Collecting older games

[Blazehawk]

While I was out and about on my birthday, I stumbled across a mass of Sega CD games that I couldn't help but purchase. Here's what I found:

Dark Wizard
Flashback
Eye of the Beholder
Dungeon Explorer
Wing Commander
Jurassic Park
Ecco The Dolphin
Ecco The Dolphin: The Tides of Time
Mansion of Hidden Souls

I also have Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, Dungeon Master 2: Skullkeep, Panic!, Sonic CD, Heart of the Alien, plus some others I can't remember offhand.

Oh, and if anyone has copies of Snatcher, Heimdall, Vay, or Popful Mail they are willing to part with, please PM me. 

Anyway, I was wondering: anyone else recently stumble across a nice collection of games for a favorite older system?  Or searching feverishly for a particular title?  Or is there a collection of games you have you are particularly proud of?

[Nikki]

JURASSIC PARK!!!???

*reaches for*

[Rowne]

I'm not sure whether it's what you're after but I know of a reliable place that hosts an ISO of Popful Mail.  I've tested it too myself on Gens, works like a charm.

[Blazehawk]

JURASSIC PARK!!!???

*reaches for*

*watches as a mow ninja swipes it seconds before Xze-Xze grabs it, then vanishes*   
If you want one too, you should be able to find one on Ebay for not too much. I got my copy for about $5, manual and case included.

I'm not sure whether it's what you're after but I know of a reliable place that hosts an ISO of Popful Mail.  I've tested it too myself on Gens, works like a charm.

There are such places, true, but I am a Working Designs fangirl and must own physical copies of anything they brought over here.    I'm silly like that.

[Nikki]

ohohohohohohhh!!

[insanekaosx]

I have a personal collection of.... more Genesis games than I care to count. I have a whole bunch of Atari 2600 games that I am too lazy to count.... only a handful of SNES games *About.... 8?* and three NES games. No NES, but three games.

Also some Atari some-other-number games, only a couple though

[Aridas]

I have to have physical copies of every game in existence or everyone will die in the year 2015.

[insanekaosx]

I have to have physical copies of every game in existence or everyone will die in the year 2015.

Good luck with that.

[Aridas]

So far so good though, I have over 150 NES games, without counting my 52-in-1 famicom cart. plenty of SNES too. not so much segastuff. but I'll get there.

[Blazehawk]

Hehe, indeed, good luck with that. Right now I'm trying to polish off my Sega CD collection with the aformentioned titles, then I'll probably work on boosting my SNES collection a bit more.

[Rowne]

Hm, my PC collection is the only thing that's remained worthwhile to me over the years.  I never did get all that into consoles, at least not as much as other people.  My copy of Day of the Tentacle (original talkie CD) was always worth more to me than most of my collection, so yeah.  I sold most of my console collection, just keeping the really rare bits.

For example, I have a complete Phantasy Star collection, including the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System.  The battery backup still works in all four.  I have the two Shining Force games and so on.

But the best of my stuff is in my PC collection.  The things that really make me pleased with my collection are stuff like an original copy of Albion, Albion complete with the weird box and incredible box-art that it had.  The Germans are so awesome at making RPGs and Albion was one of their best.

I'm weird though, I'm more about the preservation of data rather than that of hard copies.  As long as I have the data of something, I tend not to keep the hard copy.  For example, I have Daggerfall sitting around on a zip disk somewhere, so I gave my CD away and more recently, as you all know, I gave away Inherit the Earth because I had the Wyrmkeep edition.

I just don't have ties to material items like most people do.

That's probably why you'll see more giveaways in future.  ;p  That is, if I happen to stumble across any nifty furry games that I can backup, anyway.

[Blazehawk]

For example, I have Daggerfall sitting around on a zip disk somewhere

Daggerfall FTW!

I've been trying to recreate the story in Neverwinter Nights, but being me, I've never gotten around to finishing the silly thing. I also made a D&D campaign out of the story, which seemed to go well.

I've also played Albion, and enjoyed it greatly. The Shining Force series is also quite fun.

I have a lot of old PC games floating around...original copies of Myst, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Falcon 3.0 are among them.  And don't even get me started on my ridiculous collection of PC Gamer demo CDs and magazines that date back to around 1994, if my memory isn't fading.  It's scary, that was when they still ran the ads for adult games in the back, and being about 9 years old at the time, I felt kinda dirty for it. 

[Rowne]

I really liked Daggerfall, it was Elder Scrolls before they dumbed it down.  It had bugs coming out of every pore sure but the character creation system was one of the best I'd seen and the random generation was a beautiful, beautiful thing.  I wish more games embraced that way of thinking.  To be honest, it's the random generation I'm most looking forward to in Hellgate: London (well, other than the fact it's set in London, o'course).

It's just a shame that such a great game mechanism is so overlooked these days.  I had so much fun clambering around in new dungeons that I hadn't seen before every time I played that game.

I'm impressed that you've played Albion, not many people seem to have heard of it.  It had quite an impressive storyline, that one.  One had to read around the awkward translation a bit but it made it no less brilliant.  I'll always fondly remember the bit too where Drirr had Indiana Jones urges.

I'm going to press the button!

Don't press the button.

I'm going to press the button!

Don't do it, Drirr.

I pressed the button!  The sky's falling, the sky's falling!

(The ground falls out from beneath them, they fall down a floor in the dungeon.)

...

Sorry?

[Aridas]

Speaking of PC games though, does anyone have a regged "The Inside World", or at least v1.4 of the demo? The company who made it is deader than a doornail and the site for it doesn't even exist anymore, and archive.org's saved version of the site is lacking a lot of recent pages... All I have is 1.3, and the demo is limited to something like 3 floors, which doesn't give me much room to work.

[Rowne]

I've been looking around the 'net, asking friends, checking old magazines and things but I can't turn up a damned thing for that game, Aridas.  Could you tell me the name of the company that was responsible for developing it?

[Aridas]

I think it had several similar sounding names over the years, but the one I'm familiar with is "The Softgame Company of Vermont"

edit: My memory was fuzzy, sorry.. I should've said that they just completely disowned the game (staying with their crappy funpok, funsol, and etc. but leaving no mention of IW on the site)

[Nimrods Son]

I have about 70 NES titles, and except for anything Castlevania, that's all in gaming I care about enough to collect. 

[topher chee]

ecco!!!! i love that game

[Leafar]

also love ecco....
and i think i have almost ALL castlevania games for any platform...

[topher chee]

what platform was that for? sega?

[insanekaosx]

Ecco the Dolphin? I think I played that once, and did not like it at all >>

[Rowne]

Ecco the Dolphin has been out for just about every Sega platform, the only ones I've played though are the Mega Drive (Genesis in America) and the Dreamcast versions.  I believe there were two games on each.

They were hard, this is a fact, I'm almost tempted to think the developer is British considering how hard they are, since the Brits are masochists when it comes to games.  We like our games hard or we're just not interested (did you know that certain Tomb Raider games were actually dumbed down for other parts of the World because the UK version was just too mean?).

This is probably why I liked Ecco, a lot.  It took a lot of skill to play and the control system was like nothing else out there.  One had to have a lot of patience, it took effort to sit down and really master how both console versions of it worked, 2D and 3D.

And I completed them all, without guides.

I even managed to find a way 'outside' a couple of the Ecco Dreamcast levels and I swam in the great nothing.

These are accomplishments I'll always be proud of.

Oh and not to mention that Ecco is possibly the only game with a realistic underwater environment, ever.

[topher chee]

you are propably right, that is a fine point indeed

[Blazehawk]

I even managed to find a way 'outside' a couple of the Ecco Dreamcast levels and I swam in the great nothing.

Looks like I'm not the only one that discovered the hole in the Hanging Waters tube. 

[Drake Manaweilder]

Heh, my dad loved Eye of the Beholder, personally i was too scared to play it. (bite-me I was 4!)

[Rowne]

... now you're making me feel old, you cruel person, you cruel, cruel person.

I played Eye of the Beholder back in the day.  Thankfully I'm not old enough to be against technical progression yet so I enjoyed the NWN module which recreated it even more.  Good stuff.

[Tapewolf]

I never played Eye of the Beholder, but I did play EOB2.  In fact I must get back into it - I got stuck after losing one of the mirrors

This was my latest party:

One of the mirrors was created with a hex editor - didn't help me escape the maze, though..

I used to have one called 'The KLF' which should give (Rowne at least) some idea of when I was first playing the thing.

Of course the original party I created was called 'AIC' and it consisted of four characters who I hacked to have the 'Saruman' face, and all called 'Goole'...

[Rowne]

I don't feel old anymore, yay!

Hm, funnily enough, I got stuck too.  Not sure if it involved mirrors though.  Is that near the end of the game?  Involving some kind of orb thing?  I think I made it bug up and it was actually not completable.

My memory is rather fuzzified to the details.

[Tapewolf]

Hm, funnily enough, I got stuck too.  Not sure if it involved mirrors though.  Is that near the end of the game?  Involving some kind of orb thing?  I think I made it bug up and it was actually not completable.

There were three fire orbs which you had to have in order to make the walls dissolve.  That was quite easy to cock up because you could use them as weapons 

Speaking of the end, Insaal the thief dies at the end, as I recall - he's the runty guy who runs away the first time you sleep.
One of my brother's projects was to try and keep him in the party so that he meets himself - if there are only four in the party he can't do a bunk because if there are less than three players the game will sulk.  The other approach was to hack him so that his maximum health was 0 and he spends the entire game unconscious.  You can then bring him to life temporarily with the Aid spell (which gives >100% health for a short period).  Thinking about it, leaving him dead and resurrecting him might be a good way to do it.
I forget if he managed to pull this stunt off now..

[Rowne]

You should try.  If you do, please document it.  Your game breaking efforts make for an entertaining read and I always look forward to the next thing you're going to put up.  Your site has even found its way into my bookmarks and my bookmarks are a scarily sparse place.  So yes, I incorrige... I mean, encourate this!