Retro PC gaming thread, ACTIVATE! Best games from 10+ years ago

errer said:
I just remembered a couple more games I was playing around 10 years ago. I think the original Halo came out on pc back 10 years ago I didn't like it too much myself, another game I remember playing was this cheezy Vietnam war game called Vietcong. Graphics and gameplay were ok but the AI was just plain stupid and there were some other quarks that made it kind of dumb.
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Wasn't Vietcong based upon the Build engine?
 
GOD'SlittleSERVANT said:
This made me lol
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Same here. Kinda sad but funny at the same time :D

imyourzero said:
Awesome, awesome game but only came out for GameCube AFAIK. I could only wish for a PC release...
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Yeah that was a GameCube exclusive, AFAIK. Let's keep it to games on Windows XP and DX 7-9.0b please.

One of these days I'll start a thread for console games when I start getting the hardware.
 
Just played some Unreal II for a bit. Ahh, memories. :D It also supports 16:10 and 16:9 aspect ratios natively!

WTF ever happened to doing an Uneal III? Perhaps this is the next big project Epic is working on since Gears of War has run its course?
 
imyourzero said:
Awesome, awesome game but only came out for GameCube AFAIK. I could only wish for a PC release...
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oops Im dumb didnt see the PC part. Ok hmm

I didnt have any PC games back then I'm kind of a loser. I remember my first PC game was

Doom back in 97? seems like it was earlier.

My Dad had band practice and his bandmate sat me down at his PC and put on Doom to keep me occupied. Like 6 hours later my dad had to drag me out of there kicking and screaming lol.
 
oh and as for game suggestions, one of the Genre lost in the Retro era was Space Sim Games.

so make sure you tractor through them

Xwing/Tie fither series
Independence War 1 and 2
Tachyon the Fringe
the list goes on.. just get them :)
Homeworld


For me personally i love the experimentation that developers went through during gamings "Coming of Age" era.

games like

Battlezone (First real free roam game ala bf1942 i can remember) you can run on foot, get in vehicles, build bases (its a FPS/RTS hybrid). Nuclear Dawn is a similar modern type game

Mechwarrior Series - Pinnacles at Mechwarrior 3, heavily Sim influenced where MW4 went more towards arcade action


Flight Sim Games
Another lost genre (only recently revived by DCS)
Look for games like Falcon 4.0, all the Janes Series (F15, Apache, USAF), the DiD F22 series, Novalogic made some fun Commanche games.

Tried and Failed Tech (only to return with Minecraft!!)

Look for games like Delta Force, real first attempt at popularizing Voxels - it was known for its HUGE view distances at the time - the problem -- 100% software rendered at a time when 3dfx/Glide was taking off - it was hard for players to get over this fact. but it really is a great game - the size of the environements wouldnt' be rivaled until OFP (see below)...

Trespasser - Defacto introduction to physics in gaming - wouldn't be rivaled until Crysis came out :)

Operation Flashpoint - you owe it to yourself ot play the original - huge island, great story, great game play - a true pioneer.

there are plenty mroe suggestions but that should get you started, IMO i look for those obscure games no one liked but for some reason they make the retro experience worth it.


Retro Rigging is almost a history and progression of games :)
 
piscian18 said:
oops Im dumb didnt see the PC part. Ok hmm

I didnt have any PC games back then I'm kind of a loser. I remember my first PC game was

Doom back in 97? seems like it was earlier.

My Dad had band practice and his bandmate sat me down at his PC and put on Doom to keep me occupied. Like 6 hours later my dad had to drag me out of there kicking and screaming lol.
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I was playing the beta v.99 back in 93/94 I think.. it would crash at the end of each level so you had to save before the exit every time.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Just played some Unreal II for a bit. Ahh, memories. :D It also supports 16:10 and 16:9 aspect ratios natively!

WTF ever happened to doing an Uneal III? Perhaps this is the next big project Epic is working on since Gears of War has run its course?
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You check out the multiplayer? I wonder if anyone still plays that. I know it died down when Onslaught was introduced in Ut2k4. They really do need to come out with an Unreal 3, I'm sure it would be a big seller for them there are alot of people out there that want another Unreal game.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Wasn't Vietcong based upon the Build engine?
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I don't think so, this is is all I could scrounge up.

Czechoslovakian software company Pterodon wrote their own game engine. The next paragraph is verbatim from the official Vietcong web site, Developer Diary Part 2.

"At the end of 2000, programmers managed to make first functional version of the PTERO-ENGINE 2. Due to experience we had during previous projects we created the engine as modules prepared for the upcoming title. Petr Benysek the programmer started working on support for the graphic designers and preparing the 3D MAX plug-ins...”
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errer said:
They really do need to come out with an Unreal 3, I'm sure it would be a big seller for them there are alot of people out there that want another Unreal game.
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You'd think so, but some people say the same thing about Half-Life 3...only to be shot down by dozens of naysayers proclaiming "It's been too long, we don't care anymore."
 
imyourzero said:
You'd think so, but some people say the same thing about Half-Life 3...only to be shot down by dozens of naysayers proclaiming "It's been too long, we don't care anymore."
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That's unfortunate. I know for a fact that a properly in-house developed Unreal 3 would fly off the shelves. Tie in the stories from Dalton (didn't he get killed, though?) and the female prisoner from the first game, or better yet do a high tech reboot of the first game and the expansion?

Or just do a different story from within that universe. I'm just throwing out random ideas here, but U3 would be BADASS. Push Unreal Engine 3.5/4 as hard as PC hardware will allow. ala Crysis. If Epic makes it they can shut up and take my money!

Supposedly Valve is introducing something big at gamescom, so hopefully it isn't just the Steam Box or something else.
 
Just wanted to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. :)

I know there has to be more suggestions out there!

And honestly, I am surprised noone has mentioned Nocturne... Just remembered about that game a short while ago.

Great ambiance and story, with sometimes horrible camera angles, IIRC... :p
 
Star Trek Voyager Elite force + Soldier of Fortune ( that's where i got my nick came from :p )

Activision what happened to you ? :(

edit : Nuclear Dawn has nothing to do with Battlezone

btw i'm glad that i played my first fps ever on a console

Goldeneye 007 was SO innovative for its time, actual human-like animations instead of pixelated sprites shooting at you like turrets, free-aim, no crosshair when moving around, you could even lean behind corners + shoot through doors, and to top it off : objective based gameplay instead of going from A to B shooting stuff on the way, I was only 10 years old so i could not appreciate the "epicness" of duke nukem 64 + doom64 in all their half-assed ported glory

I got HL1 later for PC, it was a premium goty edition which included the very handy PRIMA official strategy guide, haven't bothered with much console FPSs ever since, or consoles for that matter :p

HL1 took the FPS genre to a whole new level, operation flashpoint was also very ambitious for its time, from there it went all downhill, first with halo and after with HL2.

Funny thing is that the FPSs we have today are so shitty that HL2 and Halo look like masterpieces next to them :(

Atleast i still have farcry1 + perseus mandate + extraction point in my "beat it atleast once in your life or go play farmville" backlog :)
 
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Two of my faves were Red Baron 3D and Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

Porsche Unleashed was a great driving sim, I liked it better than the NASCAR games. It had great tracks that were set in Europe; beautiful mountain roads, country roads along the ocean coast and through forests, winding tracks through European towns. Had great driving physics and a dashboard view for all the cars, you could see your hands on the steering wheel and shifting gears, and all the Porsche's handled differently. Most fun driving sim I ever played.

Red Baron 3D was a great WW1 combat flight sim! It shipped very buggy but the community had some very talented modders that were devoted to the game and patched it to the moon. Game was immense. The entire western front was included from the coast of France to the Alps, and all the planes. All missions were flown in real time across miles of terrain. The skies were full of planes, and the trenches populated with tanks, artillery, and infantry. Everything on the ground was destructible; bridges, buildings, airfields. The game's single player campaign was dynamic, not scripted. Events unfolded according to decisions you made while in the air. It was designed for Glide and the Voodoo video cards but you could DL a Glide wrapper that allowed Nvidia or ATI cards to run the game in Glide, which was the way to play it.
 
SoFGR said:
Star Trek Voyager Elite force + Soldier of Fortune ( that's where i got my nick came from :p )

Activision what happened to you ? :(

edit : Nuclear Dawn has nothing to do with Battlezone

btw i'm glad that i played my first fps ever on a console

Goldeneye 007 was SO innovative for its time, actual human-like animations instead of pixelated sprites shooting at you like turrets, free-aim, no crosshair when moving around, you could even lean behind corners + shoot through doors, and to top it off : objective based gameplay instead of going from A to B shooting stuff on the way, I was only 10 years old so i could not appreciate the "epicness" of duke nukem 64 + doom64 in all their half-assed ported glory

I got HL1 later for PC, it was a premium goty edition which included the very handy PRIMA official strategy guide, haven't bothered with much console FPSs ever since, or consoles for that matter :p

HL1 took the FPS genre to a whole new level, operation flashpoint was also very ambitious for its time, from there it went all downhill, first with halo and after with HL2.

Funny thing is that the FPSs we have today are so shitty that HL2 and Halo look like masterpieces next to them :(

Atleast i still have farcry1 + perseus mandate + extraction point in my "beat it atleast once in your life or go play farmville" backlog :)
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Half-Life and Goldeneye were awesome :D Still are. Have you got the chance to play Black Mesa Source?

And while I like ADS a lot more in FPS, everything else besides that and graphics have gotten worse. And to answer your question, Gutiar Hero and Call of Duty happened to Activision, that's what. :p
 
I played HL1 + BMS back2back last november and it was awesome, loading "Questionable Ethics" for the 20th freaking time since 99 and then doing the same thing re-imagined in Source engine with 4x sparse grid sumpersampling enabled, maaaaan :D

dunno about GH but COD1 + UO were just fine, cod helped making ADS more mainstream. relatively few ppl knew about that mechanic before playing CoD1 because operation flashpoint / infiltration UT mod / America's Army were not that popular back in 2000-2002, CoD2 had awesome graphics, it even featured soft smoke ! but health regen and grenade indicator totally ruined it for me, left the SP campaign half-way finished and played only 30hrs online before moving on to other much more interesting games ( like BF2, Killing Floor ut2k4 mod and RO1 :D )
 
Motoracer was a fav of mine.

I loaded up Quake and Quake 2 last night as well. Both hold up if patched. Tons of fun.

I'll never forget the feeling I got when I applied the 3dfx patch to the original Tomb Raider back in the day. Holy crap, no more pixels.
 
The first Half Life was and still is my favorite game of all time. The second one was really stupid. The story made no sense.
 
thekipper said:
Motoracer was a fav of mine.

I loaded up Quake and Quake 2 last night as well. Both hold up if patched. Tons of fun.

I'll never forget the feeling I got when I applied the 3dfx patch to the original Tomb Raider back in the day. Holy crap, no more pixels.
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It was night and day compared to software mode, for sure. And even that was much sharper and clearer than the PlayStation version.

I haven't gotten around to finishing BMS, I need to do that... :D
 
Whiplash was a great game. I have always hoped for a remake, but it hasn't happened and I'm not holding my breath.
 
thekipper said:
Motoracer was a fav of mine.
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Motoracer was one of the games that sold me on the 3d graphics.. before i couldn't win and when i installed or Orchid Voodoo1.. all of a sudden winning the races was too easy :)
 
Quake, Unreal Tournament, Settlers 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Warcraft 2, Fallen Haven, Rocket Jockey, Die By the Sword (I only had the demo, but that's kinda all you need), Dungeon Master 2, Privateer 1 and 2, Lords or the Realm 2, Lands of Lore 1 and 3, Anachronox, Titanic: Mystery out of time, Choronomaster, Ascendancy, Star Trek: Bridge Commander...

Holy shit, it's been a while since I've thought about those games. That all defines my PC gaming from 10 years ago, though.
 
Don't forget demolition derby! That was a pretty fun game back when most racing games didn't have that kind of physics.
 
ironforge said:
Don't forget demolition derby! That was a pretty fun game back when most racing games didn't have that kind of physics.
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Are you sure you didn't mean Destruction Derby by Psygnosis? I remember they made PC ports from the PlayStation originals
 
H-street said:
oh wow completely forgot about that game.. hehehe i don't have my copy any more but i'm sure someone on ebay has it for a few bucks lol..
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I remember installing it on the computers in the library at my high school, and playing over the LAN. That was fun.
 
thekipper said:
Motoracer was a fav of mine.

I loaded up Quake and Quake 2 last night as well. Both hold up if patched. Tons of fun.

I'll never forget the feeling I got when I applied the 3dfx patch to the original Tomb Raider back in the day. Holy crap, no more pixels.
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were quake & quake 2 modded in anyway? widescreen, source ports or anything? I have both but have been tempted to try the dark places port and some of the texture mods for quake 1. quake 2 was always my favorite of the series... till quake 4, that was a blast too!
 
Another one I forgot about that I haven't seen mentioned:

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2

Some sports games that I sorely miss for the real old skoolers:

Links (greatest golf game ever). Jack Nicklaus runs a close second. Tiger Woods games suck compared to these.

Sierra's Front Page Sports Football in the mid-late 90's. These were the best football games around. No arcade here, pure simulation but with actual gameplay. A big run for me was like 15 yards and that was rare.

My first PC game was of course Oregon Trail in school followed by Zork 1, 2, and 3 (text games).



Yes, there are several good quake patches that up the resolution. I'd give the Ultimate Quake and Ultimate Quake 2 patches a go. I think there are even patches for the add on packs. Check the steam forums for Quake info on various source ports, mods, etc. I need to get Quake 4 but I can say I've spend more time lately playing Unreal Tournament, Quake and Quake 2 than anything else. I think the Quake patches I mentioned actually have the Dark Places source in them, someone just put the packs together for convenience. The guy who developed Dark Places, Lord Havoc, is mentioned in the respective patch threads on Steam forums so it seems it's included.
 
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Kipper> I remember Jack Nickalus golf, had the demo of that on my xt at that time, that was a lot of fun, not a golf fan at all back then but had fun playing that game.



I dont' know if they were listed, I may have missed them... but...

Return to Zork
The 7th Guest
The 11th Hour

or back to my first computer, commodore 64
Forbidden Forest!!! for it's age the music was awesome imo.
Caveman UGH-lympics! lol
 
GTA Vice City. Soundtrack was great & the radio stations were hilarious.
 
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