Classic Games (Or Retro Games if you don't think Classic applies)

[Jer-oh-me]

Tapewolf, unless it's a moderator issue, I say images away! I don't know if this qualifies as 'my thread' but I'm certainly glad I started it. If it's a mod issue I'll respect that, don't want to be unreasonable towards them and their obviously ridiculously strenuous task (No Sarcasm) of herding us all.

Anyway, someone mentioned The Secret of Monkey Island series, I wish I'd mentioned that one, especially after watching a particular movie that reminds me of it especially. Anyhoo, keep up the awesome posts everyone! This is wicked fun!

[Rakala]

Okay, Seventh Cross Evolution is the oddest game in the world. You start out as a simple protist, a single celled organism. You have to slowly eat and work your way up to the Origin status. As you kill a few creatures you can finally evolve. Each creature is broken up into four parts. Head, Arm, Body, and Leg. There are a total of 30 creatures, but there's no way to determine which one you'll get. The 30th is Human, but humans are actually not the strongest, they are just the best spell casters. Yes you cast spells. If you have a Dreamcast see if you can get a copy. It's a strangely fun game, it's mostly combat based yet the combat isn't great but somehow it's amazing. Uh.... are spoilers allowed here?

[Jer-oh-me]

Hmmm, that's tangental, but I think we can work with it! Folks! Obscure games! Wierd games! Stuff that qualifies as a diamond in the rough.

[rt]

Odd games? I'd have to get out the disks, but back in the days of floppies and manuals I'd occasionally inhereit disks w/o any instructions and the occasional demo. Some were just a bit odd, but add the "what am I supposed to do?" factor, and it multiplies by 10 in some cases. Others it just multiplies the fun 

One demo / shareware pops to mind. IIRC "Project Buzzbar" you are a little space ship, shoot the bad guys, and pick up wayward floating astronauts. 

I also recall a mortal combat knockoff with the guys replaced by fruit.

[Janus Whitefurr]

Hmmm, that's tangental, but I think we can work with it! Folks! Obscure games! Wierd games! Stuff that qualifies as a diamond in the rough.

I'll nominate Shadow of Destiny/Memories (depending on your locale) for PS2 as a diamond in the rough game, though not a 'classic' in the old sense.

The entire game revolves around trying to prevent your own death after being given the power to travel back in time. Each time, the situation changes, and a plot begins to develop involving the main character and who he sees and meets.  Fairly simple and short game otherwise, but ridiculously fun.

[Rakala]

Okay, in the Seventh Cross Evolution booklet it clearly says there is no end to the game. However I was highly surprised when I found both a story and an ending. To start, there are several ages you go to in evolution. Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and then mammals. Now and then throughout the game you see this angel looking girl flying around shooting animals with lasers. She shoots any animals that are in the wrong stage of evolution for the many different areas. After you beat the boss in the mammal area, a huge ship appears and you see a human woman in loincloths on the ground which the angel is trying to kill. You kill the angel, and then get abducted by futuristic humans. Turns out our world ended sometime in 2006. Some red mist came out of the Arctic circle which caused a diseas and killed lots of people. There were 2 groups of people, those who wanted to go to a different planet, and others who decided they would release protists who would evolve to be immune to the disease, steal the genetics, and implant them in humans. Also the Earth is sentient. This comes out of nowhere. There are 2 endings, the human ending and the creature ending. In the creature ending, you end up going against the planet's wishes and saving the humans in a manner. You save the kids or something. The human ending is the ship crashes, the human woman in loincloths you saved puts a loincloth on you, and you go on to make another society. Game over. This is the game as much as I understand it. The plot makes about as much sense to me.

[VSMIT]

Since we are now on the subject of obscure games, try out Battlezone.  Or Battlezone II.  They were easily the forerunners of the hybrid RTS/FPS.  And the story for the first game wasn't half bad, either.  The second game changes a little of the story from the first, but it's still good, and there is a host of mods that are either in development or have been released for it, most of them being extremely well made.

[Rakala]

Okay, I must ask, since nobody else has seemingly ever heard of this game, but has anybody heard of Shining Force or Shining Force II?

[Jer-oh-me]

I've played Shining Force in a Genesis collection pack I didn't know that there was a second one.

King dies.

That textbox line made me laugh to no end.

[Ryudo Lee]

I tried to write about this game, but didn't get very far.  But, if you want an obscure title, then Uplink Hacker Elite is it.  It's a hacker simulator, written by the same guys that made Darwinia and Defcon.  I first located it on GameTap, of all places.  But GameTap has an old old version that's prone to crashing, so I went and got myself an actual copy of the game.  There's some mods out there for it, but most only work on older versions of the game.  Except for one, called Onlink, which is becoming a melting pot of a bunch of different mods, plus some original stuff too.  They also put out an unofficial patch which fixes some things that Introversion didn't.

[Janus Whitefurr]

I played music with Uplink once. I did it by getting a mod that, when selected, automatically bounced your connection between however many servers were on the map before connecting to your target server. When the map has upwards of fifty to sixty servers, it gets rather orchaestral.

So, Ryudo, which was easier for you? Saving the internet, or destroying it?

[Ryudo Lee]

Saving it.  I like being able to continue playing the game after finishing the story.  But even after the story's over, I keep dropping Revelation on servers I get commissioned to destroy.

[Rakala]

I've played Shining Force in a Genesis collection pack I didn't know that there was a second one.

King dies.

That textbox line made me laugh to no end.

There is a second one which is much better for several features. Random encounters, a sort of exploration, and KIWI!
http://sf2.shiningforcecentral.com/pages/characters/kiwi.html

[Lysander]

My brother found a shining force collection for Sega CD, on which I've never seen any of the games elsewhere. All the games were quite good and stories from the 1st two intertwine in the 3rd.

Ever since I helped a kid do some stuff on Super Mario World near a year ago I've wanted to play that more than most everything. And soon I might have time to play.   

[Rakala]

Well, they partially intertwine in the second one, but only barely. If you talk to villagers you find out in 2 you find out that all the humans in the game, ALL of them, came from the continent that the first game took place on.

I've never played the third. I'll have to find it somewhere. Was it just Shining Force 3 or did it have a special title?

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

I'm mostly a PC gamer myself, but my old/retro/classics that I have fond memories (and still play occasionally)


Lords of the Realm 2. First game I can recally which had that mixed turn based strategy and real time combat in a medievalish army setting. Paved the way for things like Rome, Total War.

Dune 2. First real RTS. 'nuff said.


Ultimas 1-7 and Underworld 1 and 2 Come on, they really kinda started the CRPG theme. Too bad EA botched the series royally.


Wing Commander  and sequels Anyone remember the joy's of space flying and dogfighting with the cats?


Master of Magic I was a MTG fan, and when this came out I was instantly taken aback at how clever it was. It's more than just a ripoff of the card game (Actually, it was in design before MTG was released) and I'vfe yet to see a strategy game that managed to balance so many gameplay elements so perfectly.

X-Com Is X-Com. Maybe a bit light on the replay department, but come on, that was an incredibly fun game.

Planescape: Torment Maybe not quite old enough to be called a classic, but I've never seen a game where character development was such an integral part of the RPG. I've yet to see any RPG campaign, either on computer or Tabletop, beat that one out. TNO FOREVER!!!!!

Finally, there was this odd little puzzle game called Chip's challenge. I got it when I was like 6, (because my parents wanted a non-violent game) and I must have spent nearly a hundred hours cracking the 150ish levels. It was (insert expletive of choice) awesome, and I have *NEVER* played a puzzle game as good. Not even Portal.

[VSMIT]

I remember Chip's Challenge!  That was one of the first games I ever played.  Damned difficult if you're only 6 years old, though.  I think it would be very interesting if they were to remake Chip's Challenge using modern graphics.  But they won't.

[Jairus]

I remember Chip's Challenge!  That was one of the first games I ever played.  Damned difficult if you're only 6 years old, though.  I think it would be very interesting if they were to remake Chip's Challenge using modern graphics.  But they won't.

If it makes you feel any better, they'd probably ruin the remake somehow.

[VSMIT]

Ya know, for some reason that actually doesn't make me feel better.  Actually makes me feel a bit worse.

[Jairus]

Ya know, for some reason that actually doesn't make me feel better.  Actually makes me feel a bit worse.

Awww, I'm sorry VSMIT. Maybe it's a game that's perfect the way it is, and there's no way to improve it aside from improving the graphics.

As it is, my first video game that I clearly remember playing is some stupid interactive adventure version of Around the World in Eighty Days, where you had this little tool kit of art objects like a pencil and an eraser and a spray can and stuff like that and you used these to manipulate the environment. It was pretty fun, and the disc had The Jungle Book and Peter Pan games like that on it too. If only I could remember it's name...

[Ryudo Lee]

The very first game I ever played was Duck Hunt.

Yes, I kept trying to shoot that dog.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Did you ever succeed?

[Ryudo Lee]

Nope.  But that never stopped me from trying!