think by SunCom). That little sucker had the best control - mostly due to the tactile response when you moved the stick in a given direction. Also, you didn't grip the stick - just the ball at the top, which improved your precision. They weren't the sturdiest things ever, lasting maybe 2-3 years of heavy use before the button started to get unresponsive, but they were only like $6.95 so it wasn't a big deal to get another one. I always hated using Apple and IBM joysticks that were humongous, heavy, expensive, and felt like you needed to move them a foot to get them to respond. That sort of analog control is only useful for simulator games - when I'm running from the red ghost in Pac-Man, I don't want to be bothered with hauling the stick around, I need immediate responsiveness!
  • I used to play those Mahjongg games on my Spectrum+ and that must have been something like 88/89. The game was called Tai Pei, IIRC, and I got it from a cover tape from a magazine.

    I used to spend hours on that game; very simple, but a lot of fun (somewhat like Tetris)! These days, I have free replacements in Gnome and KDE, although I prefer KDE's version, just for the graphics. I find it harder to differentiate the tiles under Gnome.

  • Digger! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dust Puppy ( 63916 )
    Check out Windmill Software's Digger (http://www.digger.org). It didn't work on modern PCs, but I reverse-engineered and recompiled it so now it does. Source is available, as are *nix versions.
    • Of course "Digger" is just a complete knock-off (not just "inspired by") of the circa 1982 arcade game Mr. Do.
      • That's what I thought, too, when I discovered Mr Do. But Windmill claim (I don't know if it's true or not) that they were the first to come up with the concept, and the authors of Dig-dug and Mr Do stole the idea after a trade show.
  • I have an old Osborne portable (meaning it's the size of a large suitcase) with 2 8" drives, a 3" screen and 1k of RAM - and I still play Alien Attack on it. Dates from 1976 as far as I can tell, and I have a stack of Dragon games I play on my Emulator - Android Attack, Cuthbert in The Mines, Donkey Kong, Cuthbert goes Skiing, Gridrunner (mmm Gridrunner!!!!) and I had all of these by 1984 so they are at least that old.
    Wonderful use for a fast PC, eh? Install MAME and Speccy & Tandy emulators and play better games than most of the junk around today.

    Admittedly I play a lot of Unreal Tournament too!
  • Dude the best games by far:
    Mean Streets (4 5 1/4 disks)
    F-19 Strike Fighter

    Mean Streets was fun, played that for ages.
  • I'd love to get Novalogic's Comanche going again. But whenever I try it on a modern PC it isn't interested. ;-(

    /biglig scans the web

    Comanche 4 (4?!?) out next month, eh? Looks pretty good too. Previews suggest Commanche 2 & 3 were a bit too like a flight sim for me, so perhaps I'd better wait.

    Ah, well, if I try and save my money I'll only end up buying an iPaq. ;-)
  • It's not an action game, but the original incarnation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set has been handed down in our family. It originally came on 5 1/4" diskettes. I recall re-installing it on our first '386, which had drives of both sizes. When the time came to upgrade that one, I carefully copied it to 3 1/4" floppies, and it duly reinstalled. It's now on its fifth computer. I know it's available now on the Web, but we like our version--carefully handed down like a treasured sourdough culture.

    The game I'd really like to get installed is a really obscure little number called Marco Polo. I haven't figured out how to get it going with the current sound card and o/s, but I haven't thought about it too hard either. Maybe I'll dust it off.

    (We also have numerous versions of "Oregon Trail" from when our kids were younger--some for PC, some for Mac. Even the oldest can still be made to work.)

  • But only when it's in a big-ass heavy box (read: stand-up) like mine :)

    You can come play it, if you want.

  • Vie killed it in 1997 and it has had 3 major revisions coded by fans of it since then. The latest is Continuum [sscouncil.net]

    Awesome online multiplayer space fighter game.

  • They all still Run on my Dual P3-600, these are positively ancient...I wonder if they still run on the Mainframes they spang from. Also Zork 0,1,2 Etc, and Karteka, wierd watching a modern Machine boot from a 5 1/2 Floppy with the OS and the game on the disk!

  • I'm surprised that I haven't seen more Infocom games -- Zork 1-3, Witness, Sorcerer, etc. I just fired up Lurking Horror a few weeks ago. One thing about those old text-based games -- they scale pretty well to whatever hardware you run them on!
  • Man I have a bunch.

    Sword of the Samurai as many others here seem to have.
    Master of Magic and Master of Orion. Love those games.
    X-Com.
    The Dark Heart of Uukrul. Lemme tell you, that is probably the best $30 I've ever paid for a game, and that was back in 1988. It's from Broderbund, RPG game.
    All the Bard's Tale games.
    Most of the Wizardry. Especially Crusaders of the Dark Savant.
    And I still have Sierra's first Quest for Glory in the box that is entitled "Hero's Quest."

    A bunch of others that I can't recall offhand, but those rule. Man, those were the good old days.

  • Stunts/4D Racing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by scarl ( 28358 )
    Still run it. Still build new, harder, better tracks with the track editor. The most 'deadly' track so far I have only managed to actually finish (>8minutes) twice. And the computer player crashes in the first jump...it's wicked.
  • I have to say Wasteland was on of my Favorites of the earily 90's.. (C=64 and IBM PC.. dont know about Apples/Macs)

    It was psuedo-unoffically reborne in alot of peoples hearts as the very good 'FallOut' series.. (although I dont think any offical linkage between the 2 exist).

    Who can forget Karatica (sp!).. old C=64/Apple ][ side-scroller where all you did was Kick and Punch.. very nice..
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • An old EGA shareware game by William Soleau with various files dated between '90 and '92. A simplified version of Risk with a pretty dumb AI, it has entertained me for ages. I've played probably 2500 games, achieving nearly 40% wins at 7 difficulty, 3 armies setting (if that means anything to anyone else I'd be amazed).
  • Never had a problem running Jill of the Jungle or
    the Keen episodes. Granted they're not quite as old (*early* nineties). And those will give some
    really great gameplay. And of course Paganitzu.
  • I still run Elite [clara.net] on the Horizon BBC emulator [demon.co.uk] (oops - that page is now dead)
  • I'm kinda suprised to not see it mentioned already, so does anyone remember Electronic Art's two games, Starflight, and SF2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula? They were the two that sucked the greatest portion of my childhood away. (If for nothing else, the first game is great for the moment of sick horror when you realize that Endurium, which you've been using to power spaceships for centuries, is actually a race of crystalline entities that just haven't been able to communicate)

    Another that I used to play like there was no tomorrow was Star Saga, though they were a bitch, since all the text of the games was in a stack of booklets that came with the disks.
  • http://www.coolgamez.de.tf/ Have much fun with "prince of persia" aso
  • My personal favorite is Wolfenstein 3D. not that old but still a great game. I got it running on my IBM PS/2 still.

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