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[Kagus]

Because we don't have enough of it already.

You know, there are some games that I miss.  I really do.  I felt they were highly enjoyable, and sometimes even innovative.  Nowadays they're obscure, unworkable, or rammed into the ground with sequel after sequel after successor of progressively junkier wannabes.  Here, I will talk about these games that I miss.  I invite you to join me.


I miss Blood.  You know, that game where you played as a zombie gunslinger, fighting hordes of axe-wielding undead, gibbering cultists, hellhounds, and skeletal fish using only one of the most badass assortment of weapons ever supplied to a character in the history of weapons and characters.   I'm talking tommyguns, bundles of dynamite, an aerosol flamethrower, a flare gun, a voodoo doll, and of course Caleb's signature double-barreled sawed-off pistol grip shotguns.  This guy could take on the legions of Hell through sheer awesomeness.

But there's more...  He wasn't one of those silent protagonists that game developers somehow think we'll replace with ourselves, he was an undead cowboy with something to say about everything and an incredible voice to say it in!  From film quotes to poem snippets to impromptu lines from a Broadway musical, you could rely on Caleb to have just the right thing to say at any given moment.

Caleb still ranks pretty damn high on my list of greatest protagonists ever, and I don't restrict that just to video games.  I neglect to mention the sequel because, well...  Yeah.


Another game I miss is one I've brought up a few times before...  Namely, Beasts and Bumpkins.

Now, here's a game that will go down in the annals of history as friggin' EPIC.  Or, at least, it would go into the annals of history if anyone knew about it.

In this game you control a small village of bumbling imbeciles who have nothing better to do than pester the chickens, whistle at the very well-endowed womenfolk and shout phrases like "Our leader is truly great!" all day.  I don't think I'll ever get that line out of my head.  My dad still quotes it from time to time, and he barely ever played it.

You will encounter a wide variety of hurdles as you lead your smelly citizens of less-than-average intelligence to glory and riches...  Challenges such as gathering those idiotic cows together so you can milk them, or planting the wheat at the right time so your people can stuff themselves with bread, or rebuilding the town after a huge demon flew over and hurled fireballs at everyone!   What the heck??! 

There are very few things wrong with this game, but the problems it does have are significant.  However, I have a very hard time getting down on it for that, because everything it gets right is just so damned endearing that I can't help but love it.

Everything except for that ruddy cow level...  The least they could do is keep the blasted thing from growing old and dying of natural causes while you were trying to save it!  Stupid cows...


B&B was a fun, charming, original (in its own right) game with excellent replay value and a good sense of humor.  Which makes it all the stranger to find out that it was produced by EA. 

Shocked?  Well, read the fine print.

EA did absolutely bugger-all in regards to marketing and selling this game.  The game went largely unnoticed, and Worldweaver Productions, the little development company that could, went tits-up and was never heard from again.


I can excuse EA for making eighty expansion packs for every one of the Sims games...   I can excuse them for mass-producing vast quantities of sports games that differ only in title and superficial details...  I might even someday find it in my heard to forgive them for what they did to Spore, but this?

No.  I cannot forgive EA for ignoring Beasts and Bumpkins.


I had delightful childhood memories from playing the demo, so I tried playing it again a year or two ago just to see if I was ironing out some of the wrinkles...   After an intense amount of searching, digging, and rudimentary hacking I finally managed to get a crack of it (the only thing I could find) to work.

And you know what?  I wasn't ironing out wrinkles.  It was just as good as I remembered.  Hell, it was better than I remembered, since I got access to the stuff that wasn't in the demo!


I'd mention some others now, but I feel pretty relieved after ranting about these two, so I'll leave off for a bit.  Please, come one and all, tell us about the games that you remember fondly... 

Or, heck, discuss the ones I just mentioned.  They really are just that good.

[Puck]

Damnit, you are old, are you?

I think I remember, somewhere in the back of my head, reading about those games in some computer magazine but I never played them. Ill try to correct that, because those two games sound AWESOME.

A game I liked as a kid was "Spy Vs Spy" on the C64. I only played it for a few hours with a friend, but I remember almost pissing myself laughing because you could do some fun and awesomely cruel stuff to each other. I remember us almost bursting with glee while hoping the other guy would stumble into your traps. Such fun! I guess the fact I knew the comics really helped, too.

I'm pretty sure it would be dull to play these days. But I'll try sooner or later, maybe I'll be surprised... the most boring thing I can imagine, however, is playing it against the computer.

And while searching for beasts and bumpkins, I stumbled upon this:
http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/chicago-90.php

kept me occupied for hours as a kid... I guess it's time to get DosBox for the wii 

oh oh oh, and something else! leisure suit larry in the land of the lounge lizards  definetly the PERFECT game for an 8year old kid!

[Kagus]

Actually, neither of the games I mentioned are particularly "old", per se...  I just really miss them.  If I wanted to swing wood about old games, the best I could manage would be something like Jazz Jackrabbit or Commander friggin' asskicking KEEN.

Or, y'know, Pong...   I played that too.

[Puck]

Yeah, I just found that out. Blood supposedly is 1997...

I played Pong, too. I still have one of those ancient machines you can hook up to the telly. But it's rather advanced, it has hockey and basketball, too. Well, they all play like Pong with a few extra lines.

[G-Flex]

A lot of old DOS games were pretty innovative and great.

I have a special place in my heart for Tex Murphy (especially The Pandora Directive), and the original System Shock, for instance.


My college a few years back had an original Asteroids machine. I loved it, especially the vector display, which makes it literally impossible to properly emulate on a computer. I want one of my own, someday, but damn are arcade machines expensive.

[kulik]

The thing i miss the most is the anticipation before i actually played a new game. You know, im eastern europe and in my old times there wasn't gameshops in our city and no internet. It was my older brother who brought from time to time some games. And when i saw some new floppydiscs on the table i was going crazy from anticipation.
Sometimes i think that i valued games more and i tried harder to enjoy them (We all know that nearly not all old games where that good.) as i do now. Dear lord i was playing even adventures and i didn't understood english!!! The only way was to use everything on everything and use all dialogue possibilities. It was more pain than joy to play them but i was fascinated with games.

[Mindmaker]

I miss the turn based strategy genere which is slowly dying out.
And the complex RPGs which actually cared about presenting you a good, atmospheric story.

And what really hurts is that I sold my SNES and N64 when I was younger.
God what would I give to have them back.

[HideousBeing]

Good 2d platformers are fairly rare. I loved playing stuff like keen, dukenukem 1 and 2, cosmo and all that other fun stuff. Shareware was win.

[Bluerobin]

haha Kulik you bring up a good point... the first time I played The Secret of Monkey Island was when my family lived in Germany so everything was in German. We are most definitely not German and I think my brother and I were in second and third grade or something so my Dad my brother and I would all sit down and between the three of us (and a magazine strategy guide we found later) we fumbled our way through the German.

It was still an awesome game.

[sproingie]

I remember spending hours and hours and hours playing Ultima III on the c64.  I *still* have the Sosaria overland theme stuck in my head.

Then there was all the time meticulously mapping out every last dungeon in the entire Bards Tale series on graph paper.  I swear I'll never have that kind of attention span again.

[Idiom]

Xargon, Jill of the Jungle, Super Mario Bros, Bomberman, Contra, MOO, Star Control II, XCOM... and that's just off the top of my head.

[Tack]

One game I really loved, was Castles. You know, build the castle in isometric, defend from invaders, Etc. It was such a fun game, simple to learn, and you had the fun of managind labour to create an actual Castle, and Watching it get built in Real time. Castles II, however... Meh.


And another thing... Though... it doesn't really belong in here....
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time.
Now, Although it might have been far (Far) newer than all the others here, You can't help but hear the bouncy notes of the Forest Temple, and not give a wistful sigh, along with a urging in your heart to play the game again. My personal opinion? All 3D zelda games had the best storylines. But, When I think of Ocarina Of Time, I just get the urge to listen to the Song of Storms, So badly... Am I alone in this? In any case. I put it on my computer as a emulated game, and yet I'd still gladly pay the fucking exhorbidant fees to buy a N64 and play it, it was that great. I feel like playing it right now... Goodbye.

[jashman]

I would give many, possible vital, organs for an updated version of Castles.

I spent many hours with Pirates! on the Commodore 64, as well as some ice climbing game with a name I can't recall.  I also have very fond memories of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for the Intellivision... damn you invincible purple blobs!

[ChairmanPoo]

I miss Blood.  You know, that game where you played as a zombie gunslinger, fighting hordes of axe-wielding undead, gibbering cultists, hellhounds, and skeletal fish

aaahhhhh....

[Arathel]

Couple of games that I feel like mentioning:

1. Xcom: UFO Defense was the best turn based strategy game I've played. When I think of the long hours I sunk into this game commanding my forces and scraping enough resources together on superhuman difficulty to fight back all I can think of is good times. The other two sequels were ok but didn't really hit the same feel as the first one.

2. Masters of Orion 2: I never really got into the first one as it was before my time but my friends and I became obsessed with this game. We wrote back stories for our races, held summits where we would assemble and discuss diplomatic relations every few turns and generally had an awesome time.

3. Warlords 2: Yet another old turn based game, this was yet again something FUN.

4. Battles of Destiny: To those of you who know of it, congrats, it was epic.

5. Starcraft: It's STARCRAFT.