I recall a topic like this in the past, but I have been google-ing my ass off for about 4 hours with no luck.
I have a few games (and I'm sure you all do too) that I played a whole bunch as a kid, without really understanding what I was doing. I remember having loads of fun though, and I've been wanting a new chance to play them, or at least see how true my memory of those games is.
The first game I vaguely recall was a first person (or possibly third person if you pressed a button) mech game. I remember it being tough as balls for me, and the few other things I do remember I will bullet below:
+You could choose what mech you deployed to the mission with (I recall some mechs weighing more than others, and being named generic mech names like Atlas and Orion)
+It was shareware (I could only play with some of the mechs, those below a certain weight class)
+Armament included LAZORS, mgs, rockets, photon cannon things and big bullet cannon things. shields too
+Your mech could be outfitted with a jetpack. As I mentioned earlier much of the actual fighting was too much for me, so I would just fly around the massive canyons on the planets with the jetpack.
There was lots of fall damage +The maps you played on could vary greatly, from grass covered with big (I mean fucking massive) buildings to climb around on, to giants sandstorm desert planets, to completely pitch black desert planets where you had to turn on some sort of infrared vision just to see.
+in addition to this mech fighting stuff, there was a campaign mode (I think) where you controlled a planet in a seemingly randomly generated solar system. The view of this was a 3d starmap. Flying to other planets let you harvest their resources, with the planets varying in resourcefulness and size and whatnot
That is pretty much what I remember. It is none of the games on the wikipedia list of mech games (I youtubed every single one), and googling various combos of the above facts turn up nothing. I played this on a macintosh.
FOUND: YOUNGS MODULUS
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/05/freeware_game_pick_youngs_modu.htmlMy second game is even more vague in my memory. It involved moving chess pieces around a grid map, and taking control of territory.
+Each territory you took control of gave you points to build more chess pieces.
+I think there was a specific tower for each kind of chess piece you could build.
+the game played out turn based, with the human building different pieces and battling the AI.
+there were both melee and archer pieces (sketchy memory)
+the grid system had a black background, with the view being isometric. The actual tiles you captured had different graphics on them, from grass to ruins to dead trees
+I have a strong sense of ravens and graveyards when I think of this game
+It was nothing like actual chess
+Macintosh
The third game I have been meaning to find is looked remarkably similar to
http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ee476/FinalProjects/s2008/jk459_mmi4/jk459_mmi4/index.htmland
http://www.javagameplay.com/WarZone.htmlbut was neither of these games.
I distinctly remember:
+multiple levels, not waves
+multicolored blocks and tanks (orange green red blue)
+6 levels
+Pretty sure it was vector graphics, but my 7 year old self could not have known that
+Macintosh also
I hope I'm not being too demanding asking for help finding these games, I just feel that the people who play DF are very qualified for the obscure and old game finding job
This will probably turn into a 'post your mysterious memory of a childhood game' thread, which I don't mind at all!