Nostalgic Titles

[Miriped]

In this post I am curious what sort of games brought you a huge amount of nostalgia and effected your passion, if existent, for games today.

 

Personally Spyro and Nights Into Dreams paved way for my passion.

 

Spyro is a common classical game and I've played most of the titles but something about the first three games draws me into preferring them over later releases. It had a good sense of humor but the plot wasn't so bad and it was a relaxed game for both casual players and enough content for Completionists

 

Nights Into Dreams had heavy emphasis on atmosphere and really felt "pretty". Simple gameplay but ultimately very smooth and alluring. Although the graphics may be considered dated to the modern day, of its time it was pretty great and altogether it was a fantastic play

 

Some notable mentions was Sonic for Dreamcast. There was this little digital pet that you put into your controller and could transfer those little blue creatures in the Tamagotchi/Digipet-esque device. It pretty much made me love simpler Pet like games.

Another game that set up my admiration for classics is the Baldurs Gate series. Although since I suck at it I never got far but it drives me to get better at such games.

 

 

List what games made you who you are in the gaming world. I hope this little threat prospers. Cheers.

[Rabbit1251]

For me it would be the board games made by Avalon Hill in the 1970's. They were so much more than the simple parlour games that I was used to. I amassed a great collection of them and would play against myself for days on end. One of the prime reasons that I bought a computer in the early 80's was to get a proper opponent for playing them. I was pleased to see that many of these games became available for my Apple II+.

 

 

Rabbit

[rainrtw]

I think my first computer game was Castle II... no not the one you see on a google search. I loved that one too but that came much later. You see my uncle was a programmer back in the early days of that profession. As with any business they had a bunch of stuff they made for themselves that never got picked up by the company, or never made it to market. One of them as a text and ASCII art type dungeon crawl game they called Castle II.

 

He did pretty well money wise back then and would occasionally drop a new computer on us as a gift. I was a kid then so I just didn't care about the name of the machine, or what OS they ran I just cared if it had neat games. I think one of them was an Osborn but past that I never kept track of brand, or even if they were an actual product or a prototype. I just remember most were of the type, Insert OS on one giant floppy disk, and the game/program on a second.

 

In glorious 2 color green on green graphics you would move from room to room exploring a, mostly abandoned Castle, trying hard not to disturb its few remaining and rather hostile monstrous residents. Ah good times, sadly I don't think that one ever made it out of the office he worked in. Shame too as it would be a great nostalgia trip to play that again, though it would no doubt take some ancient system emulation.

 

I think the next game I remember playing a lot was Leisure Suit Larry, great game for a kid eh? Granted in computer class we had O'Dell lake and Oregon Trail, but we never owned those at home. Pretty sure my uncle was to blame for out computers having games like Leisure Suit Larry and Leather Goddesses of Phobos on them, but oh my god I found them funny back then.

 

Anyway enough stupid ranting. I did play some official games, but my favorites, and firsts were prototypes never released.

Edited January 28, 2016 by rainrtw

[TheTokenGeek]

We were actually discussing this a little bit today here at the Nexus. There are actually far too many things that I could say helped define the path I have taken in gaming, I collect consoles so have quite a nice collection of the things I played on as a child.

 

My first ever console/computer was a Phillips Videopac G7000 - I have fond memories of it now, but never ever want to turn it on again for fear of destroying said memories.

 

I guess playing the text adventure The Hobbit on the spectrum, jumping around in Mario on the NES / SNES and then Streets of Rage 1/2 on the Megadrive will always stick with me. Just don't go back to them as part of the memory is always remembering them better than they actually were!

 

In terms of PC, the game that got me hooked was Doom... Just the shotgun reload animation had me going "WOW"...

 

First ever online Multiplayer was Delta Force, on a dial up connection. That game cost me £100's in telephone bills, even had a separate line put into the house for it :D

[greatdarius]

GTA sa and samurai warriors 2 . oh boy I had so much fun and good times playing them .thanks for nostalgia feels great!! :) Edited March 13, 2016 by greatdarius

[AraFox]

 

 

jumping around in Mario on the NES / SNES

 

Yes! Mario. And then Spyro, and then Tomb Raider (oh man, you can do a throwback Thursday on Fridays, right?) FF VII, VIII, IX, X and if you want to really go back, CIV II, III, and IV took up a great portion of my life at several points. I played Age of Empires for a while, and still do now and then but it never keeps me engaged for long. Generally when I'm playing AOE, I start thinking of other games I wish I was playing instead.

 

I think that the CIV franchise was when I first realized how quickly time passes when you drop into a virtual world. Before that I didn't really track time, I just got yelled at by my mom for "playing that damn video game all the time." I'd play till she'd come over and turn off the power in the middle of my game and I'm like "Oy! I didn't even get to save!" lol. But I digress.

 

I still have an Atari, a Sega, an SNES, and a PS. I absolutely still play on them from time to time :smile:

 

OP, I also hope this topic prospers.

Edited March 25, 2016 by AraFox

[fatemefathi]

The topic was useful. Thank you

[erikthegreat68]

Playing TMNT and the Rocketeer on NES. First game ever played on PC was Journeymen 2000, then knights of the sky I logged several hrs flight time on that. Also played Sid Meier's Civil War. Lord's of the Realm 1 & 2

[WakahisaSensei]

I can still perfectly recall the room I was in when I first played the original command and conquer, probably my first experience with gaming.

 

Other games that spark nostalgia are FF7 (my favorite game), Zelda games (favorite series), Deus Ex (first modding experience), and Quest for Glory V (for some reason).

[Kartoflator]

Definitely turn-based classics. As I've already posted elsewhere, "Laser Squad" on C-64 probably started my passion for APs, TUs and such. When I've finally got into PC gaming, "Jagged Alliance 2" instantly became - and remains - my beloved title, followed by "Silent Storms" and first "Fallouts". Yeah, I like first X-Coms too, but these are quite different from "JA2" in many aspects, so trying to determine which one is "better" is pointless to me. Let's just say I love them all.

"GTA 3" - first game I've modded. OK, "cool story, bro" time: that was back when "internet" was still quite a mystery to me and back where I live most people hadn't had any connection - including me. I know virtually nothing about coding, but when I was inspecting GTA game folder, I've discovered lots of ".dat" files. I only knew, that this was an extension of general data files, meaning that they could contain any kind of data - music, pictures, text... I've noticed, that they are small in size and so I've tried to open them with Notepad (later I did the same with various ".ini" files). What happened next was an orgy of tweaking: from car colors, to gang members stats, to pedestrian behavior. There's no funnier sight, than an angry grandma chasing down the street a group of scared and helpless cops, clubbing them with her purse... Or starting a fire and observing a squad of firefighters running scared from the flames :laugh:

"Neverhood" - game that showed me, that games can be truly an art, and also can be witty and well-written. Later, I've noticed that some games have actually better writing and even better acting than many contemporary, high-budget hollywood movies. I think that's how I became a gamer - I love movies, but when the movie industry started to eat its own tail, well...it's time to move on. Personally I think it's true especially nowadays - movies are being made strictly with profit in mind, writing butchered to fit PG-13 rating (so more kids will buy tickets), overblown expositions and "spoonfeeding" are ubiquituous, so nobody has to use their brain while watching, one cliche is chasing another, "political correctness" nonsense kills even the best scripts... I could go on. That's why many people miss videotape era or classics from 90s. Original "Robocop" is not better "because nostalgia" or "oldschool". It simply IS better. For a long time video games provided me with the level of entertainment the movie industry couldn't reach anymore. Sadly, what happened to cinematography happens now also in videogame industry. Thank God there are still companies like CDProjekt (and I'm not saying that just because I'm from Poland), that can develop a game without trying to cater to "everyone".

Since I was comparing videogame and movie industry: "Privateer - The Darkening". Clive Owen ftw! God, I loved the idea of joining virtual worlds with real-life acting. Why was it even abandoned? Yeah, I know the answers... Still, games with actual movie actors were instantly ten times better than anything else, and at some point there was so many of them. "Command & Conquer" series wouldn't be half as glorious without real chicks... (and I was quite surprised seeing Jennifer Morrison in one of the games) :happy:

Last, but not least, the game that showed me the potential of sandboxes... No, not GTA... It was "Omikron - The Nomad Soul". Not "really" a sandbox, but playing that title I felt incredible freedom - probably because how well the game world was designed, and I'm not talking just about maps. I'm talking about the game mechanics, which allowed player to change the playable character "on the fly", about the world that really felt "alive" with its inhabitants, the whole artistic game concept. Plus David Bowie lending his face and voice for multiple game characters was also incredible. I often found myself hunting for in-game hints how to find and attend one of "illegal" music concerts, rather than focusing on actual plot.