Do you have any games you ever think about . . . only to realize that you only recall one or two aspects of them and you have no idea what they were?
I remember going to computer lab in the early 1980's and playing a game where . . . you time travel? I think? It was kind of sort a text game, but not solely text (probably) . . . Look, the only thing I can remember about it is that you meet the Loch Ness Monster. That is burned into my memory vividly. Nessie roars out of the deep and confronts you. But other than that, I can't recall a thing.
Any hazily remembered games you think about?
This seems appropriate for this thread
One of the first games we got on our Apple IIe was a collection of 5 Christmas action games. The one I remember most fondly involved moving around a large Christmas tree turning the lights to the correct color. We played that game all year long, and I can't remember its name.
About a hundred NES, SNES, and Genesis games rented from the local video store back in the day.
Oh boy. Let's see...
On the NES, there was this co-op side-scrolling ninja game. OK, stay with me here...
It featured a lot of large bosses, most of them mechanical in some way. I remember the boss of the first level being some giant tank. One of your key weapons is a sickle on chain/grappling hook and you would need to use this tool to fight many of the bosses.
What else... ah, on another level you battled a giant samurai in white armour. Not entirely sure if he was part cyborg. Yeah this one is pretty foggy.
It was a decent game, just not very challenging and co-op even felt a bit unnecessary.
Wow this thread is great! I'd love to contribute... But I aptly cannot recall anything at the moment other than I know this had happened to me before.
Wow this thread is great! I'd love to contribute... But I aptly cannot recall anything at the moment other than I know this had happened to me before.
That's an even deeper level of forgetfulness
My brother and I rented some sort of medieval fantasy game on the NES back when I was a kid. It wasn't a Castlevania game, but it was a sidescroller where you went to castles and villages and stuff (it was also not Zelda II). I don't even remember the monsters or weapons or anything.
All I remember is you could pick up bread for health, and when you ate it the music stopped and there was a deep 8-bit gulping sound. That sound effect is the only reason the game has stuck with me.
Naturally, I'm not sure the game ever actually existed and it wasn't just some 5 year old's hallucination.
Way back when I remember playing a game on some obscure console. It might have been colecovision but something makes me think it wasn't. It was a flying game but it was more about shooting and dropping bombs. I think you only had a view looking down from the belly of the plane. The biggest standout though is the word "flak". The game said it all the time.
I guess that makes it not coleco as there wasn't any voice in those games. Maybe intellivision?
When we had Prodigy internet back in the early 90's, I used to play some kind of first person dungeon crawler. I don't think I was very good at it but it was one of the few games I remember playing back then.
Later we got an IBM Aptiva PC with our first CD-ROM drive. There was some game we got with it where you played as a superhero bent on fixing environmental problems. It was all 2D hand drawn animation. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
For the longest time
Way back when I remember playing a game on some obscure console. It might have been colecovision but something makes me think it wasn't. It was a flying game but it was more about shooting and dropping bombs. I think you only had a view looking down from the belly of the plane. The biggest standout though is the word "flak". The game said it all the time.
I guess that makes it not coleco as there wasn't any voice in those games. Maybe intellivision?
When we had Prodigy internet back in the early 90's, I used to play some kind of first person dungeon crawler. I don't think I was very good at it but it was one of the few games I remember playing back then.
That was probably "Mad Maze".
Oh boy. Let's see...
On the NES, there was this co-op side-scrolling ninja game. OK, stay with me here...
It featured a lot of large bosses, most of them mechanical in some way. I remember the boss of the first level being some giant tank. One of your key weapons is a sickle on chain/grappling hook and you would need to use this tool to fight many of the bosses.
What else... ah, on another level you battled a giant samurai in white armour. Not entirely sure if he was part cyborg. Yeah this one is pretty foggy.
It was a decent game, just not very challenging and co-op even felt a bit unnecessary.
All I remember is you could pick up bread for health, and when you ate it the music stopped and there was a deep 8-bit gulping sound. That sound effect is the only reason the game has stuck with me.
Maybe Faxanadu?
As for me I think I've successfully identified every game that I can recall anything at all about.
Some stumpers for me for a long time were the Swordquest Atari games, Airborne Ranger and Kid Niki Radical Ninja but I eventually figured/recalled all of them.
Ok, I've got one. So this game was on either a Yamaha computer, or some kind of European version of a Japanese computer that never really made it to the US. But the game was a top down vertically scrolling actiony game where you played a knight who shot swords or something out in front. And you went through various levels and environments. This game was probably the first game I ever played, back in the USSR. And it really played a major part in my development as a video game player. But I have never been able to find it since then, not even a name.
ccesarano wrote:All I remember is you could pick up bread for health, and when you ate it the music stopped and there was a deep 8-bit gulping sound. That sound effect is the only reason the game has stuck with me.
Maybe Faxanadu?
Another vote for Faxandu. God, the hours I wiled away with that one. Do you remember the NPCs blinking very, very rapidly?
There was this NES sidescroller set in Ancient Greece, in which you fought monsters like the Minotaur and Medusa. I also remember very tall trees, and winged shoes that let you fly. Sadly, that's all I remember. I don't even remember if it was a good game or not, but not knowing which game this was has bugged me for years.
One of my foggiest memories is playing an unidentified text adventure on the TI-99/4a as a child.
It was one of those games that came on a tape cassette that took forever to load every time you booted it up. The game itself started you out washed up on a desert island. Everything gets a bit fuzzy from there.
I was pretty young at the time, maybe 9 or 10, so my reasoning skills weren't the sharpest. Still, I recall loving that damn game. Even though I never came close to finishing it.
I've occasionally thought about that game over the decades, not exactly sure of the game's history or even the title. But I did stumble across it not long ago. It was Pirate Adventure, by the illustrious game designer, Scott Adams. Had no idea at the time that this guy was the godfather of text adventures, but he at least left a mark that stayed with me for years.
All of the nostalgia/archiving sites like like GOG, PlayDOSGamesOnline, and Internet Arcade has made this topic largely moot for me. However, there are a few games which I remember the names of that I can't find (playable) anywhere any more.
The first is Welltris which was a sort of 3D Tetris with the perspective of looking down a well and the pieces slide down the wall. It's on PlayDOSGamesOnline but it has copy protection in the form of a manual lookup. The manual is probably out there somewhere.
That was probably "Mad Maze".
I played a simple DOS game called Mad Maze years ago that I can't find. It's an ascii game where you navigate a large scrolling maze. You have an oxygen meter that runs out and you can find oxygen tanks and dynamite to blast through walls. Anyone know what I'm describing?
There was this NES sidescroller set in Ancient Greece, in which you fought monsters like the Minotaur and Medusa. I also remember very tall trees, and winged shoes that let you fly. Sadly, that's all I remember. I don't even remember if it was a good game or not, but not knowing which game this was has bugged me for years.
That's gotta be the Battle of Olympus. Was there Map of Greece in the top left? A bunch of items? I spent a lot of time with that one in rental form and never beat it.
I played a simple DOS game called Mad Maze years ago that I can't find. It's an ascii game where you navigate a large scrolling maze. You have an oxygen meter that runs out and you can find oxygen tanks and dynamite to blast through walls. Anyone know what I'm describing?
The problem with finding those old DOS games is that many of them were slightly tweaked clones of other games, or mashed into packs of games sold with a magazine. There could be 10 questionably legal versions of a similar game that each only got published once.
Dear god!!! I just found it! Why now instead of before, I have no idea. But looks like it was called Knightmare for the Yamaha MSX.
One of my foggiest memories is playing an unidentified text adventure on the TI-99/4a as a child.
I'm going to guess that was Scott Adams' 'Savage Island', or at least one of his other games.
The game itself started you out washed up on a desert island. Everything gets a bit fuzzy from there.
There was a text adventure on the TI that had some graphics, and it started out with really fuzzy, terrible graphics. If you used the command 'squint', the graphics became normal for a moment, and then got fuzzy again. You had to find your glasses to fix them properly.
Might that have been it? If it was pure text, it's not the one I'm thinking of.
I'm pretty sure the one I'm thinking of was Return to Pirate's Isle.
KaterinLHC wrote:There was this NES sidescroller set in Ancient Greece, in which you fought monsters like the Minotaur and Medusa. I also remember very tall trees, and winged shoes that let you fly. Sadly, that's all I remember. I don't even remember if it was a good game or not, but not knowing which game this was has bugged me for years.
That's gotta be the Battle of Olympus. Was there Map of Greece in the top left? A bunch of items? I spent a lot of time with that one in rental form and never beat it.
THAT'S IT! Decades of frustration gone in just one forum post Thank you!
No, I'm pretty sure the one I mentioned was Pirate Adventure.
Not really hunting down clues as the mystery has already been solved. But I brought it up as I was in the dark for years until only recently, remembering the experience but not the specific title.
Pong. For the life of me I cannot remember the story line.
Ok, I've got one. There was, I think, a subscription series of educational games for the Apple II series back in the early-mid 80s. I remember one where my character walked around a museum as Greek gods and monsters came to life, and another where there was some sort of evil wizard named Pwyno Ledge and a Dogat (dog-cat). Beyond that, I can't remember any real details, except that they were super addictive when I was 5.
Edit: Oh, holy crap: Google FTW:
http://www.retroist.com/2010/12/06/s...
I think I know next week's Thread of the Week for the podcast.
I'll have to check out Faxanadu. Humorously enough I recall seeing the cartridge often when working at GameStop, but never thought much of it.
Should we prepend "imbiginjapan Identifies Your" to the thread title?
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