For me, it was the game Rocket Jockey released by Sega Soft in '96. It was perfect. The game featured a surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale. The entire premise of the game was to ride around on rockets and using long cables to yank your opponents off theirs. Referees were also fair play. I don’t think I’ve met anyone else who has played the game, so if you have, let me know!
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Me and my sister were crazy about Zoo Tycoon, but we weren’t super good at it. We would run the zoo into the ground and then release the T. Rex.
Releasing the T. rex and plopping guests into the shark tank and removing the ladder were important parts of a successful zoo. I wish the Zoo Tycoon series kept the same level of freedom the original has, the new one was depressing to play.
I didnt know there was a new one. We played the 1st and 2nd ones.
I feel like anything new would lack the magic from back then.
- one must fall
- anything from apogee
- Ultima underworld
- wolf 3d / doom
Doom, total classic. In that same vein, did you ever play Hexen? I recall it being a pretty cool medieval/ magic Doom.
And of course, unreal tournament. Although that was later. It had a Linux port which is why I played it.
Excellent list
Loved all of these, great list. I’d add:
- syndicate
- XCOM UFO
- Ultima VII (a real masterpiece both as a game and as software)
Unreal Tournament '99!
I remember having a blast with Rocket Jockey - I think we had it on a demo disc? Otherwise I always loved Sim Copter.
FX Fighter, Enemy Engaged: RAH-66 Comanche vs. KA-52 Hokum, Sim City 3000, Descent, and Carnivores 2. Just love the janky 3D, complicated keyboard bindings, goofy UIs, and crunchy textures.
Rebel Assault 1 and 2 – they’re total crap, but if you were a Star Wars fan at the time, they were epic. FMV in RA2 was so good, and introduced story unique to the game.
Descent is really hard to beat for me. I put it above Doom/Quake in terms of actual gameplay. It felt so nice to rush to the exit when you’re really good. Only Majora’s Mask 3-days mechanic has rivaled the anxiety factor of Descent.
Heavy Gear > Mechwarrior.
Starcraft/Warcraft.
Heroes of Might and Magic 1-3.
A shit ton of flash games I can’t remember now.
Scorched Earth Worms UT2K Quake 3 Arena Tribes Descent Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries You Don’t Know Jack Where in the World is Carmen San Diego
MechWarrior 3 was where I got into the franchise. Those were awesome games.
When you load into a mission and the mech boots up… titanfall really scratched that itch
Oh yeah, absolutely loved Titanfall. I’m still praying for a sequel. The multiplayer in that game was incredible.
It’s a travesty they didn’t already get TF2 done with the continued sales of the first game and huge success of Apex.
The Moraff adventure games. Moraffs World and Moraffs Dungeons of the Unforgiven.
Also Castle of the Winds.
It’s either tough or impossible to get purchased copies of any of them now, but that means there are sites willing to host the full unlocked versions of them now. As far as I know, the creators of both are still alive though. So I suppose if you tried really hard you might still be able to get money to them.
In both cases they were games I played when I was a kid and they stood out as games I wanted to come back to when I was less bad at stuff. And in both cases I did, and little me was right.
I remember the death messages of Castle of the Winds: RIP Killed by Huge Ogre or RIP Killed by Kobold. I had never seen or heard of an Ogre before and thought it was “org” so I pronounced it that way too for the longest time. Until Shrek was released.
I vaguely remember the death message said “another one bites the dust” and I had no idea what that meant.
I played one of the Moraff games (I think Dungeons of the Unforgiven) and remember it being like an acid trip. In retrospect I probably didn’t have the colors set up right.
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Mental Omega, a total conversion mod for Red Alert 2, Yuri’s Revenge.
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Age of Empires 2.
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I was totally sucked into the world when I first played it as a kid. The balance and trade offs between tech and magic are awesome and the incredible dialogue and (OK from what I remember) story makes this one I come back to every once in a while.
I don’t think I ever actually have beaten the game though – but I do that with nearly every game.
I keep playing Total Annihilation. I play it at least once a day.
Oh heck yeah, nothing beats the original Total Annihilation. My dad would play LAN against each other and online. We would absolutely destroyed cause we sucked, but it was fun! Nothing beats picking off the enemy command with a Big Bertha!
Sometimes that’s me an Supreme commander: forged alliance.
You’d think I’d be better by now.
I’ve tried both Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation.
I think what mostly bothers me about updated versions of the concept is that there are too many “this type of unit counters that type of unit” pairs. You’ll start a campaign level, build yourself a nice mixed bag of versatile units, and then an enemy will show up with a horde of some specific unit X that completely overwhelms you, because you didn’t have enough Z artillery which is like the only effective thing against X.
I rarely had that problem in the original TA. Generally, all units are vulnerable to all other units, so you have to use geography and consistent resource-denial strategy to your advantage.
I recall getting stomped online by guys that would amass 3-400 little flyers and just rain hell on you before air defense could knock them out in TA.
Star Control 2 is the one I still come back to every now and then.
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I really loved Tie Fighter from 1994. The music was pretty cool because it changed based on the state of the mission you were on and star wars music was a cheat code to my feelings.
I also thought it was so cool when you’d complete secret objectives and they’d bring you in to the emperor’s secret order and tattoo your arm. I thought that was just fucking great. Those cut scenes were so cool.
Also thanks to all of you who posted cool older games im going to try some of these. I’m thinking about trying fallout I’ve never played any in that series.
Honestly Lucasarts of the early-90’s to mid 2000’s had such a high batting average.
Tie Fighter really captured the feel of the original trilogy that only a few games have actually done, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight both did the same.
Lucas arts was so strong at that time. I loved dark forces(?) the FPS
Wait, you forgot to mention that he tattoes your arm with FORCE LIGHTNING.
So there’s this old DOS game called ‘Archipelagos’. You just wandered around this weird checkered liminal space looking for obelisks. I dont remember much more than that but it was just such a weird and different game and I loved it.
