Classic Gaming

There have been several old-school gaming threads, but I lack Darkmite8's mad searching skillz. Here's a semi-old thread I started about old school shooters, if that's anyone's cup o' tea...

Holy shit, I had that game. Played the hell out of it.

Its funny even though I played more than enough video games as a kid, only three are really comming to memory as true console classics (I'm not including video game ports)

- Pitfall,
- Pitfall 2
- River Raid

Oh, I'm talking only first generation console classics of course.

One thing I find kind of interesting about is how different videogame nostalgia is in the US compared to the rest of the world, or at least Europe. In the states classic gaming seems to be absolutely dominated by early Atari and then Nintendo and Sega, and with early PC gaming in the sidelines. For me and most people I know, classic gaming is really about your Amstrads, Spectrums, Commador 64s, Atari STs and Amigas. There are so many legendary games on those machines that seem to be all but unknown in the US, and so often get left out on internet nostalgia fests.

Here's a bloated list of games that I used to adore that, with a couple of exceptions, no one online ever ever talks about:

Treasure Island Dizzy (in fact, any and all Dizzy)
Wriggler
Cauldron
Dynamite Dan 1 + 2
North and South
Oids
Paradroid 90
Another World
Captain Blood
Flood
Rick Dangerous
Maddog Williams
Elite
Xenon 2
Speedball 2
IK+
Lemmings 1 + 2
Stunt Car Racer
Supercars 1 + 2
Harley Davidson
Armorgeddon
Wizball
Sensible Soccer
Starglider 2
Hunter
Nebulous
Defender of the Crown
Midwinter 2

Researching this list put me in a nostalgic reverie.

I had the...Mattel Intellivision and Atari 2600. My favorite classics are...
Intellivision
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Cloudy Mountain and Treasure Of Tarmin
Sea Battle
Astrosmash
Demon Attack
Atlantis
Night Stalker
Pitfall 1 and 2
Space Battle (originally was supposed to be...Battlestar Galactica)
Triple Action
NFL Football

Atari 2600
Adventure
Space Invaders
Tank Battle
Centipede
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Demon Attack

Quick question, how was PC gaming done in Europe as compaired to the States. One of the big reasons I image this may be true is that alot of people within the industry stateside saw "home computers" to be a money loser. The big money is selling the computers to companies not the home market. I have no clue exactly when this perception changed and the true "we are selling these things to homes" real began (it may of been with the great videogame crash in the 80s, but not certain).

I image the Vic20/Commador 64 started the trend, but if I recall correctly on the most part this was actually at a loss and not a gain to the company. Also looking at wikipedia and seeing the original asking price of almost $600 is giving me a hint on why PC gaming didn't take off in America in the 80s. Comapre the to Atari $200 launching price.

Junior high and high school was all about the Commodore 64 for me and my friends. I had a friend with an Atari 5600, but I put in many more hours on the Commodore, what with Bard's Tale and Ultima and Wasteland.

Richard Dickson, I also had both the...Commodore Vic 20 and C-64. The Last Ninja was my favorite title, along with...Beachhead!

Commodore 64 was it for me growing up. I loved Ultima III-V, Wasteland, Ultimate Wizard (I had so much fun with the level creator) among others. I loooooved Autoduel and still can't figure out why that hasn't been remade for a modern audience.

I'm really very lucky that I never had the hardware (other than the Atari 2600). I would have been well and truly fucked during the classic game era as far as grades, social interaction, and going outside once in a while. The sum total of my gaming memories were flicking one of the 2600 switches rapidly back and forth to get machine-gun fire in Space Invaders, giving a buddy a ride home every day and playing SMB3 on his NES, and messing around with the Space Quest games whenever I visited another guy. In fact, I have more memories of writing my own games on the Timex Sinclair and the Apple IIe.

I know that by 70 I'll be blind and insane, so I fully plan to spend all of my 69th year doing nothing but trying out all the great games I missed (plus at least one last Deus Ex playthrough).

I had a Commodore 64 and an Atari VCS, before they began calling it the 2600, along with a subscription to Basic magazine, from the publishers of the Sesame Street and Electric Company print mags. I learned a little bit of BASIC from the articles.

Activision, Infocom, and EA were household names for me and a tiny, tiny handful of the kids I went to school with. I also had a denim jacket that had both sleeves covered from shoulder to cuff with those Activision iron-ons you had to earn by sending in a photo of your high score. You can probably guess that I was picked on.

I'm still waiting for modern updates of EA's Racing Destruction Set and Mail Order Monsters.

Both of the Dungeons and Dragons games were really quite good for the Intellivision. I remember trying to open the doors in Treasure of Tarmin that would then come alive and shoot fireballs at you.

I had an amazing game called Swords & Serpents by iMagic for Intellivision, and I found out years later that it was apparently very rare. Nobody that I knew had even heard of it. Cool 2 player coop game, one player is the knight with a sword and the other player is a wizard who can fire from range. The knight is always in the center of the screen and the wizard basically had to keep up. Played for hours with a friend, got to the dragon at the end...and nothing happened. No fight. The dragon wouldn't move, couldn't hurt us and just sat in front of the treasure. We were so disappointed.

Intellivision also had Sub Hunt, Tron Deadly Discs, and there was a basketball game that was REALLY advanced for a first gen console in that you drafted your team before you played and had a salary cap you had to adhere to.

Whenever we complain about the "we'll fix it in a patch" mentality these days, let us remember that back in the day it was totally fine to just not program the end of a game.

"Jim, the dragon doesn't work."

"Who the fuck is even going to get that far? Ship it. We've got eight other games to wrap up by the end of the week."

Those were also the days when it was possible to copy protect a game by requiring you to enter the fifth word from the tenth page of the manual. There wasn't an internet to run out and look it up on.

Sphere Monk, you gotta talk to some more video game nerds or something. I remember Monkeyshines from the Odyssey 2, and the Atari ST--despite getting completely steamrolled by the NES--isn't that obscure.

I don't know how it played or looked on the ST, but the original Star Raiders on the Atari 400/800 is absolutely unbelievable, considering it was made in 19-freakin'-79. Galactic map, hyperspace jumping, first-person pseudo-3D combat, localized ship damage, base repairs.... 1979.

I have connections....

You brought the magic, Sphere Monk(eyshines!). I was just the one left pulling the rabbit out of the top hat.


All you young whippersnappers in here, with Commodore 64 this and Colecovision that, we grew up with the Fairchild Channel F System.

A-Pathetic, Swords and Serpents was cool. Imagic made some of my favorite games.

So true. For me growing up, long before the imported consoles, it was all about Sinclair Speccy 48k, then the +2, then the +3 (oooooh fancy, a disk drive!). As well as the C64 and Amiga.


Yes to all of these. Also:

3D Deathchase
Renegade (still nothing in beatumups as satisfying as Renegade's punching of a guy while he's down... or kicking a thug over the side of the train platform... or doing a flying kick on a biker)
Target Renegade
Robocop
Myth: History in the Making (a Harryhausen wet dream)
Thundercats
Death Wish 3
Barbarian (decap football!)
Exolon
Cybernoid
Cobra (based on the Stallone movie- best sense of humour of any video game until GTA came along)
The Last Ninja
The First Samurai
Shadow of the Beast (oh God, the graphics)
Midnight Resistance (it was our Contra)
Turrican

The first actual computer in our house was a Macintosh....therefore:



To this day, the sound effects of the monsters of that game haunt my sleep....this bastard of a game was merciless.
The sequel was even more of a nightmare.

Also:



God, i hated that pig man...never beated the bastard.