Favorite Classic Video Game

[ajb1978]

We all love video games!  If we didn't we wouldn't be here.  So with that in mind, out of curiosity, what is your favorite classic video game?  By classic, I mean real old school, 1990 or earlier.

For me, it's Mega Man 2.  If I have to explain why Mega Man 2 is awesome, we can't be friends lol

[ThePancakeLady]

Arcade machines- Tempest and Centipede. 

Sue me, I loved Frogger.

Kings Quest 1, and pretty much any Sierra On-Line game.
Because Roberta Williams was an idol for many of us gals, who were into computers and video games, back then.

[Doc Feral]

When it comes to really old arcade games I'd go for Ghosts 'n Goblins, Black Tiger or Bubble Bobble, but if it's old enough Street Fighter II wins.

For pc games the first Civilization holds the "oh crap birds are chirping it's morning I have to take a nap before school" record.

[MrWolf]

For me, "real old school" means late 70s to early 80s.  I spent many hours playing Space Invaders and other games on the Atari.

One of my favorite early 80s arcade games was Dragon's Lair.  I dropped many quarters into those machines.

I've never heard of Mega Man 2.  Or Mega Man, assuming it preceded Mega Man 2.  I'll have to look that up.

@ThePancakeLady, I loved Frogger, too.  And Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man and Asteroids, and a number of others.

[Guest Jeffery Simpson]

So many to list... 

My go-to is Elevator Action. It's a really fun game, simple but well designed. There was a Dexter's Lab version of it on GameBoy Advance awhile ago that I liked a lot.

 

[ThePancakeLady]

9 minutes ago, Jeffery Simpson said:

So many to list... 

My go-to is Elevator Action. It's a really fun game, simple but well designed. There was a Dexter's Lab version of it on GameBoy Advance awhile ago that I liked a lot.

 

OMG, I totally forgot about that game until you brought it up. I do believe we had that one on the NES at home, not sure if our smallish local arcade ever had it. Nice memory there, thank you!

[Ice Hole]

Lately I have been nostalgic for Crazy Climber.  It is a twin stick arcade game from the 80's and quite remarkable.

Right on!

 

[ajb1978]

Lots of games mentioned that I have fond memories of!  I do actually recall playing Crazy Climber in a Chuck E Cheese back in I think 84.  Elevator Action was  was the 2nd NES game I ever played (the first of course being Super Mario Bros.) and back then it blew my mind that I could have TWO buttons on a controller.  Until that point all I'd played was Atari and Commodore 64, with a single-button joystick.

There was a Commodore 64 game called Forbidden Forest (which spawned a great sequel, and a not-so-great third game in the 90's).  I have had thoughts that if The Long Dark were released in the 80's, it would probably be something like Forbidden Forest.  A lone archer, running back and forth through the woods, plugging random critters with arrows, and gruesome synchronized animation kills if a critter gets the best of you.

[ThePancakeLady]

Remember when... we had spinner controls, and 2 buttons, and were awed that a game had more than 1 button or 1 joystick and 1 button? 3 controls was insane!

And all of the instructions (tutorial) for the game were printed on the cabinet skin. 

But still... Trackball and one button FTW!

[stratvox]

Tempest and Centipede, I take it?

[ThePancakeLady]

3 hours ago, stratvox said:

Tempest and Centipede, I take it?

Indeed.

[ajb1978]

Nice!  I remember being particularly awed by Battle Zone, which is one of the first (if not the first) first person shooter.  Levers on the left and right side that control your left and right tank treads, forward or reverse, to control your movement and turning.  That took some retraining of the brain!

[ThePancakeLady]

4 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

Nice!  I remember being particularly awed by Battle Zone, which is one of the first (if not the first) first person shooter.  Levers on the left and right side that control your left and right tank treads, forward or reverse, to control your movement and turning.  That took some retraining of the brain!

Nice! If I remember that one, it was very basic line art style, and you literally put your face up in a "mask" or right up to the screen? I think it may have been the reason "Twin Stick Shooter" became a thing?

[stratvox]

I played a lot of Battle Zone back in the day. Yeah, green screen vector art. ISTR reading about a new video game built using that tech but at a level those old designers could only dream of.

[ThePancakeLady]

I recall seeing an article about someone who had managed to "remake" at least one, maybe more, old vector art games, adding all new colors for the art, possibly better resolutions and such, as well? At home, as a "professional hobbyist", though I think they are a #gamedev as well. But I saw that article month ago, maybe even a year ago? And con't for the life of me remember which e-zine I saw it in... and there are so many gaming/video game related e-zines, it's hard to know where to start. My Google-fu is failing me, and I haven't found it again, yet... And this is why I should never clean up the 1000+ bookmarks I have in any browser, regardless of how long it takes to scroll through them all.   xD

[ajb1978]

Ooo I saw one a few months ago where a guy built his own vector game console out of an oscilloscope, and he had some kind of Star Fox clone on there.  The Ocelot, I think it was called.

[ThePancakeLady]

4 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

Ooo I saw one a few months ago where a guy built his own vector game console out of an oscilloscope, and he had some kind of Star Fox clone on there.  The Ocelot, I think it was called.

That may be the one I am thinking of, my friend. You know. things get hazy when a million memories all get mashed together in a limited space...  

[Luciën]

Classic games... I think I must have played games from the 80's category around 1995 at secondary school. I loved this text based game where you own this ice cream stand and you'd get the weather predictions and then would have to buy ice creams accordingly. I think it was Dutch, so hardly a chance that you would have heard of it if you're not from this tiny country. Then again, i wouldn't know it's name.

If I could add something beyond 1990, I would like to name Stunts 4D as an old time favourite. The fact that you could build your own tracks, including weirder stunts if you'd leave out a bit of road. And the error where you'd be launched like a rocket and then, of course crash. Like a car. Wish I had the floppy disk that contained those tracks me and my brothers built...

[ajb1978]

Anyone remember those text-based games, where you read a description of the area you're in, then type in what you want to do.  A parser would pick your sentence apart and translate it into action.  Like... "Get sword", "Go north", "Attack troll with sword" or things like that.  The Zork trilogy is essentially the paragon of the text-based adventure game.

[Luciën]

@ajb1978 I think I already didn't have the patience for those text based games anymore. I do see the compelling element in such games. Because text based games stimulate your fantasy in a similar way a book would, it imagine it can be very immersive.

[NardoLoopa]

Zork: "Blow up raft."  Your raft explodes.  *sigh*

Favorite Ye-Old-School games:

Nethack - ASCII dungeon crawl.  The apex of "Roguelike".  Permadeath.  Best part is that in retrospect, you always realize there was a way out of the situation that caused your death, if you'd only paused for a moment to think about it.  Very similar to TLD.

The Bard's Tale - First C64 game I bought.  D&D Party Dungeon Crawl.  Might have bought the C64 just to play this game.

Sinistar - After spending hours roaming around Chuck E' Cheese's with nothing but lint in my pocket, I can still hear his voice baiting me.

 

[Soul Sojourner]

I know you said pre-90's, but one of my all-time favorites was for the SNES. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Before that, it was probably just Zelda and Dragon Warrior for me. I also thoroughly enjoyed the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Goonies.

I never really played much for arcade games, and never really went to arcades, save for a very rare occasion. That's largely a result of living rural out in the country outside of small towns with no major cities nearby for my entire life. lol Barely ever even went out to eat... I've surprised people when going somewhere for the first time, like going to KFC, or Burger King for the first time as an adult, just surprised people. lol

[codfish107]

I really liked Galaga and Super Mario World

[stratvox]

I played a lot of Battle Zone back in the day. Yeah, green screen vector art. ISTR reading about a new video game built using that tech but at a level those old designers could only dream of. Played a lot of Tempest, Missile Command, Donkey Kong... I've played Pong on the original hardware in my friend's basement back in public school. Oh, Defender, and esp. Defender on the ol' Trash-80 in the computer lab at my high school! Whoever coded that piece of software was seriously on the ball.

[greatwhitegamer]

Don't know f this counts as "classic", but for me it was Mario Kart Wii. I played that game NON STOP on the weekends and it introduced me to gaming!