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[Kagus]

As good as AoE II is, I've never been particularly thrilled with the "classic" style of RTS...  I prefer things that are a bit more dynamic or "alive", or that at least have persistent/renewable resources (and while using gold from trade carts to buy all other resources is a possibility, it quickly becomes far too expensive to be of any real use).

The real fun is to be had with triggers, and to use the really quite stylish graphics to create a very interesting atmosphere for a different kind of game inside of AoE.  Unfortunately, the triggers aren't exactly the most flexible I've ever seen, so you'll need some clever tweaking in order to get any sort of special features.


Still though, it's a delightful game when it doesn't crash.  Although I must admit that I never really got around to playing with any degree of skill either, since I simply couldn't resist those delightful cheats that Microsoft insisted on putting into the series.

[CobaltKobold]

MAX:Mechanized Assault and Exploration.
Master of Orion 2.

[Azkanan]

I don't think much of Spore was ripped out by EA higher-ups: I think Will Wright channeled his inner Peter Molyneux and over-hyped, over-promised, and under-delivered.  He blathered a lot about procedural generation and "demoscene code" but when it came time to show something, all he ever showed was the primordial soup level, which they just slapped slightly cuter graphics on.  I lay the blame entirely on Maxis.

Things they ripped out to be sold later, definetly:

Aquatic Stage
Flora Editor

-

Trust me, I've been following Spore religiously since 2006, whereas It  was a low-blow when it  was finally released. (My xspore account can validate I was around that date )

[xoen]

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.

PC wasn't able to provide fun these days.
Amiga was.

[dragnar]

I don't think I can really feel "nostalgic" about any games, because the games I played growing up were crap picked up second hand or from a bargain bin, or were over my head. The handful of old games I've found to be good I've only come across recently, and in general I think games as a whole are significantly better than they were, say, in the nineties. The only deleterious effects on the general quality seems to mainly stem from the modern console-centric focus; over simplifying controls to work with the horribly limited and unresponsive game pads, over simplifying interfaces because they're meant to be seen from a couple of meters away on a low resolution screen, over simplifying gameplay to allegedly broaden the audience, etc. And old games are hardly better in those regards, mostly due to technical limitations (smaller screens, slower cpus, really the only exception is occasionally the controls, since the keyboard and mouse have been around much longer, though again limitations in size, cpu cycles, and ram limit the potential there).

I disagree. Though the quality of the average game has steadily improved, the quality of truly great games... has not. There are many good games still being released, true, but very few of them are anywhere near the level of the best games of the past. Can you name a single modern game that can stand up to the likes of super mario world, crono trigger, or even tetris?(What?! Firefox's spellcheck does not recognize the word Tetris?!)

Of course, most of my complaints stem from the fact that I am an RPG/strategy gamer for the most part. First came the age of arcade games, then platformers, then RPGs, and now we seem to have entered the age of the FPS. I can't help but be disappointed by this shift.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I think average quality has improved mainly from the emergence of proper coding and design standards, as well as following the lead of what worked best in the past, even in the lower end titles today. Thus, what wound up making some games stand out when the industry was in its infancy (like proper design ideology, etc) has now become a basic standard, so of course you see less games that stand out from the pack.

It also takes more than just a good idea. Because there are lots of good ideas, often with at least halfway decent quality to back them up. So just having a cool idea and being at least half competent is also no longer enough to make a game stand out from the crowd.

tl; dr: games are better as a general rule, so there's less difference between "great" and "average", since "average" no longer means "abject garbage".

[G-Flex]

Games these days usually have higher average production values and work better.
This doesn't mean they are better.

I play a lot of old games (DOS, early Windows, etc.) and I have to say that I tend to prefer them, even if the execution was a bit sloppier and (by today's standards) archaic, because they tended to actually be interesting and unique. These days, that seems to be a thing of the past, at least in the serious-business commercial-games industry.

Really, that's why "average" games have gotten better and "great" games don't exist quite as often. The industry has enough precedent these days that it's easy to churn out something that works but isn't fantastic or particularly memorable, but is so absurdly high-budget that publishers aren't willing to take risks producing anything else.

Of course, there was also a time when most games didn't suffer horribly due to executive meddling or running out of time and money 3/4 of the way through. That, however, was a very long time ago.

[Puck]

PC wasn't able to provide fun these days.
Amiga was.

OBJECTION! some of them took til the late 386 but there was a lot of fun to be had with pcs, (and this comes from an amiga fanboy):

Scorched earth
Sopwith
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Street Rod
Stunt Island
Alone in the dark 1
Privateer

for instance. I believe even "Lemmings" hit the PC first.

Of course, there was also a time when most games didn't suffer horribly due to executive meddling or running out of time and money 3/4 of the way through. That, however, was a very long time ago.

didnt microprose have at least one ferrari f40 as company car abck then 

[CobaltKobold]

MoO][
MAX
MegaZEUX

[Sowelu]

Sopwith

Daaamn, someone remembers Sopwith!  Now THAT was oldschool, right up there with Thexder.

[ductape]

In Soviet Russia, game plays you!

[Puck]

Sopwith

Daaamn, someone remembers Sopwith!  Now THAT was oldschool, right up there with Thexder.

I'm ashamed I never heard of Thexder, tho.

But I'm not only REMEMBERING sopwith... I'M STILL PLAYING IT! On the wii, I kid you not. As far as I can tell its completely like the original, only played with the d-pad and the buttons of the wiimote. http://wiibrew.org/wiki/SDL_Sopwith

I seriously LOVE my homebrew channel, and just for the record, I dont have a single pirated game. I just use it to play, well, homebrew software, there is some insanely good stuff to play.
Like powder, harmonium and whatnot.

[CobaltKobold]

MAX:Mechanized Assault and Exploration.
Master of Orion 2.

MoO][
MAX
MegaZEUX

...I must be nostalging all over the place >_>

Try MAX, Kagus.