Games of the 70’s and 80’s You Are Currently Playing

I’m sure a lot of us could talk a fair amount about memories of games from that era, but is there any specific game that was published before December 31st, 1989 that you are currently playing? If so, what are your thoughts about it from the vantage point of 2016? (Or 2017 if this thread lasts that long?)

I for one am playing Willow for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was actually a big Willow fan back in the 80’s and always wanted to play the NES game but I only got around 5 or so games each year and for whatever reason Willow never made the cut.

So flash forward 27 years later and I’ve picked it up and started playing it. I have on my nostalgia goggles for the world but not for the game because I never played it when I was young. While I’m only about two hours in I’m genuinely enjoying it so far.

It’s a Zelda clone, but not in a bad way. You take on monsters so that you can get stronger and better weapons so that you can take on stronger monsters and get even better weapons so… It’s pattern that has stood the test of time for a reason.

I’m playing it right before I go to bed, in fits and chunks, and I can honestly see myself finishing the game in that same manner.

Is anyone else here currently playing any really old games?

IMAGE(http://buzzkillgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/screenshotWillow1.png)

This snake due (and a lot of other character's I've encountered) wasn't in the movie, but it's probably for the best that they didn't remain too faithful.

Willow was one of my favorite NES games. It's not objectively a great game, but it was simply fun and had a killer soundtrack.

I'm not currently playing any games from prior to 1990, but I seem to wobble all over the gaming spectrum as time goes on. I'm about due for some NES or 80's Arcade action in the near future.

I used to play quite a few NES games on Dolphin, but that number has dwindled over the years to a few like Contra, Zelda I & II, Mario II & III, and Castlevania III.

As for computer games, realistically only a few Infocom games using walkthroughs to just enjoy the story. I also revisited the early Ultima's semi-regularly, but not in the last 5 years or so.

Not currently, gave King's Quest (the original 1983/1984 release) a run a couple years back and had a good time with it. Kinda weird playing a game that's slightly older than oneself though.

Farscry wrote:

Willow was one of my favorite NES games. It's not objectively a great game, but it was simply fun and had a killer soundtrack. :)

I'm having fun with it so far and I'm not spotting any major flaws that would make it a widely disliked game the way that . . . oh Back to the Future on the NES is. A game I played and thought was garbage even as a not very discriminating 9 year old. One of the few games I purchased and then didn't play much of.

Farscry wrote:

I'm not currently playing any games from prior to 1990, but I seem to wobble all over the gaming spectrum as time goes on. I'm about due for some NES or 80's Arcade action in the near future.

Any specific games you thinking of?

Running Man wrote:

I used to play quite a few NES games on Dolphin, but that number has dwindled over the years to a few like Contra, Zelda I & II, Mario II & III, and Castlevania III.

From about 1997 to 2010 I played Zelda I and II every four years or so. Haven't played them since then though. When I decided to revist some NES games a couple of days ago I decided I wanted something different than the old stand bye's, hence Willow.

Running Man wrote:

As for computer games, realistically only a few Infocom games using walkthroughs to just enjoy the story. I also revisited the early Ultima's semi-regularly, but not in the last 5 years or so.

Hmmm... To be honest I can't think of a pre-1990 Computer game I'd play today. Civ I would be the closest, but that's 1991.

I still play Nethack fairly regularly. It first came out back in 1987. Of course it has been under development for all that time, but it is definitely old school.

I also play D&D regularly if that counts.

jrralls wrote:

Any specific games you thinking of?

The two that I've got in mind all of a sudden are Blaster Master on the NES and Alien Syndrome on the Sega Master System. Sadly I do not have the latter, but it was one of my favorite co-op games back in the 8-bit era.

After playing the demo of Dragon Quest Builders, I got the sudden urge to play through the original NES series. I'm almost done with DW1 now, and I'm itching to get into II which I haven't played in about 20 years.

Bonus points- I'm playing on my Ouya!

shoptroll wrote:

Kinda weird playing a game that's slightly older than oneself though.

Unusual certainly, but people often read books or watch movies that are older than themselves. The video game medium just changes faster than either of those, so I do agree it's a difference in kind, not in degree.

Farscry wrote:
jrralls wrote:

Any specific games you thinking of?

The two that I've got in mind all of a sudden are Blaster Master on the NES and Alien Syndrome on the Sega Master System.

Blaster Master was one of those games that my friend had but I didn't, so while I played it I never got very far in it. If you do go back to it, let me know how it holds up.

Alz wrote:

After playing the demo of Dragon Quest Builders, I got the sudden urge to play through the original NES series. I'm almost done with DW1 now, and I'm itching to get into II which I haven't played in about 20 years.

Bonus points- I'm playing on my Ouya!

You ever see any of the console-tan comics?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/gDkeZSm.png)

I still play Bubble Bobble every now and then, even though I play the Xbox360 version now. As a matter of fact, my sister and her boyfriend will be visiting next week, and we're already planning to play the game while they're here .

I wasn't a kickstarter backer of the Ouya, but I was really interested by its premise and even hoped to develop for it at some point. It had some really good games but never got the A-level developer support it needed (Before the MS aquisition of Mojang, I think Minecraft was rumored at one point but they quickly backed away from that.) It turned from being an indie Steam box to being another XBLIG.

It doesn't get plugged in often, but I've been on a retro gaming kick lately so I've used it more in the past month than either my PS4 or Xbox.

Interesting thread. I got an Intellivision emulator working on my phone a few months back and went back to Tron Deadly Discs and Adv. D&D for a while. Old favorites I grew up playing.

I'm in chapter 2 of my play through of Dragon Warrior 4 (playing an actual NES cart like God intended).

I pretty much only play VR games or retro games these days. I'm also in the middle of playthroughs of Battletoads, Willow, Bard's Tale 3 and some others.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I'm in chapter 2 of my play through of Dragon Warrior 4 (playing an actual NES cart like God intended).

I pretty much only play VR games or retro games these days. I'm also in the middle of playthroughs of Battletoads, Willow, Bard's Tale 3 and some others.

Where are you in Willow? I just got to the Dragon in the cave. Man, the game does not follow the movie, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm considering it the Extended Willow Universe.

If you enjoy the Willow NES game, give Crystalis or The Guardian Legend a try. They're both a bit more obscure titles, but they definitely have the NES RPG formula down pat.

I was just thinking about pulling the 2600 out of the loft and letting my 2 year old go nuts playing Breakout.

I play old games all the tiiiiiiime. I just did a few hours of 1989's Space Rogue, before that, the early 90s Buck Rogers games and before THAT, Star Fleet 1 and 2 from the mid 80s. So much goodness from back then.

Veloxi wrote:

I play old games all the tiiiiiiime. I just did a few hours of 1989's Space Rogue, before that, the early 90s Buck Rogers games and before THAT, Star Fleet 1 and 2 from the mid 80s. So much goodness from back then.

How does Space Rogue hold up in 2016?

Jonman wrote:

I was just thinking about pulling the 2600 out of the loft and letting my 2 year old go nuts playing Breakout.

Honestly, probably too tough.

Veloxi wrote:

I play old games all the tiiiiiiime. I just did a few hours of 1989's Space Rogue, before that, the early 90s Buck Rogers games and before THAT, Star Fleet 1 and 2 from the mid 80s. So much goodness from back then.

You also (finally) played Super Star Trek!

jrralls wrote:

How does Space Rogue hold up in 2016?

Oh god I was so, so bored.

tboon wrote:

You also (finally) played Super Star Trek!

Bahahahaha, and Trek73!

Veloxi wrote:
jrralls wrote:

How does Space Rogue hold up in 2016?

Oh god I was so, so bored.

tboon wrote:

You also (finally) played Super Star Trek!

Bahahahaha, and Trek73!

Did you all ever play EGATrek? I played that so much growing up, and I still break it out again every 5 years or so.

EriktheRed wrote:

Did you all ever play EGATrek? I played that so much growing up, and I still break it out again every 5 years or so.

Oh hellllsss yeah. EGATrek, Begin and Star Fleet 1 were my all-time favorites of the ascii Trek clones.

Possibly the oldest game I still occasionally play is Begin, an ancient DOS game that does a pretty fair simulation of Federation ship battles. You can spawn up to forty-ish ships per side (I think from 0-9 of each ship type, and the various sides usually have four types), and slug it out, trying to keep yourself alive and wipe out the other side. All the sides have phasers, which aren't terribly strong, and only work at close range, but can do quite a bit of damage to a ship with the shields down. I believe all the various sides have torpedoes, although the types vary. Federation vessels, for instance, have 'mk7' and 'mk8' torps; the mk7s are twice as fast but half as strong. I'm pretty sure Klingons have ktx, and Romulans have these nasty homing "plasma" torpedoes that can be devastating, but they fire them just one or two at a time, where the other ships do volleys. (the Romulan torps typically explode much closer to the enemy than other torps, because they can course-correct and come back if they miss. They're pretty scary.)

There's a hell of a lot of complexity to the game. For instance, with torpedoes, you set a proximity at which they'll explode. The tighter you set the prox fuse, the more damage you'll do when you hit, but the more likely it is that you'll miss completely. Phasers can be fired with a spread, which greatly increases their chance of hitting something, but sharply reduces their damage; this is useful for trying to detonate enemy torps before they close enough to hurt you. (phasers have a range of 2000 to 2200 meters, depending on what race you're playing, and torps start doing damage at about 750 meters. So you've got this narrow window where you can shoot them down successfully; enemy ships are quite good at it.)

You can also fire torpedoes in a spread, which increases the chance of hitting your target, but again will hit with fewer explosions, doing less damage. This is useful when the enemy is maneuvering hard, and also good for trying to detect cloaked ships. Enemies are, once again, quite good at doing this... fighting as a cloaked ship is actually somewhat difficult, as you appear when you fire, and the enemy ships are pretty good at analyzing where you could potentially be. They're fond of bracketing the area with torps, hoping to hit you, which of course does damage, and gives them an updated position. It feels quite a bit like a submarine game, in a sense, as you're maneuvering wildly to avoid incoming barrages.

You have the choice of either manually turning your phasers to a specific bearing, or of locking them onto some other ship. A phaser on bearing 45 will always shoot to your right; under heavy torp fire, pointing phasers at the NSEW bearings can make it much more likely that you can hit an incoming torp before it blows you to kingdom come. Or, if you're in close pursuit of someone, locking the phasers on them means they'll always be pointed straight at that ship .... get within 2000 meters and fire, and you'll do some damage. But this can also be handy for shooting down incoming torpedoes. If that ship is the only one firing at you, locking phasers on him will normally also bracket the incoming volleys.

The interface is quite interesting. You don't do things yourself. You issue commands to your bridge crew. Early on, you'll probably type them out in full, eg: 'load all tubes'. This tells the gunnery officer to load a new kind of torpedo. (you can also 'load tube 1' or 'load tubes 2 3 4' if you want a varied loadout.) He or she will ask you what kind of torpedo, which you have to know from looking it up in the in-game library, and will ask you what proximity they should get to before exploding. You can build all this right into your original command: "load all tubes mk7 500", for instance, will use fast Federation torps with a 500 meter proximity fuse. And you can abbreviate heavily as you get good; you only need to type in enough characters to be unambiguous. IIRC, "l a t mk7 500'"will do the same thing with fewer keystrokes.

Another commands is to come to a new course: "course 90" will change your heading. "course 90 6.0" will change your heading and speed. If you're at Warp 1 or lower, assuming a new heading is instant, taking one turn. If you're at 1.1 or higher, your ship has a rotation speed, based on your race and exact ship mode; a Federation Dreadnought turns slower than a Constellation, and the little scout ships can arc fairly quickly, even at high speed. WIth the big ships, it can be a lot faster to drop out of warp, aim in a new direction, and re-engage; this takes three commands, which you could be using for something else, but will usually be much faster than waiting for the ship to come about.

Everything takes time. Loading tubes takes four cycles. They continue to cycle automatically after you load them the first time; if you change the torpedo type, it starts over at 0. I believe phasers recharge in three cycles, but I'd have to double check. Probes (very slow, devastating weapons that are only good against ships that no longer have point defense) can be loaded in one cycle, so you can load and then fire and then load and then fire, but they're so pokey about getting where they're going that they're very easy to shoot down.

Accelerating and decelerating takes time. Deceleration is quite fast, acceleration is slowish on big ships, quite fast on small ones. You might type "cou 90 6.0" in turn 1, but you probably won't actually get to Warp 6 for five or six turns in a big ship, and it could easily be 10 or 15 turns for your bow to swing over, if you were already at Warp 6 when you started.

You have to watch your drive heat levels; exceeding your cruise velocity will overheat your drives. If they're damaged by enemy fire, they'll start overheating even at cruise speed. It takes quite awhile before they build up enough heat to be damaged or explode, so your warp temps are another thing you have to manage... maybe it's worth slamming the pedal down to Warp 9 for a few turns, or maybe it's worth pushing up to Warp 4 with your horribly damaged warp core, just to get the heck out of the way of those incoming torpedoes. But then you'll need to slow down to let your drives cool off.

Your shields recover slowly, and you can pump extra energy into them. I've never been entirely clear on what 'reinforce shield X' does; I'm not sure if you take less damage or if they recover faster. On Enterprise-type Federation ships, you usually have enough spare power at Warp 6 to reinforce three shields. I've never been certain when I should do it, so I've focused much harder on trying not to be hit in the first place.

Energy, by the way, is another resource you have to manage; you have a constant supply from your warp drives, and lots of batteries, but if you take damage, you may lose the ability to power all the systems you want. Romulan vessels can't go fast under cloak for very long, but they have enough batteries to do it for a little while, which lends itself well to 'sprint and drift' tactics, also like real submarines.

For an early DOS game, it is really a remarkably engaging simulation. It's a shame they didn't go any further with it, but it's still fun to fire up a classic battle of a Federation and Klingon starbase, with accompanying fleets.

Oh, you can also board and capture enemy vessels. They're usually terribly damaged and not of much use, but you get extra points at the end for doing so. If you're playing a super-epic battle, you can take prizes back to a starbase for faster repairs; docking is WAY faster than onboard damage control, especially by a skeleton prize crew. (speed of in-flight repair is a function of crew size.)

You can issue orders to the other ships in your fleet... but this takes a turn, like most other orders, so it's something to be used judiciously. You can tell the other captains to attack particular targets, to pursue a target. (which your helmsman can also do), to board a ship, and to dock with a starbase, at the very least. I'm not certain, but I suspect any order you can give your own crew, you can give to other ships, by prepending the order with 'tell X'. In other words, "cou 90 6.0" brings you to course 90, warp 6. "tell cromoer cou 90 6.0" will instruct the Cromoer to do that instead.

It is a really good game, and there are lots of modern offerings that look downright shoddy in comparison.

Have you played the Rules of Engagement games, Malor? As much as I love Begin, the ROE games are my go-to games for complex starship simulations.

Veloxi, have you ever played The Guardian Legend? I searched your blog and found nothing.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Veloxi, have you ever played The Guardian Legend? I searched your blog and found nothing.

Never heard of it, so I had to look it up. I never owned an NES so sadly not.