Hazily Remembered Games With Only the Vaguest Notion of What They Were

OMG! I completely forgot about Dream House. So great!

The passage of time shouldn't amaze me, but it does; the animations are so rudimentary, so basic, but I remember being incredibly amazed by them at the time.

My sister and I played quite a bit of Dream House and there was ONE TIME we managed to make it into the secret attic. We had no idea how we did it and spent entirely too much time after that trying to do it again, but we weren't even sure which house it was! But now I know, thanks to YouTube!

Wow I remember that game it has been quite a bit.

jrralls wrote:

The passage of time shouldn't amaze me, but it does; the animations are so rudimentary, so basic, but I remember being incredibly amazed by them at the time.

I've never played it, but I know games of the era and I'm impressed. That's a very ambitious game for the technology.

Here's mine: I think this was an SNES game, but could have been on Genesis. It's your standard 2D platformer where you play as an anthropomorphic feline-type. I remember jumping from car to car on a highway in one of the earlier levels, then you end up in some sort of haunted house? I've looked around online but haven't been able to find it. I'm sure it would be underwhelming if I ever tracked it down, but I've been wondering what it is for so long.

Doesn't ring a bell for me, but a quick search suggests at least one possibility: there was a series of platformers about Bubsy the Bobcat. I don't know if any of them had a highway level or haunted house, though. (I'm assuming it wasn't a more obvious tie-in to a major character like the Pink Panther or Garfield.)

Doesn't sound like Bubsy.

Flipping through Mobygames' list of platformers, I note several things: first, there's only a couple hundred or so on each of those two consoles. Second, a lot of those are really crappy tie-in games. Third, a ridiculous number have the same plot as Mario: someone gets kidnapped and the possum/7-up logo/robot/surfer has to rescue them by jumping.

There was an unreleased SNES game about Bill Clinton's cat:IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Socks_Rocks_the_Hill.jpg)IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Socks_the_cat_snes_screenshot.png)
Has Richard Nixon, but I don't think that's what was meant by 'haunted house.'

Rocky Rodent has both cars and a haunted house:
IMAGE(https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-10DMfpaejwk/TwKNfj-sGTI/AAAAAAAAMVs/qylj1wO69Mg/s1600/Rocky_Rodent_%2528SNES%2529_15.png)
IMAGE(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q-3dYPHlJEs/TwKZH0koXjI/AAAAAAAAMWk/GOpMiqTvrCE/s1600/Rocky_Rodent_%2528SNES%2529_23.png)IMAGE(https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xCvNuyvV-dA/TwKZOLOVFYI/AAAAAAAAMXs/rhKoi75CQGM/s1600/Rocky_Rodent_%2528SNES%2529_32.png)

But isn't a cat. Matches the description otherwise, though.

Rocky Rodent! Quick work, Gremlin! Man, I could have sworn it was a cat. That explains why I was never able to find it. Now to watch a gameplay video and disappoint my childhood memory.

OK, this one is my brother's memory, not mine, so I'm even more vague on the details:

A single-player 2d sidescrolling platformer, with procedurally generated weapons that you lost if you replaced them with a new weapon. Might just have been random power-ups, not full weapons.

Was on the PC, sometime pre-2007. Was likely an indie game, or otherwise downloadable.

I have read through all the posts and you guys amaze me finding so many lost treasures!

Hope you can fill some gaps in my memory as well.

The first game I still remember was a text adventure. It started with you having been dropped out of a plane with your parachute stuck in the trees. You had to get free first and I never got any further. It helped me learn some English back then, trying all kind of words/items/actions - but because I know so little, I doubt anyone will recognise this.

The second one I played till the "endboss". The daughter of a governor is kidnapped by a pirate and you must either free her by force or pay for her freedom. During the game you must trade alot to get the money to free her and sometimes between ports you must fight pirates. I think it was on an Atari homecomputer, might have been on a tape instead of a floppy. The graphics were pretty basic, but the thrill of having to fill your canons with powder and canonballs and then shoot at that ship that was moving from left to right lower and lower on your screen (meaning closer and closer) was an awful lot of fun. I never could defeat the pirate though

The last one is a shareware game. A mafia game. I dont remember alot but it had little guys walking around with baseballbats hitting (not sure if they were hitting people or were conquering stuff), speak easies, places you could take over and upgrade, expanding your "empire". It is the only shareware game we tried to buy, but the company was already out of business I think. I tried other mafia games later, but all of those were much more complicated. I think this can be set around 1992-1995 as I remember playing it in my house of that time.

A few games I do remember:
- One Must Fall - Finished it several times. Retried it later but the speed of the robots was adjusted to the speed of my pc
- Diaspora (from Altitude) with a few of their clones - font memories of the community (both the bad and the good ;))
- Realms of Kaos (played that on 9/11 - still remember how the community reacted from a single mentioning to all out maddnass)

Ok I have one that has been bugging me for a while. I was playing it on a PC around 1996 or 1997.

It was an 8-bit space exploration game that I remember being pretty brutally difficult, top down or isometric view with both flying in space and landing on planets.

The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind though is the character creation. You randomly generated your characters life year by year as a military career. There was a sort of gambling element where each additional year you rolled you had a chance to get better stats, but you also had a chance for the character to die and have to start over at the beginning of character creation.

thrawn82 wrote:

The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind though is the character creation. You randomly generated your characters life year by year as a military career. There was a sort of gambling element where each additional year you rolled you had a chance to get better stats, but you also had a chance for the character to die and have to start over at the beginning of character creation.

Sounds like a game based on the Traveller rules. MegaTraveller? MetaTraveller 2?

SparrowOne wrote:

The second one I played till the "endboss". The daughter of a governor is kidnapped by a pirate and you must either free her by force or pay for her freedom. During the game you must trade alot to get the money to free her and sometimes between ports you must fight pirates. I think it was on an Atari homecomputer, might have been on a tape instead of a floppy. The graphics were pretty basic, but the thrill of having to fill your canons with powder and canonballs and then shoot at that ship that was moving from left to right lower and lower on your screen (meaning closer and closer) was an awful lot of fun. I never could defeat the pirate though :(

Pirates of the Barbary Coast?
IMAGE(http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_2.gif)
IMAGE(http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_5.gif)
IMAGE(http://gury.atari8.info/img/p/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_5.png)
IMAGE(http://gury.atari8.info/img/p/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_10.png)

Atari ST version:
IMAGE(http://www.atarimania.com/st/screens/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_starsoft_development_laboratories.gif)
IMAGE(http://www.atarimania.com/st/screens/pirates_of_the_barbary_coast_starsoft_development_laboratories_4.gif)

CGA PC version

Gremlin wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind though is the character creation. You randomly generated your characters life year by year as a military career. There was a sort of gambling element where each additional year you rolled you had a chance to get better stats, but you also had a chance for the character to die and have to start over at the beginning of character creation.

Sounds like a game based on the Traveller rules. MegaTraveller? MetaTraveller 2?

Wow Thank you!! It was definitely MegaTraveller, those screenshots positively explode in my memory.

edit: spelling is hard.

Gremlin wrote:
SparrowOne wrote:

The second one I played till the "endboss". The daughter of a governor is kidnapped by a pirate and you must either free her by force or pay for her freedom. During the game you must trade alot to get the money to free her and sometimes between ports you must fight pirates. I think it was on an Atari homecomputer, might have been on a tape instead of a floppy. The graphics were pretty basic, but the thrill of having to fill your canons with powder and canonballs and then shoot at that ship that was moving from left to right lower and lower on your screen (meaning closer and closer) was an awful lot of fun. I never could defeat the pirate though :(

Pirates of the Barbary Coast?

Amazing that you could find it that fast! Thank you

I was curious about the parachute one and I think it might be this game: Espionage Island

At least, it's the only thing that came up when searching for an adventure game that starts off with getting a parachute stuck in a tree.

Demyx wrote:

I was curious about the parachute one and I think it might be this game: Espionage Island

At least, it's the only thing that came up when searching for an adventure game that starts off with getting a parachute stuck in a tree.

Nice try, but no, this doesnt seem to be it :(. This one starts in the plane and is on a console I never owned. My game was on an Atari homecomputer (I think ST - not sure though) and started dangling in the tree. I know it is not much to go on, so it might be a mission impossible. Thanks for trying though.

SparrowOne wrote:
Demyx wrote:

I was curious about the parachute one and I think it might be this game: Espionage Island

At least, it's the only thing that came up when searching for an adventure game that starts off with getting a parachute stuck in a tree.

Nice try, but no, this doesnt seem to be it :(. This one starts in the plane and is on a console I never owned. My game was on an Atari homecomputer (I think ST - not sure though) and started dangling in the tree. I know it is not much to go on, so it might be a mission impossible. Thanks for trying though.

I think it's Emerald Isle

IMAGE(http://gazettereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/mission-impossible-ethan-hunt.jpg)

Chairman_Mao wrote:
SparrowOne wrote:
Demyx wrote:

I was curious about the parachute one and I think it might be this game: Espionage Island

At least, it's the only thing that came up when searching for an adventure game that starts off with getting a parachute stuck in a tree.

Nice try, but no, this doesnt seem to be it :(. This one starts in the plane and is on a console I never owned. My game was on an Atari homecomputer (I think ST - not sure though) and started dangling in the tree. I know it is not much to go on, so it might be a mission impossible. Thanks for trying though.

I think it's Emerald Isle

IMAGE(http://gazettereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/mission-impossible-ethan-hunt.jpg)

Yes yes yes!!!

Now only to figure out what I missed back then - how to do the next step lol.

Thank you very much.

SparrowOne wrote:

Now only to figure out what I missed back then - how to do the next step lol.

out of topic for this threat, but can someone explain how I now start the game? I downloaded the file, can find it in the command prompt, but the name is Emerald Isle.com. which is not recognised by windows. I renamed it to Emerald.com, but then I got the message it is not compatible with my 64 bits version of windows.

Directly starting it is prevented by my antivirus programm.

You would surely need an emulator for the model of atari that it ran on

I think it needs a 400/800 emulator.

That worked like a charm! It is fun, exactly as I (didnt) remember: me trying to free myself and vultures finding and killing me in 3 tries!

SparrowOne wrote:

That worked like a charm! It is fun, exactly as I (didnt) remember: me trying to free myself and vultures finding and killing me in 3 tries!

oh my... I figured it out!!!! Open parachute did the trick. With me trying to get a knife to cut the parachute, pulling a chord or other difficult stuff.... too simple lol.

Thank you all!

Not so much old, but the podcast this week reminded me of a game I wanted to check out.

It was a fire fighting game, and it was top-down. I remember there were islands (maybe?) with different elevations, and you had to stop the fire spreading. I think it used a similar mechanic to Creeper World, where the geography really mattered.

I think it may have been available on mobile devices as well as Steam. I remember bright green and bright blue in most of the screenshots.

Any guesses?

A text adventure game (with pictures) where you played a parody world of Me Roger’s Neighborhood?