What old games have you dredged up recently and why?

This thread, because I miss the conversation. 10 years since the last post makes me sad.

The old game I've dredged up recently is King of a Dragon Pass because its sequel Six Ages was upcoming and is now released. Catch-all.

Panzer general 2 and Panzer corps. I really love the simplicity and the deeper strategy available in the games.

All the swirling controversy about Star Control 3 gave me a hankering for Star Control 2: Ur-Quan Masters. I'd love just an HD remake of SC2, although smooth turning in combat would require significant tweaking.

I don't know if I'd call it old, but I finished Assassin's Creed Origins, and remembered I'd never finished Unity, so I downloaded and installed that. Man, that is still a beautiful game. I think it arguably looks better than Origins, and undoubtedly has a more complicated combat model. That said, I have no idea what's going on with the story, which is why I originally dropped it.

Getting an urge to load up Rise of Legends. Now I just hope it runs well on Win 7! The art direction and unit diversity are excellent!

Don't know if this counts cause I haven't acted on this yet, but I've been having a serious craving for some Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages recently. I've played those games more times than I can count at this stage.

Icewind Dale 2
Nox (for the brief moment I could bear it) - great game for its time but those mid 90's interfaces...
Skyforge (quit about 2 months ago after playing for a couple weeks)
Mechcommander 2 (halfway through another play through)
Dark Sun (oddly a lot easier to play the first than the sequel despite a lot of improvements)

fangblackbone wrote:

Icewind Dale 2
Nox (for the brief moment I could bear it) - great game for its time but those mid 90's interfaces...
Skyforge (quit about 2 months ago after playing for a couple weeks)
Mechcommander 2 (halfway through another play through)
Dark Sun (oddly a lot easier to play the first than the sequel despite a lot of improvements)

Man, I really need to pick up mech warrior 2 again. Great game through and through.

Eye of the Beholder on my Amiga 500. I've since put the Amiga back on the shelf but had fun with it all the same. If I had the space I'd leave it set up all the time.

I also just recently bought the first two Baldur's Gate games when they were like $5 but haven't fired them up yet. I plan to get into a multiplayer game with my 25-year-old son.

Plain Jane Rome: Total War, again. Playing as the Germans. I didn't realize their spearmen could run in phalanx. Probably because I rarely fought them, as the Gauls usually wiped them off the map. Having fun. Just took the Julii home towns, and pushing in on to sack the F out of Rome in about 3-5 more turns.

With the new edition of Vampire coming out, I have a strong urge to kick off another play through of Bloodlines.

parallaxview wrote:

With the new edition of Vampire coming out, I have a strong urge to kick off another play through of Bloodlines.

Me too. I’ve read the reviews of 5th edition. They’re all over the place, but that’s to be expected. I was hoping for more backstory with what happened since the ‘final nights’ as a lead-in, just to make it a little less sandbox-ish but well see. Won’t stop me from trying it out and likely adding a lot of house rules to accomodate.

Sid Meier's Colonization (the original), inspired by watching Ken Burns Presents: The West.

Installed the original Tomb Raider (1996?) on my PC again, spent an hour getting it to look pretty and work with my controller. I played a bit of it yesterday, and it was pretty much what I thought it was going to be. I have some nostalgia for it, so I can tolerate the jankiness and enjoy it to a certain level, but that game should not be played by anyone who has not played it before.

Also thinking of replaying Xenogears (1998) (with a cheat code to speed up the text).

I'm on a weird old games kick these days for some reason.

fangblackbone wrote:

Icewind Dale 2
Nox (for the brief moment I could bear it) - great game for its time but those mid 90's interfaces...
Skyforge (quit about 2 months ago after playing for a couple weeks)
Mechcommander 2 (halfway through another play through)
Dark Sun (oddly a lot easier to play the first than the sequel despite a lot of improvements)

I loved the multiplayer in Nox back then!

PeterS wrote:

Sid Meier's Colonization (the original), inspired by watching Ken Burns Presents: The West.

Man, the colors in that game are so beautiful, it's timeless.

It seems I have been playing nothing but old games as of late.

I got the Pool of Radiance Gold Box series off GOG and finished those a while back.

I also started Betrayal at Krondor, but that playthrough is currently on hold.

And the rereleases of Day of the Tentacle and Dragon Quest 8 (would those count for this thread?)

Path to the Greengrocer wrote:

It seems I have been playing nothing but old games as of late.

I got the Pool of Radiance Gold Box series off GOG and finished those a while back.

I also started Betrayal at Krondor, but that playthrough is currently on hold.

And the rereleases of Day of the Tentacle and Dragon Quest 8 (would those count for this thread?)

Those gold box games were something for sure. I recently finished champions of Krynn and then got my butt whipped around in death knights of krynn and had to put it away for a bit.

I've been playing Wizardry 6 recently. It's a fairly brutal and often silly old game (and ugly even when it was new), but I get some enjoyment from the old-school exploration, combat and mapping. Which is fine, but... I looked back at the previous page, just to see what people were talking about when the thread was last active, and immediately noticed the following post:

Myself, *over ten years ago* wrote:

My problem is that I never seem to get around to playing new games. I've been playing a lot of Fire Emblem lately, and I had been replaying Fallout 2, but I got sidetracked and haven't touched it recently, leaving it in limbo like my third PS:Torment game. I also really need to get around to playing through Longest Journey (and then Dreamfall I suppose).

Let's see... I'm also a little into a new game of Earthbound, one of my flatmates was demonstrating Battle Isle 3 to me, and I really want to replay Baldur's Gate for the seventy-millionth time using BGTutu (and so the BG2 engine) as, yes... a sorceror... that'll be a change from playing a wizard like usual. Yep, totally different (I have a strange affliction in RPGs where I just replay refinements of the same preferred character type, rather than actually different things for some reason).

Oh, and I've recently had a compulsion to replay Wizardry 6 -- because then, if I buy Wizardry 8 and dig up my copy of 7, I can play across the entire trilogy with the same party in a single epic adventure, which my faerie ninja tells me would be awesome.

Did I mention I'm at an advanced stage in my PhD, and so don't technically have any actual free time? I'm so screwed [holds head in hands].

Almost nothing has changed. Pretty much everything in that post still applies today. Oh dear.

Ravanon wrote:

Almost nothing has changed. Pretty much everything in that post still applies today. Oh dear.

How's the PhD going?

Well I went on a cheap binge:
Thunderscape
Might and Magic 1-6

I remember hating 6 because they changed to these god awful generic rendered CG graphics and painted over stock video instead of hand drawn cartoon of 3-5. But upon revisit I am expecting cheese graphics so that has little effect. (oh and they are so bad)

The game has real promise. The realtime with turned based pause really works. Spell casting needs to be streamlines a bit because what should take 1 click or a hotkey takes 3-4 clicks. But at least it doesn't take a half dozen mash of hotkeys and clicks like some of its contemporaries.

bobbywatson wrote:

Installed the original Tomb Raider (1996?) on my PC again, spent an hour getting it to look pretty and work with my controller. I played a bit of it yesterday, and it was pretty much what I thought it was going to be. I have some nostalgia for it, so I can tolerate the jankiness and enjoy it to a certain level, but that game should not be played by anyone who has not played it before.

Yeah, I tried to play that when the remake of it was about to come out (Anniversary) and after the first level decided to stick with the remake so that my memory wasn't tainted too much.

I have Zeus: Master of Olympus installed on my PC. When I was in Athens, my passport was damaged slightly. There was a chance I would be stranded in Greece for a week. I made a promise if I got home without incident I would honor Zeus and install his titular game on my PC and play it.

Don't look at me like that, it worked. I got home and it's a small sacrifice for my hard drive.

Stevintendo wrote:

How's the PhD going? :)

That I managed to finish :).

Ravanon wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

How's the PhD going? :)

That I managed to finish :).

Congratulations! I was a little worried that I shouldn't have asked that question.

Plants vs zombies. Because my 7 year old saw it know my Steam list and wanted to know what it was. It holds up.

Path to the Greengrocer wrote:

It seems I have been playing nothing but old games as of late.

I got the Pool of Radiance Gold Box series off GOG and finished those a while back.

I also started Betrayal at Krondor, but that playthrough is currently on hold.

And the rereleases of Day of the Tentacle and Dragon Quest 8 (would those count for this thread?)

The Goldbox games are great. I am working through them again, off and on (mostly off for the last couple of months). I want to do something I did not do back in the day: take a party through all 4 of the games + Hillsfar. Currently I am in Hillsfar. It does not hold up that well as you might expect but I am stubborn and not too bright and so will continue to bash my head against the minigames until I get through it.

I also have a M&M 1-6 game going off an on that I want to do a similar thing: import parties to new games where I can do it.

Partly due to the latest GWJ podcast, but mostly due to watching Moana, I started replaying Zelda: Wind Waker. It holds up really well - if it weren't for the fact that it's not HD, it could easily pass as being released this year. I forgot just how long it took to get the boat though!

Going back even further, I put some time into Battle Of Olympus on the NES recently. It's 'heavily inspired' by Zelda II, but without the top-down sections. It doesn't hold up quite so well, although it's still a lot of fun. Probably rate it higher than Zelda II to be honest.

tboon wrote:

I also have a M&M 1-6 game going off an on that I want to do a similar thing: import parties to new games where I can do it.

That's definitely a lot of fun to do. By the way, if you end up enjoying Might & Magic 3, the default party ends up becoming canon in Might & Magic 7:

Spoiler:

The party from 3 shows up in 7, but fractured: the "good" and "evil" halves divided in a new world and are each leading factions at war in that world. Depending on the path you chose, you end up working for one side or the other.

Recettear, as it came up on the podcast when they were talking about Moonlighter, and I got the itch to play it again...