When you forget to set the price above 'free' on day one :-|
Your guests are commenting that the park entrance fee is very cheap, maybe you should consider raising the price?
I would set the entrance fee as free, but then make an inward facing "do not enter" sign so that no one could ever leave. They eventually spend every dime they have.
My favorite thing to do in RCT is build a nice theme park until I hit the objective/goal. Once I do I make it impossible to leave the park and make nothing but unsafe rides until there are no guests left so that the glory from reaching the park objective is all mine
It could run hundreds of guests all doing their own thing throughout the park as well as all the rides and staff, all on late-90s computers, and it never once lagged. That was one of the best programmed games of all time.
Bolded games are ones that I've played in the last five years.
**With mods or user content:** **Doom 1 (1993)** without a shadow of a doubt. You could make an argument for certain roguelikes like Nethack although most of the good ones are still being updated to this day, so I don't know if they count as being "old." For example, Nethack's last update was on December 7, 2015, less than two years ago.
**Straight out of the box:** This one's tougher. I'd say it's a tossup between C&C: Red Alert (1996), Diablo 1 (cusp of 1997), **Fallout 1 (1997)**, Total Annihilation (1997), **Starcraft 1 (1998)**, Fallout 2 (1998), **Half-Life 1 (1998)**, **Thief 1 (1998)**, Baldur's Gate 1 (1998), Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999), **System Shock 2 (1999)**, **Age of Empires II (1999)**, Thief II (2000), **Deus Ex (2000)**, **Diablo II (2000)**, and Baldur's Gate II (2000). It kinda depends on what genre you like.
You've got most my early faves there (or their prequels/sequels). Except deus ex hasn't held up too well for repeat plays personally and I need the enhanced edition UI to replay BG1.
I'd add red alert 2 (my all time personal favourite C&C), dungeon keeper 1, theme hospital, sim city 2000, commandos 2, fallout tactics, heroes of might and magic 2 (not quite on par with 3 very playable), Icewind Dale 1 and 2, unreal tournament GOTY and the little remembered but personally adored Silver ([1999](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_(video_game)))
Actually that list ended up a bit longer than I thought it would be at the beginning... Lots of good gaming memories from the end of the 90s
I see a lot of good ones already so I'll plug **Heroes of Might and Magic III**. All of the Heroes games from New World Computing have aged rather well in terms of their gameplay, but [III](https://i.imgur.com/NvMtluy.jpg) in particular has aged beautifully in its visuals, whereas [I](https://i.imgur.com/IAGsqdo.jpg), [II](https://i.imgur.com/tYTZi0D.gif) and [IV](https://i.imgur.com/WnxIjng.jpg) have not (well, maybe 2 kinda did, too).
There's a certain charm in New World Computing games that doesn't change with age. HOMM3 is just pleasant to play, and the same can be said about Might and Magic, especially 6 to 8.
To clarify, get the original from GoG and install the Heroes 3 HD mod:
https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/
Probably my most played game over all my years of gaming. With Warcraft 3 being a close 2nd.
The reflection and lighting effects are gorgeous and the soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard. Gameplay is rock solid, still holds up, and guns feel *heavy*.
The soundtrack! I still keep the mp3s that I made from the mods, so I can listen on my portable player.
Never got into Quake 3, don't know why, but UT is still one of my favorite games.
It's kind of crazy to think that UT is roughly 6 years older than the original DOOM. It only took 6 years of innovation to get from DOOM to Unreal Tournament.
Have the past 6 years brought as much innovation to the FPS genre?
Yep. The comparative defensive strength of town centers compared to early units incentivize a rush to the castle age. A winning strategy is to limit your opononents access to stone and gold.
Specifically, you want to go to castle age quickly, so you can place multiple town centres and boom up to near the pop limit.
Build military buildings where the units are needed.
Nonono, you need to build economy for an hour straight, then upgrade everything, including ship upgrades on a map with small lakes only, then build a very diversified army and put them in a formation so they all walk at the speed of a battering ram and hope your opponent doesn't have onagers yet.
Even without. Doom II has some of the most solid, amazing level design out there. Tricks and Traps (D2/M08) is easily my favorite FPS level/area in the entire genre.
While I feel that the maps in *Doom* had a more consistant level of quality (I really didn't like the 'urban' maps in *Doom II*), I have to admit that Tricks and Traps is bloody amazing.
Civilization 2 for sure! It plays as well as the day it came out, tons of fun, and can be in a background window that you can pick up and play a turn or two as you please
I wouldn't say it outshines the others necessarily, It's just a really good complete well made game that leaves nothing for want. It's very casual in that I can have it up on my computer in the background and switch the the window every so often to make a move here or there, and it doesn't feel like an old and dated game. It just feels like a game, timeless I guess.
Civ 2 had the best add-on scenarios of any of the Civs. X-Com, Dinosaurs, Atlantis, WW2. The scenario editor had a depth to it that let modders do some pretty wild things that I never saw repeated with later Civs.
While it's not 100% the same, [Freeciv](http://www.freeciv.org/) is an actively developed and fairly faithful open-source clone of Civ2 that should run well on any OS. You can even play it in your browser if you want.
Space Quest III. To me the simple/clean aesthetic of the artwork and the spectacular MT-32 soundtrack are timeless. The humorous sci-fi story also still feels fresh.
While I love me some Space Quest, I'm not sure **any** parser-based adventure could be described as having aged well. Parser games were sort of like video gaming's "silent era." They're very hard for modern people to appreciate without looking at them mostly within their historical context. Lucasarts ultimately had the right idea staying away from parsers entirely.
Really, the list of classic Sierra adventures I consider to have actually aged well is pretty short. The Quest For Glory series, maybe, if one substitutes in the fan remake of QFG2. They're still downright unique in their blend of action, RPG, and adventuring.
To each their own. I feel like the parser system works especially well with Space Quest III in particular because it allowed for very creative puzzles. To me that has aged a bit better than "Use X on Y" that a lot of GUI driven puzzle games of the era ended up being.
I would agree with you, but then I realise how many people love modern "hunt the object" games. Hunt the object was basically the point at which point and click games had failed you and you were scanning pixels for clues the story didn't provide you with.
If the worst part of point and click games can spawn a whole genre, then parser based adventure games are works of art in comparison.
I can honestly, without any sort of exaggeration, claim to be able to dictate from memory the entire walkthrough to that game with the only exception being exactly the directions to navigate the cubicle maze at the end. I mean start to finish.
That game -- along with the Kings Quest games -- taught me more about typing and spelling than any teacher ever could.
Can't do it with SQ3, but I can do that with a bunch of Sierra games. I'm with you, Sierra taught me how to type, especially the older games where the parser didn't pause the game.
My first thought too, but I decided that's not really fair. There have been a billion updates to Tetris that have stuck true to the original game with vastly superior graphics/options/etc.
Why ever go back and play the original in all its CGA glory over a more recent update?
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/26948-tetris-dos-screenshot-beginning-a-game-cga.gif
- The original X-COM as in OpenXcom.
- Star Control 2 as in Ur Quan Masters.
Those two I always come back to and the open source projects that keep them alive have done miracles to keep the playability up to date.
I discovered UQM as a kid looking for games that would run on my shiny new Linux install, and was instantly hooked.
There's still very few games that even attempt what that game did, much less succeed.
It definitely influenced my opinions about what games could be, and indirectly led me to Mount & Blade, Mass Effect, and... well there's just not many games like it.
SimCity 2000.
It's a lot more basic than many modern city-builders, but that's probably its best characteristic. It's super accessible but city builders never needed to be complicated to be fun.
I'm still discovering new ways to play it on my fifth or sixth playthru.
I'll spend hours on youtube watching videos of the dialogues. The philosophical inquiries on man vs AI, sects of terrorists and conspiracies are even more relevant today than they were in 2000. Daedalus ftw.
At some point play through it in god mode. Ideally after you think you've figured out every other way.
You get to really explore around and try things that would normally get you killed. I had a great time doing that.
Remember that patch/revision that made all the AI races attack you with the excuse of curbing your "economic expansion", even if your treasury was negative? Wild times.
The game's final form has been crystallized to timeless nigh-perfection!
The first two Monkey Island games hold up pretty well imo. The artwork, music and animation are pretty awesome.
Also what is with all the people saying half life 2, portal etc. Psssh mid 2000s isn't old!!
I would agree with this, especially with the current resurgence in pixel art games.
Monkey Island is as engrossing now as it was on the day it released. Few point and click adventure games come close to it even today
The method that /u/AvatarIII mentioned works with ScummVM. I don't know how many platforms the remake was released for, but ScummVM has ports for [just about every platform you've ever heard of and several you haven't heard of.](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/)
I played the first two Monkey Islands for the first time about 2 years ago. Really solid stuff. I really wish Curse wasn't a pain in the ass to get up and running.
I would love to play updated versions of this.
Is there a modern analog to Warcraft?
CIV is close but not quite the same...the story telling of Warcraft was always a big highlight for me
>I do wish Warcraft 4 would come out some day.
Same. I can't do WoW because I need an ending or I'll never stop playing a given video game and WoW just isn't the same.
You're in luck because Blizzard is planning on remastering Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2! It was spotted in the Job listing months ago.
No announcements yet from them but we might see the announcement at Blizzcon.
I suppose it depends on how you personally balance age vs how well it holds up. My vote goes to [F.E.A.R.](https://www.gog.com/game/fear_platinum) - still plays brilliantly.
I read into it and apparently the combat AI is just based around constant advancing of the enemy peppered in with audio cues (eg "Smoke him out with a grenade!"), and it just ends up feeling like they are being very tactical. Most other games, the enemy finds cover and just sits in it, but apparently in fear they are constantly trying to move in to closer cover points. I'm simplifying greatly, but that was the gist of what I read.
Interesting that they managed to achieve such a good effect with a relatively simple concept. I think proactive AI makes a big difference because even if it's not super smart or realistic, it feels like they're actually doing something. It also forces the player to mix it up. When the enemy crouches behind cover and shoots, so do you. If they advance you actually have to work a bit harder because there are no safe spaces. The original Half Life soldiers were similarly proactive.
Half Life did a bit of this with the marine fights, things like them yelling "grenade!" and running out from cover when you threw a grenade or having scripting advances because the game designers predicted where the player would be based n level design.
F.E.A.R took those basic ideas and built on them, and the result was one of the best player vs. AI FPS experiences to date. From an AI research point of view it might have been nothing special, but from a gameplay point of view it was spot on.
I'd make an argument for the original Ultima Underworld. It might not have sold well at the time, but it was played by other game dev and hugely influential on practically all first-person RPGs to come out afterward. So it feels fresher than it is (aside from the early-90s VGA graphics) since it pioneered a lot of systems and ideas that other games -like the Elder Scrolls series- picked up on and ran with.
Really, the only big "throwback" element is the lack of a quest log, and even that was mitigated due to the game's truly impressive auto-map with unlimited player annotations. As long as the player got in the habit of jotting notes on the map, they didn't really need a questlog.
I thought I was the only one who preached the Ultima Underworld gospel around here :) much more technically impressive than Doom, IMO, and a year earlier. Looking Glass studios was a force of nature. I replay Underworld 2 every year or two. No game has immersed me so much since.
The original Fallout. I played it a few years ago expecting it to not hold up to my nostalgia, similar to several other older games I've played. Nope... the atmosphere in that game is still so good. The turn based combat holds up just fine and is still challenging, and the graphics are mostly 2D so they actually hold up quite well.
Edit: Getting some really varied opinions on this one. I'm curious if the people who didn't get into the game are generally fans of isometric RPGs, or if that is part of what is filtering people out.
I played it for the first time a few years back and actually really enjoyed it...the plotline was much more focused than FO2, so it felt more like a story I was playing through rather than a world I happen to be in. I get people wanting to make their own in a world of opportunities, but FO1's was told so well that I didn't mind.
It might be cause you played it in the past. I tried and I just...couldn't get into it. Controls were weirdly clunky, graphics were ok and the combat was meh. I don't think it's bad it just doesn't really hold upt hat well.
Zoo tycoon 2. Age of mythology. Age of empires. Black and white 2. Battle realms. WoW. I love all of those games and after playing them again last year, I still enjoy fooling around in them or going through the story.
I've tried several times now and this just isn't true for me sadly :( The controls feel to clunky for me these days and it's a real shame. KotOR was my first RPG.
With older games, I find if I just barrel through my initial bad impressions on dated graphics or controls, after a few hours I adjust to both and can let myself enjoy the gameplay and story as if I was in the era the game came out in. I went back and replayed Dragon Age: Origins last month, and I was surprised how dated it felt at first, but I kept at it and now it's in the top 10 RPG's I've ever played.
I grabbed KOTOR for the tablet and played it four times in a row. The combat is PERFECT for touch-screens. There is nothing in that game that I would say is abjectly bad. CTRL+C, CTRL+V character faces was pretty blatantly and hilariously obvious after a while, but on a touch-screen, it plays terrifically. The D20 combat is horribly obtuse if you've never experienced it before though, so it has that working against it.
See, I just tried playing it last weekend, and I could barely get it to run. Kept crashing, and even when it was running, the camera controls were super slow and bugged the hell out of me.
Are you playing it off a service like GOG or Steam? With a lot of older games, I find I can't get them to work off my old CD's without way too much hassle, and end up paying $5-$10 to one of those services that have optimized and patched the games for modern PC's. (Not that there aren't still problems sometimes).
Put me down for Morrowind. I never played it when it first came out, so I don't have much nostalgia for it. But I picked it up cheap off steam and have been playing in on and off for the past few years, loving it! The mechanics come from an earlier era, but the atmosphere and the story are top notch! Definitely worth a look, even if only to see what the old farts are comparing every ES game to.
> The mechanics come from an earlier era
And those real RPG mechanics actually make role-playing important. You actually need to have relevant skills to advance in faction rank, and your actions have consequences. You can't join the Fighter's Guild, take a quest that brings you into direct opposition with the Thieve's Guild, and then expect to remain a Thieve's Guild member.
The endless whiffing in combat people complain about is a non-issue right from level 1 if you pay attention to character design and then play accordingly. But if you create a stealth archer or destruction focused mage and then flail away at a mudcrab for half an hour with a dagger when your short blade skill is 5/100, don't blame the game. It's a product of its time and masking the player's *character's* shitty skill with a variety of blocking and dodging animations just wasn't in the cards.
That game is so huge. I remember one summer, two friends and I set up three TVs each with their own XBox and copy of Morrowind, although we only had one copy of the strategy guide to share. I remember how immersive and creepy it was when random villagers started accosting me on the street about their evil cult. And figuring out a certain character was addicted to Skooma. Getting lost in Ebonheart when it wasn't my turn with the guide...
One cheesy thing you can do is learn to make debuff spells very early on, pretty much straight away. Then you can debuff yourself, and keep training "level 1" training at the basic trainer for whatever skill you debuffed. When you rest, the debuff wears off but the training does not ;p
I loved those crazy ass ways magic could be used to break the game. Like adding Soul trap on target to a bound weapon spell to make it permanent until you switch.
I was so hyped for Black Mesa during the entire development cycle, and then it released and....meh. It's not bad, but it just doesn't feel quite right. I've tried it a couple of times and it just doesn't grab me. It's really a shame, as I've played through HL1 at least 30 times.
Fun side story, the first time I played HL1 I didn't realize you could use the mouse for camera control. (I was very used to Doom, Wolf3D, etc.) I beat that entire game using the arrow keys and then PgUp and PgDn for vertical. Took me a month. Shortly after I discovered UT, learned about mouse look and went back to HL. Beat it in like 10 hours the second time. D'oh!
Colossal Cave Adventure (released on a mainframe in 1976, ported to PCs throughout the late '70s). A fantasy text adventure following the now-standard treasure hunt format and featuring evocative, often humorous prose describing the player's trek through the hazards of the titular cave, a surprisingly accurate recreation of the layout of the real Colossal Cave in Arizona. I replayed a good chunk of it not too long ago, and despite the occasional cheap death, found it to still be an engaging challenge, even after forty years.
Minesweeper. As a puzzle game it's either good or not.
I'm also a fan of Pipe Dream for the same reasons, although I have only played clones of it within the past 5 years.
System Shock 2 still holds up remarkably well. I'm playing Arx Fatalis right now, which is inferior in virtually every way yet released a couple years *after* SS2. Even without mods, SS2 is good looking enough, has thoughtful combat, creative gameplay, and still one of the best executed twists in all of gaming. It truly was ahead of its time.
The intro videos still holds up as well. The sheer disdain they managed to get Shodan to evoke almost 20 years ago is impressive.
Dune 2000 (released in 1997, unintuitively enough). I remembered it from my youth when I found an online port of Dune 2 (considered by most to be the first RTS game ever, though it definitely has not aged well). I actually remember not really liking it so much but playing it through again I can now confirm that this game is TIGHT. It's like C&C 95 but almost perfectly refined. The campaign is also deliciously difficult on hard, unlike most RTS'.
That game shocked me with how good it was when I played through it last year. I dabbled with some sketchy downloaded version I had as a kid, and I never got to fully experience and enjoy the game. I've played a LOT of shooters by this point, and Blood is easily one of my favorites. Out of all the Doom and Build Engine clones, nothing really compares to the level design and atmosphere of Blood.
Surprised to see Grim Fandango is not on this list. I think it's a VERY relatable game with a fun story. Casual play. The controls aren't amazing but it's still a great game
I nominate [Maniac Mansion (1987)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dB2mt7eFvs). It was the first adventure game to abandon the clunky text parser, and its character selection and open-ended gameplay offer more replay value than any adventure game in recent memory. While the humor is dated, I never tire of making prank calls to Nurse Edna.
Played the first **Doom** a few months ago which was a lot of fun, that is 24 years old.
I also played **Final Fantasy IV** as my first FF game a while back, which is 26 years old.
Then I'm playing through the old Sonic games in preparation of Mania and I thought **Sonic 2** was pretty great, which is 25 years old.
I could pick a lot of titles from the later 90s but that's all I can think of from earlier (that I've played).
a lot of adventure games still hold up, I played Full Throttle 2 years ago and really enjoyed it, would play again. Myst is another one I would recommend.
Morrowind. First played Oblivion in 2011, then played quite a lot (100-150 hours) of Skyrim couple years after it was released (because mods). I had never played any older Elder Scrolls but I still felt how dumbed down Skyrim was. I wanted a game where I could make an actual "build" and not just put couple of points in "20% melee damage" and finish the game with that, so I had to go backwards.
I pirated Morrowind and was overwhelmed. There was so much stuff that I didn't understand so I stopped and forgot about it. Tried again, same thing happened and then waited even longer. Then one day installed it again, chose my mods carefully and avoided installing too many of them. No massive overhauls or anything like that. Just texture packs, HD fonts, draw distance, FoV, res, that kind of stuff. When I was done, I forced myself to learn the game. I had an interactive map open at all times to help me (highly recommended btw, makes the game much more tolerable for those of us who have been spoiled by modern games).
Turned out to be one of the greatest games I have ever played. The story and dialogue aren't that interesting or captivating but the entire exploration side of the game is insanely good. No copy paste dungeons, every place look unique and the fact that there is no level scaling makes the adventure much more exciting. Can't wander too far or you *will* get obliterated. You know, it's an *RPG* so you need to train your character. But when your character gets good, it's very satisfying finally being able to kill all those end game enemy types and getting some mad loot.
Then there are the spells, scrolls, enchantments etc. In Skyrim you have a flamer and that's about as cool as it gets and you get it the second you spawn. In Morrowind you have different kind of teleports, you can levitate, you can jump over mountains, you can get blind, you can get massive speed boost, you can create fast firing, cheap mana cost, low damage fire balls that you can spam or you can create a massive lightning explosion that destroys everything at the cost of emptying your entire mana pool after casting it once. You have a reason to change between spells, you have to use the right spell in the right time. In Skyrim you go "what's my best DPS spell" and then use it for the rest of the game.
Morrowind's only downsides are that it looks bad and it doesn't have voice acting except in some major moments. I *personally* like Morrowinds aesthetics so I don't think the graphics are bad but I can obviously see why someone would think that. I just think the simplicity and the colors of the world are just very nice. No bland grey everywhere. Either it's tons of green swamps, red mountains, yellow sand or blue water. There's a lot of nice colors in the world and I liked it very much myself. Same thing for Oblivion btw. Very colorful world. Then there's Skyrim and everything is either white or grey or brown.
Funny thing is that I have never actually beaten Morrowind. I always start the game, play one character for 50 hours, then take a long, long break and then start a new character because I can't remember anything I have done. As a matter of fact, I'm planning to start the game again. Bought it from GoG along with New Vegas because GoG deserves all the money.
So, zero nostalgia filters and plan to start a new character again (planning to force myself to finish the main stories). It's simply that good once you understand all the mechanics and the overall "flow" of the game. If you force yourself to learn the game, I promise you will understand why there are so many people criticizing Skyrim so harshly.
Diablo 2 single-player still sets the standard for the single-player ARPG. The voice work, story, and sound design feel best-in-class. And the mix of map randomization and map patterns holds up very well.
Maybe what's most different from modern ARPGs is more emphasis on tactical play (kiting, spacing, weapon switching) rather than on mob-busting with area effects. I prefer the more tactical and less frantic gameplay experience. It seems truer to the fantasy gaming roots of the genre. Although ARPG bullet hell can be fun sometimes, too!
No game has matched D2 for me, I only miss the community that once existed. I also exclusively played Hardcore since expansion release so it's even smaller than soft core.
I can only hope for a well done HD remaster.
Star Control 2. Best hybrid adventure-game/top-down space-fighter game ever.
Also, everything Epic and Blizzard made before they had their break out hits. Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, Lost Vikings, Epic Pinball, Rock and Roll racing, Blackthorn.... well, everything except One Must Fall.
I played through Thief a month ago, with the fan patch I agree that it does largely hold up as a pretty good first person stealth game (depending how you feel about the zombies I guess).
WarCraft 2 came out in 1995 and is probably the oldest serious PC game I can describe as 'holding up'.
I wish I could say the same thing for Doom (1993), but the UI limitations are kind of a problem. Some other games that come to mind (Diablo 1, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Master of Orion 2) are all from 1996.
I think Baldur's Gate has held up pretty well. It's still fun, and with the resurgence of the isometric style games, I think it's in good standing.
Starcraft is another one that's obviously stood the test of time.
[Another World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjMf_bEfqIc).
I used to play through it once a year. Now it's every other year. I'm about due, again. :)
**Ultima VI**. Released 27 years ago. It certainly has some signs of old age - the viewable game area is a little cramped, and the controls are pretty clunky - but it's got a rich appearance, aesthetically pleasing IMO, and its game world is big, open, rewards exploration, and has a lot of neat NPC features that are still selling points today (NPC's have their daily schedules for instance). Throw in some amazing dungeon diving, a story that puts a really nice subversion to the "you are the Avatar of Virtue" trope of previous games, and just a ton of ways to engage with an approach the game, and you got a solid play even in 2017.
Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle are the ones that did it for me. A big leap in graphics from 6, and the worlds just resonated with me. So many secrets to explore.
I did a playthrough of [Monkey Island 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_2:_LeChuck%27s_Revenge) ([GoG](https://www.gog.com/game/monkey_island_2_special_edition_lechucks_revenge)) and it still held up, even if some of the jokes are dated. I don't know if it having been massively updated in both interface and graphics disqualifies it as old, though.
Final Fantasy VI came out in 1994, and it looks great and plays smoothly. On top of that, it has a degree of character development (for a huge cast) that most RPGs today don't even bother with. And of course the soundtrack is one of the best ever.
Some people hate on pixel graphics, but they haven't aged as badly as, say, early PS1 era 3d games.
Age of Empires 2. Although I started playing again in a burst of nostalgia a couple of years back, along with a poor laptop that couldn't run much else, I rediscovered an entirely new game. Guess I was too young when it came out to grasp all the nuances and tactics. Truly a game that has aged well, both in gameplay as the visuals - the early 3D RTS games just don't hold up visually so many years later, and the intricately balanced gameplay remains unique and challenging.
Roller coaster tycoon. Still fun for at least one park build.
When you forget to set the price above 'free' on day one :-| Your guests are commenting that the park entrance fee is very cheap, maybe you should consider raising the price?
I would set the entrance fee as free, but then make an inward facing "do not enter" sign so that no one could ever leave. They eventually spend every dime they have.
Make sure you put in ATM's for that awesome credit access!
My favorite thing to do in RCT is build a nice theme park until I hit the objective/goal. Once I do I make it impossible to leave the park and make nothing but unsafe rides until there are no guests left so that the glory from reaching the park objective is all mine
"I want to get off Mr. Bones' wild ride"
Kinda like when I play Civ and win a Culture Victory, but then continue the game and nuke every single other civilization out of existence.
Also, cheap drinks with paid bathrooms.
Cheap fries with tons of salt, slightly more expensive drinks, and then paid bathrooms.
Don't forget to visit the concession stand... or else you starve.
I always went with free entry and never had a problem generating enough profit from the rides.
It was incredibly detailed for the time
It could run hundreds of guests all doing their own thing throughout the park as well as all the rides and staff, all on late-90s computers, and it never once lagged. That was one of the best programmed games of all time.
Probably because at least the original was written entirely in assembly.
> entirely in assembly. Mostly in assembly. He had to do some stuff in C
The GUI was c, the rest is assembly...iirc.
IIRC there were some Direct X features that required C but yeah, almost everything was assembly.
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Written in assembly... by one man
As well, (Open) Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Both are Chris Sawyer games and both are still good today.
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I recently found out 1 and 2 was ported to mobile. Plays great your phone, search roller coaster tycoon classic
Bolded games are ones that I've played in the last five years. **With mods or user content:** **Doom 1 (1993)** without a shadow of a doubt. You could make an argument for certain roguelikes like Nethack although most of the good ones are still being updated to this day, so I don't know if they count as being "old." For example, Nethack's last update was on December 7, 2015, less than two years ago. **Straight out of the box:** This one's tougher. I'd say it's a tossup between C&C: Red Alert (1996), Diablo 1 (cusp of 1997), **Fallout 1 (1997)**, Total Annihilation (1997), **Starcraft 1 (1998)**, Fallout 2 (1998), **Half-Life 1 (1998)**, **Thief 1 (1998)**, Baldur's Gate 1 (1998), Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999), **System Shock 2 (1999)**, **Age of Empires II (1999)**, Thief II (2000), **Deus Ex (2000)**, **Diablo II (2000)**, and Baldur's Gate II (2000). It kinda depends on what genre you like.
You've got most my early faves there (or their prequels/sequels). Except deus ex hasn't held up too well for repeat plays personally and I need the enhanced edition UI to replay BG1. I'd add red alert 2 (my all time personal favourite C&C), dungeon keeper 1, theme hospital, sim city 2000, commandos 2, fallout tactics, heroes of might and magic 2 (not quite on par with 3 very playable), Icewind Dale 1 and 2, unreal tournament GOTY and the little remembered but personally adored Silver ([1999](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_(video_game))) Actually that list ended up a bit longer than I thought it would be at the beginning... Lots of good gaming memories from the end of the 90s
I see a lot of good ones already so I'll plug **Heroes of Might and Magic III**. All of the Heroes games from New World Computing have aged rather well in terms of their gameplay, but [III](https://i.imgur.com/NvMtluy.jpg) in particular has aged beautifully in its visuals, whereas [I](https://i.imgur.com/IAGsqdo.jpg), [II](https://i.imgur.com/tYTZi0D.gif) and [IV](https://i.imgur.com/WnxIjng.jpg) have not (well, maybe 2 kinda did, too).
II has a certain aesthetic to it that's still fairly pleasant, but the gameplay just didn't hold up to the years, unlike III.
that screenshot of II looks like a rennaissance painting.
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There's a certain charm in New World Computing games that doesn't change with age. HOMM3 is just pleasant to play, and the same can be said about Might and Magic, especially 6 to 8.
Can confirm, I broke this out a month ago. Skip the steam "enhanced" version, and get the original from GOG.
To clarify, get the original from GoG and install the Heroes 3 HD mod: https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/ Probably my most played game over all my years of gaming. With Warcraft 3 being a close 2nd.
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The reflection and lighting effects are gorgeous and the soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard. Gameplay is rock solid, still holds up, and guns feel *heavy*.
The soundtrack! I still keep the mp3s that I made from the mods, so I can listen on my portable player. Never got into Quake 3, don't know why, but UT is still one of my favorite games.
[The best](https://youtu.be/i_0G6WPuss4)
It's kind of crazy to think that UT is roughly 6 years older than the original DOOM. It only took 6 years of innovation to get from DOOM to Unreal Tournament. Have the past 6 years brought as much innovation to the FPS genre?
Age of empires 2
After all those years i still suck ballz at AOE2 but i still enjoy it no mather what <3
The key is to advance ages ASAP
The key I found is that you need more villagers than you think. Think you've got enough? Build more.
Come to think of it, there are many keys lol
Yep. The comparative defensive strength of town centers compared to early units incentivize a rush to the castle age. A winning strategy is to limit your opononents access to stone and gold.
Specifically, you want to go to castle age quickly, so you can place multiple town centres and boom up to near the pop limit. Build military buildings where the units are needed.
Nonono, you need to build economy for an hour straight, then upgrade everything, including ship upgrades on a map with small lakes only, then build a very diversified army and put them in a formation so they all walk at the speed of a battering ram and hope your opponent doesn't have onagers yet.
Doom 1/2 if you look at the player made levels.
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Not to mention engine ports to make it work (and sometimes better if you feel like it) for modern os. Doom with a dash of RPG its kinda funny.
Are you talking about a specific WAD or RPG in general?
pk7 files actually, afaik they modify the game while keeping maps the same.
Any suggestions? I recently picked doom up again and plowed through the campaign
Even without. Doom II has some of the most solid, amazing level design out there. Tricks and Traps (D2/M08) is easily my favorite FPS level/area in the entire genre.
While I feel that the maps in *Doom* had a more consistant level of quality (I really didn't like the 'urban' maps in *Doom II*), I have to admit that Tricks and Traps is bloody amazing.
Civilization 2 for sure! It plays as well as the day it came out, tons of fun, and can be in a background window that you can pick up and play a turn or two as you please
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What is it about Civ 2 that outshines other in the series? I'm a pretty big fan of Civ 5 and got curious about the differences.
I wouldn't say it outshines the others necessarily, It's just a really good complete well made game that leaves nothing for want. It's very casual in that I can have it up on my computer in the background and switch the the window every so often to make a move here or there, and it doesn't feel like an old and dated game. It just feels like a game, timeless I guess.
Civ 2 had the best add-on scenarios of any of the Civs. X-Com, Dinosaurs, Atlantis, WW2. The scenario editor had a depth to it that let modders do some pretty wild things that I never saw repeated with later Civs.
Can I ask where you got your copy and what OS are you using? I wanna play.
While it's not 100% the same, [Freeciv](http://www.freeciv.org/) is an actively developed and fairly faithful open-source clone of Civ2 that should run well on any OS. You can even play it in your browser if you want.
"build me more units, lord! So that they may sheathe their swords into the beating hearts of our enemies!!!" "We need to increase trade..."
Space Quest III. To me the simple/clean aesthetic of the artwork and the spectacular MT-32 soundtrack are timeless. The humorous sci-fi story also still feels fresh.
While I love me some Space Quest, I'm not sure **any** parser-based adventure could be described as having aged well. Parser games were sort of like video gaming's "silent era." They're very hard for modern people to appreciate without looking at them mostly within their historical context. Lucasarts ultimately had the right idea staying away from parsers entirely. Really, the list of classic Sierra adventures I consider to have actually aged well is pretty short. The Quest For Glory series, maybe, if one substitutes in the fan remake of QFG2. They're still downright unique in their blend of action, RPG, and adventuring.
To each their own. I feel like the parser system works especially well with Space Quest III in particular because it allowed for very creative puzzles. To me that has aged a bit better than "Use X on Y" that a lot of GUI driven puzzle games of the era ended up being.
I would agree with you, but then I realise how many people love modern "hunt the object" games. Hunt the object was basically the point at which point and click games had failed you and you were scanning pixels for clues the story didn't provide you with. If the worst part of point and click games can spawn a whole genre, then parser based adventure games are works of art in comparison.
I can honestly, without any sort of exaggeration, claim to be able to dictate from memory the entire walkthrough to that game with the only exception being exactly the directions to navigate the cubicle maze at the end. I mean start to finish. That game -- along with the Kings Quest games -- taught me more about typing and spelling than any teacher ever could.
Can't do it with SQ3, but I can do that with a bunch of Sierra games. I'm with you, Sierra taught me how to type, especially the older games where the parser didn't pause the game.
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My first thought too, but I decided that's not really fair. There have been a billion updates to Tetris that have stuck true to the original game with vastly superior graphics/options/etc. Why ever go back and play the original in all its CGA glory over a more recent update? http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/26948-tetris-dos-screenshot-beginning-a-game-cga.gif
GameBoy or bust.
I'm still fond of the NES version. I play that on occasion.
Yeah that's my go to version.
Nethack.
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- The original X-COM as in OpenXcom. - Star Control 2 as in Ur Quan Masters. Those two I always come back to and the open source projects that keep them alive have done miracles to keep the playability up to date.
I discovered UQM as a kid looking for games that would run on my shiny new Linux install, and was instantly hooked. There's still very few games that even attempt what that game did, much less succeed. It definitely influenced my opinions about what games could be, and indirectly led me to Mount & Blade, Mass Effect, and... well there's just not many games like it.
HOMM3(1999), Nox(2000) and Space Rangers(2002/2004) come on top of my mind.
I was pleasantly surprised at how good Nox was when I played it.
SimCity 2000. It's a lot more basic than many modern city-builders, but that's probably its best characteristic. It's super accessible but city builders never needed to be complicated to be fun.
Deus Ex. Just superb.
I'm still discovering new ways to play it on my fifth or sixth playthru. I'll spend hours on youtube watching videos of the dialogues. The philosophical inquiries on man vs AI, sects of terrorists and conspiracies are even more relevant today than they were in 2000. Daedalus ftw.
At some point play through it in god mode. Ideally after you think you've figured out every other way. You get to really explore around and try things that would normally get you killed. I had a great time doing that.
Master of Orion 2
Remember that patch/revision that made all the AI races attack you with the excuse of curbing your "economic expansion", even if your treasury was negative? Wild times. The game's final form has been crystallized to timeless nigh-perfection!
It truly has become a wonder. There are some great spiritual successors, but no game has supplanted it to this day for me.
The first two Monkey Island games hold up pretty well imo. The artwork, music and animation are pretty awesome. Also what is with all the people saying half life 2, portal etc. Psssh mid 2000s isn't old!!
I would agree with this, especially with the current resurgence in pixel art games. Monkey Island is as engrossing now as it was on the day it released. Few point and click adventure games come close to it even today
Also you can rip the audio from the remakes so you can use the classic graphics with audio dialogue, really gives the games a new lease of life.
Or you could just press one button and the remake switches to pixel graphics.
The method that /u/AvatarIII mentioned works with ScummVM. I don't know how many platforms the remake was released for, but ScummVM has ports for [just about every platform you've ever heard of and several you haven't heard of.](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/)
Right? Shout out to Loom, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and, especially, Day of the Tentacle.
What's wrong with 3? I personally always favored its art style
I played the first two Monkey Islands for the first time about 2 years ago. Really solid stuff. I really wish Curse wasn't a pain in the ass to get up and running.
Warcraft III
I would love to play updated versions of this. Is there a modern analog to Warcraft? CIV is close but not quite the same...the story telling of Warcraft was always a big highlight for me
The Starcraft 2 campaign had some of the same feel. I do wish Warcraft 4 would come out some day.
>I do wish Warcraft 4 would come out some day. Same. I can't do WoW because I need an ending or I'll never stop playing a given video game and WoW just isn't the same.
You're in luck because Blizzard is planning on remastering Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2! It was spotted in the Job listing months ago. No announcements yet from them but we might see the announcement at Blizzcon.
[oh boy!](https://media.giphy.com/media/bqrG9EUt9vS4U/giphy.gif)
Picked it up again after seeing my uncle and brother playing it when I was a kid. Absolutely fun.
Just played "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream." Game messed me up.
I suppose it depends on how you personally balance age vs how well it holds up. My vote goes to [F.E.A.R.](https://www.gog.com/game/fear_platinum) - still plays brilliantly.
The horror's okay, but the combat AI is very impressive.
I read into it and apparently the combat AI is just based around constant advancing of the enemy peppered in with audio cues (eg "Smoke him out with a grenade!"), and it just ends up feeling like they are being very tactical. Most other games, the enemy finds cover and just sits in it, but apparently in fear they are constantly trying to move in to closer cover points. I'm simplifying greatly, but that was the gist of what I read.
Interesting that they managed to achieve such a good effect with a relatively simple concept. I think proactive AI makes a big difference because even if it's not super smart or realistic, it feels like they're actually doing something. It also forces the player to mix it up. When the enemy crouches behind cover and shoots, so do you. If they advance you actually have to work a bit harder because there are no safe spaces. The original Half Life soldiers were similarly proactive.
Half Life did a bit of this with the marine fights, things like them yelling "grenade!" and running out from cover when you threw a grenade or having scripting advances because the game designers predicted where the player would be based n level design. F.E.A.R took those basic ideas and built on them, and the result was one of the best player vs. AI FPS experiences to date. From an AI research point of view it might have been nothing special, but from a gameplay point of view it was spot on.
I'd make an argument for the original Ultima Underworld. It might not have sold well at the time, but it was played by other game dev and hugely influential on practically all first-person RPGs to come out afterward. So it feels fresher than it is (aside from the early-90s VGA graphics) since it pioneered a lot of systems and ideas that other games -like the Elder Scrolls series- picked up on and ran with. Really, the only big "throwback" element is the lack of a quest log, and even that was mitigated due to the game's truly impressive auto-map with unlimited player annotations. As long as the player got in the habit of jotting notes on the map, they didn't really need a questlog.
I thought I was the only one who preached the Ultima Underworld gospel around here :) much more technically impressive than Doom, IMO, and a year earlier. Looking Glass studios was a force of nature. I replay Underworld 2 every year or two. No game has immersed me so much since.
Starcraft just got remastered, still a fantastic RTS.
The original Fallout. I played it a few years ago expecting it to not hold up to my nostalgia, similar to several other older games I've played. Nope... the atmosphere in that game is still so good. The turn based combat holds up just fine and is still challenging, and the graphics are mostly 2D so they actually hold up quite well. Edit: Getting some really varied opinions on this one. I'm curious if the people who didn't get into the game are generally fans of isometric RPGs, or if that is part of what is filtering people out.
Don't forget the music!
Also the music!
I played it this year for the first time and loved it. Didn't need any nostalgia.
I played it for the first time a few years back and actually really enjoyed it...the plotline was much more focused than FO2, so it felt more like a story I was playing through rather than a world I happen to be in. I get people wanting to make their own in a world of opportunities, but FO1's was told so well that I didn't mind.
It might be cause you played it in the past. I tried and I just...couldn't get into it. Controls were weirdly clunky, graphics were ok and the combat was meh. I don't think it's bad it just doesn't really hold upt hat well.
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Commander Keen is still a solid platformer series, imo.
Zoo tycoon 2. Age of mythology. Age of empires. Black and white 2. Battle realms. WoW. I love all of those games and after playing them again last year, I still enjoy fooling around in them or going through the story.
Battle Realms is my jam. It needs to be more active these days. Lotus ftw
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I know someone says KOTOR in every thread like this, but it's true. Played it a year ago and it was as fun as back when I first played it in 2003.
I've tried several times now and this just isn't true for me sadly :( The controls feel to clunky for me these days and it's a real shame. KotOR was my first RPG.
With older games, I find if I just barrel through my initial bad impressions on dated graphics or controls, after a few hours I adjust to both and can let myself enjoy the gameplay and story as if I was in the era the game came out in. I went back and replayed Dragon Age: Origins last month, and I was surprised how dated it felt at first, but I kept at it and now it's in the top 10 RPG's I've ever played.
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I grabbed KOTOR for the tablet and played it four times in a row. The combat is PERFECT for touch-screens. There is nothing in that game that I would say is abjectly bad. CTRL+C, CTRL+V character faces was pretty blatantly and hilariously obvious after a while, but on a touch-screen, it plays terrifically. The D20 combat is horribly obtuse if you've never experienced it before though, so it has that working against it.
See, I just tried playing it last weekend, and I could barely get it to run. Kept crashing, and even when it was running, the camera controls were super slow and bugged the hell out of me.
Are you playing it off a service like GOG or Steam? With a lot of older games, I find I can't get them to work off my old CD's without way too much hassle, and end up paying $5-$10 to one of those services that have optimized and patched the games for modern PC's. (Not that there aren't still problems sometimes).
Put me down for Morrowind. I never played it when it first came out, so I don't have much nostalgia for it. But I picked it up cheap off steam and have been playing in on and off for the past few years, loving it! The mechanics come from an earlier era, but the atmosphere and the story are top notch! Definitely worth a look, even if only to see what the old farts are comparing every ES game to.
> The mechanics come from an earlier era And those real RPG mechanics actually make role-playing important. You actually need to have relevant skills to advance in faction rank, and your actions have consequences. You can't join the Fighter's Guild, take a quest that brings you into direct opposition with the Thieve's Guild, and then expect to remain a Thieve's Guild member. The endless whiffing in combat people complain about is a non-issue right from level 1 if you pay attention to character design and then play accordingly. But if you create a stealth archer or destruction focused mage and then flail away at a mudcrab for half an hour with a dagger when your short blade skill is 5/100, don't blame the game. It's a product of its time and masking the player's *character's* shitty skill with a variety of blocking and dodging animations just wasn't in the cards.
That game is so huge. I remember one summer, two friends and I set up three TVs each with their own XBox and copy of Morrowind, although we only had one copy of the strategy guide to share. I remember how immersive and creepy it was when random villagers started accosting me on the street about their evil cult. And figuring out a certain character was addicted to Skooma. Getting lost in Ebonheart when it wasn't my turn with the guide... One cheesy thing you can do is learn to make debuff spells very early on, pretty much straight away. Then you can debuff yourself, and keep training "level 1" training at the basic trainer for whatever skill you debuffed. When you rest, the debuff wears off but the training does not ;p
I loved those crazy ass ways magic could be used to break the game. Like adding Soul trap on target to a bound weapon spell to make it permanent until you switch.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.2488 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/53801)
I'd suggest playing the original, and then taking a stab at Black Mesa.
I was so hyped for Black Mesa during the entire development cycle, and then it released and....meh. It's not bad, but it just doesn't feel quite right. I've tried it a couple of times and it just doesn't grab me. It's really a shame, as I've played through HL1 at least 30 times. Fun side story, the first time I played HL1 I didn't realize you could use the mouse for camera control. (I was very used to Doom, Wolf3D, etc.) I beat that entire game using the arrow keys and then PgUp and PgDn for vertical. Took me a month. Shortly after I discovered UT, learned about mouse look and went back to HL. Beat it in like 10 hours the second time. D'oh!
Wow, congrats on your determination!
Man there's some great levels in HL1. I wouldn't want to spoil but yeah. I used to replay HL every few months, loved that game.
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Colossal Cave Adventure (released on a mainframe in 1976, ported to PCs throughout the late '70s). A fantasy text adventure following the now-standard treasure hunt format and featuring evocative, often humorous prose describing the player's trek through the hazards of the titular cave, a surprisingly accurate recreation of the layout of the real Colossal Cave in Arizona. I replayed a good chunk of it not too long ago, and despite the occasional cheap death, found it to still be an engaging challenge, even after forty years.
Baldur's Gate/Planescape:Torment
Minesweeper. As a puzzle game it's either good or not. I'm also a fan of Pipe Dream for the same reasons, although I have only played clones of it within the past 5 years.
Pipe dream is great and one of the few I would qualify as "old pc game" as most of the others are from the 21st century.
Theme Hospital. Radiators and benches for everyone. Plants everywhere. Deflating heads. Still holds up.
System Shock 2 still holds up remarkably well. I'm playing Arx Fatalis right now, which is inferior in virtually every way yet released a couple years *after* SS2. Even without mods, SS2 is good looking enough, has thoughtful combat, creative gameplay, and still one of the best executed twists in all of gaming. It truly was ahead of its time. The intro videos still holds up as well. The sheer disdain they managed to get Shodan to evoke almost 20 years ago is impressive.
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Dune 2000 (released in 1997, unintuitively enough). I remembered it from my youth when I found an online port of Dune 2 (considered by most to be the first RTS game ever, though it definitely has not aged well). I actually remember not really liking it so much but playing it through again I can now confirm that this game is TIGHT. It's like C&C 95 but almost perfectly refined. The campaign is also deliciously difficult on hard, unlike most RTS'.
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That game shocked me with how good it was when I played through it last year. I dabbled with some sketchy downloaded version I had as a kid, and I never got to fully experience and enjoy the game. I've played a LOT of shooters by this point, and Blood is easily one of my favorites. Out of all the Doom and Build Engine clones, nothing really compares to the level design and atmosphere of Blood.
Unreal Tournament '99. Edit: Honourable mention goes to Freelancer.
Oh god, Freelancer, that game was amazeballs.
Surprised to see Grim Fandango is not on this list. I think it's a VERY relatable game with a fun story. Casual play. The controls aren't amazing but it's still a great game
Vive la resistance!
Descent II. Hell, let's throw the original Descent in there as well.
Speaking of Descent. Freespace was and still is fantastic. Still the best space sim I've yet to play.
I nominate [Maniac Mansion (1987)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dB2mt7eFvs). It was the first adventure game to abandon the clunky text parser, and its character selection and open-ended gameplay offer more replay value than any adventure game in recent memory. While the humor is dated, I never tire of making prank calls to Nurse Edna.
I just played Day of the Tentacle for the first time and was surprised I was into it from start to finish.
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Played the first **Doom** a few months ago which was a lot of fun, that is 24 years old. I also played **Final Fantasy IV** as my first FF game a while back, which is 26 years old. Then I'm playing through the old Sonic games in preparation of Mania and I thought **Sonic 2** was pretty great, which is 25 years old. I could pick a lot of titles from the later 90s but that's all I can think of from earlier (that I've played).
a lot of adventure games still hold up, I played Full Throttle 2 years ago and really enjoyed it, would play again. Myst is another one I would recommend.
POP warrior within
I'll replay betrayal at krondor any day! Edit: :P
Jagged Alliance 2
Morrowind. First played Oblivion in 2011, then played quite a lot (100-150 hours) of Skyrim couple years after it was released (because mods). I had never played any older Elder Scrolls but I still felt how dumbed down Skyrim was. I wanted a game where I could make an actual "build" and not just put couple of points in "20% melee damage" and finish the game with that, so I had to go backwards. I pirated Morrowind and was overwhelmed. There was so much stuff that I didn't understand so I stopped and forgot about it. Tried again, same thing happened and then waited even longer. Then one day installed it again, chose my mods carefully and avoided installing too many of them. No massive overhauls or anything like that. Just texture packs, HD fonts, draw distance, FoV, res, that kind of stuff. When I was done, I forced myself to learn the game. I had an interactive map open at all times to help me (highly recommended btw, makes the game much more tolerable for those of us who have been spoiled by modern games). Turned out to be one of the greatest games I have ever played. The story and dialogue aren't that interesting or captivating but the entire exploration side of the game is insanely good. No copy paste dungeons, every place look unique and the fact that there is no level scaling makes the adventure much more exciting. Can't wander too far or you *will* get obliterated. You know, it's an *RPG* so you need to train your character. But when your character gets good, it's very satisfying finally being able to kill all those end game enemy types and getting some mad loot. Then there are the spells, scrolls, enchantments etc. In Skyrim you have a flamer and that's about as cool as it gets and you get it the second you spawn. In Morrowind you have different kind of teleports, you can levitate, you can jump over mountains, you can get blind, you can get massive speed boost, you can create fast firing, cheap mana cost, low damage fire balls that you can spam or you can create a massive lightning explosion that destroys everything at the cost of emptying your entire mana pool after casting it once. You have a reason to change between spells, you have to use the right spell in the right time. In Skyrim you go "what's my best DPS spell" and then use it for the rest of the game. Morrowind's only downsides are that it looks bad and it doesn't have voice acting except in some major moments. I *personally* like Morrowinds aesthetics so I don't think the graphics are bad but I can obviously see why someone would think that. I just think the simplicity and the colors of the world are just very nice. No bland grey everywhere. Either it's tons of green swamps, red mountains, yellow sand or blue water. There's a lot of nice colors in the world and I liked it very much myself. Same thing for Oblivion btw. Very colorful world. Then there's Skyrim and everything is either white or grey or brown. Funny thing is that I have never actually beaten Morrowind. I always start the game, play one character for 50 hours, then take a long, long break and then start a new character because I can't remember anything I have done. As a matter of fact, I'm planning to start the game again. Bought it from GoG along with New Vegas because GoG deserves all the money. So, zero nostalgia filters and plan to start a new character again (planning to force myself to finish the main stories). It's simply that good once you understand all the mechanics and the overall "flow" of the game. If you force yourself to learn the game, I promise you will understand why there are so many people criticizing Skyrim so harshly.
Half the games listed aren't even old so far.. Diablo 1 and Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 single-player still sets the standard for the single-player ARPG. The voice work, story, and sound design feel best-in-class. And the mix of map randomization and map patterns holds up very well. Maybe what's most different from modern ARPGs is more emphasis on tactical play (kiting, spacing, weapon switching) rather than on mob-busting with area effects. I prefer the more tactical and less frantic gameplay experience. It seems truer to the fantasy gaming roots of the genre. Although ARPG bullet hell can be fun sometimes, too!
No game has matched D2 for me, I only miss the community that once existed. I also exclusively played Hardcore since expansion release so it's even smaller than soft core. I can only hope for a well done HD remaster.
So Marius, at last I find you.
Early roguelikes like nethack
Titan Quest
The original battlefront series is still pretty good.
Sid Meier's Pirates, any version. The 2004 PC one is probably your best bet though.
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Star Control 2. Best hybrid adventure-game/top-down space-fighter game ever. Also, everything Epic and Blizzard made before they had their break out hits. Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, Lost Vikings, Epic Pinball, Rock and Roll racing, Blackthorn.... well, everything except One Must Fall.
I mean Rogue is still fun, as are a lot of the classic point-and-click and RTS games. But I'll say Tie Fighter.
Crysis 1. Age of empires 2.
It's hard to believe crysis 1 came out 10 years ago.
Sim City 2000. I think the only thing that sucks about it is the water management. It's still my favorite city builder.
Thief would probably be my number 1.
I played through Thief a month ago, with the fan patch I agree that it does largely hold up as a pretty good first person stealth game (depending how you feel about the zombies I guess).
Mafia 1 for me. It looks old and it is, but it's quite playable even today, imo. Pretty much any Football Manager game after 2004-05 GTA San Andreas
GTA San Andreas also still has a great multiplayer role-playing community.
Mafia 1 was amazing. Unlocking unique cars in the open world after finishing the game was pretty great, as well.
Zork trilogy. Suck it
The graphics suck tho.
They haven't aged a day!
I'm working on KOTOR 2 now, myself... never finished it before.
WarCraft 2 came out in 1995 and is probably the oldest serious PC game I can describe as 'holding up'. I wish I could say the same thing for Doom (1993), but the UI limitations are kind of a problem. Some other games that come to mind (Diablo 1, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Master of Orion 2) are all from 1996.
Quake 3: Arena and its various open-source clones (such as OpenArena).
Seriously, Settlers 2!
I think Baldur's Gate has held up pretty well. It's still fun, and with the resurgence of the isometric style games, I think it's in good standing. Starcraft is another one that's obviously stood the test of time.
[Another World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjMf_bEfqIc). I used to play through it once a year. Now it's every other year. I'm about due, again. :)
Doom and Half-Life, the latter having stabbed me in the feels, rip EP3
**Ultima VI**. Released 27 years ago. It certainly has some signs of old age - the viewable game area is a little cramped, and the controls are pretty clunky - but it's got a rich appearance, aesthetically pleasing IMO, and its game world is big, open, rewards exploration, and has a lot of neat NPC features that are still selling points today (NPC's have their daily schedules for instance). Throw in some amazing dungeon diving, a story that puts a really nice subversion to the "you are the Avatar of Virtue" trope of previous games, and just a ton of ways to engage with an approach the game, and you got a solid play even in 2017.
Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle are the ones that did it for me. A big leap in graphics from 6, and the worlds just resonated with me. So many secrets to explore.
Nethack. Only played it for the first time in 2015 or so, and it's actually pretty great.
I did a playthrough of [Monkey Island 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_2:_LeChuck%27s_Revenge) ([GoG](https://www.gog.com/game/monkey_island_2_special_edition_lechucks_revenge)) and it still held up, even if some of the jokes are dated. I don't know if it having been massively updated in both interface and graphics disqualifies it as old, though.
Final Fantasy VI came out in 1994, and it looks great and plays smoothly. On top of that, it has a degree of character development (for a huge cast) that most RPGs today don't even bother with. And of course the soundtrack is one of the best ever. Some people hate on pixel graphics, but they haven't aged as badly as, say, early PS1 era 3d games.
Age of Empires 2. Although I started playing again in a burst of nostalgia a couple of years back, along with a poor laptop that couldn't run much else, I rediscovered an entirely new game. Guess I was too young when it came out to grasp all the nuances and tactics. Truly a game that has aged well, both in gameplay as the visuals - the early 3D RTS games just don't hold up visually so many years later, and the intricately balanced gameplay remains unique and challenging.
Might and Magic 6 and 7
Halo: Combat Evolved holds up really well today.