Old school computer games

[agasfas]

I got one! Today I was searching for old DOS games and I ran across the game "Hugo's House of Horrors." Anyone remember the hugo games? My memory is a bit fuzzy but I believe it was a mix of adventure and a problem solving/puzzles.
Here are a few images:




and finally:



The good ol' days!

[madphilb]

Ah, the "good ole days".... Commander Keen and whatnot where some of the better games for the PC, I started before then, when the C64 was still in it's hey-day. Many of the games where not quite up to what the ad on the back of the box made it sound.

Of the classics, The Commander Keen series was pretty high on my list of cool games. It was a true great platformer. I only wish that ID would licence someone to bring the goodness up to date and give him some new adventures on the consoles.

Some of the freeware/shareware that I played back then was pretty good too, there where a few games that took advantage of the new EGA adaptors of the day, there was some sort of mario/DK clone that played pretty well (I remember not being able to get beyond the 3rd board ever), I had a pretty cool version of asteroids that toasted the left-shift key on my 286's keyboard.

Prior to the PC I was gaming on my Atari 7800 (which played 2600 games as well), some decent ones there, though one of the best was Xevious.

Even earlier I had a TI-99/4A years ago... some interesting stuff there too.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

The Hugo games were great fun and at times very challenging. I love a good adventure mystery game (to rare these days).

[shooraijin]

Ah, the TI 99/4A. I picked one up at a garage sale just to play Blasto. Gotta port that to the Palm or Mac!

[agasfas]

still hanging in there strong with my old school TI-83 . I was always unable to play games w/ mine.
Anyone remember the game "Mario Type"? I actually learned how to type playing that game. To bad we don't have more games like that; make learning fun again

[madphilb]

Ah, the TI 99/4A. I picked one up at a garage sale just to play Blasto. Gotta port that to the Palm or Mac!

I had that cart.... picked it up cheap when the last of the TI carts where being clearanced everywhere.... don't remember it 100%, but it was pretty cool.

As I recall the TI had the only graphical version of Hunt the Wumpus (let's see how many people had the Basic Computer Games book )

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

What about DOS games like Maths Rescue? I hate maths and even I found them fun. I think there was also one called Word Rescue.

[Bobtheduck]

Anyone play Wolfenstein for Apple II?

Sim Tower
Civilization
Colonization
Lemmings...
Adventure

That's all I can think of... I owned Sim Tower, Colonization, and Civilization legally, and I'm unsure whether Adventure was legal... I also owned Sim City, Sim Life, Sim earth, and chessmaster but I didn't like those ones...

Here's one for you: Romeo & Juliet... Think Donkey Kong style platformer... Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I had a batch of 250 shareware titles that I got a lot of play out of, but I didn't quite understand the concept of Shareware so I never bought any... There was one game that was like a 3d version of breakout with customizable maps and another game that was a split screen 2 player top view shooter... It was cooperative, but it was more fun to kill each other... There were other games, but many of them were too limited or wouldn't install... One game would lock up whenever I tried to install it, and it was some sort of racing game...

It's a bit newer, but I had Civ2 as well... I had so much fun with that game...

[shooraijin]

I had Wolf for the C64 ("Halt!" -- it talked!). I have Wolfenstein *3-D* for the Apple IIgs ... bet you didn't know that port got licensed.

Romeo and Juliet? Do you mean Imagic's Beauty and the Beast? That was a great Kong clone on the Intellivision and a few other systems.

As I recall the TI had the only graphical version of Hunt the Wumpus

... and it was pretty good! ^_^ TI did a lot of things right with the 99/4A. They just did a lot of things wrong with it too

[madphilb]

That's all I can think of... I owned Sim Tower, Colonization, and Civilization legally, and I'm unsure whether Adventure was legal...

I think by the time you would have played it it was pretty much freeware (all 500 versions of it, all of which available at the IF Archive )

I don't think I have my original Civ anymore (though I might still have the book Civilization on 640k a day)... I do have Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri (which was quite good as well, uses the Civ engine as I recall).

[Mithrandir]

Well, the computer ate my first attempt at this (two days ago, I think). So...

My favs: Sierra. I think I've beat all of them (except LSL). Kings Quest, Space Quest, QFG, Police Quest, etc.

I played most everything that came out for the IIgs, but I really liked my atari better. I actually wrote a Sierra style game, and a parody of the Ultima series.

[madphilb]

Ah, the TI 99/4A. I picked one up at a garage sale just to play Blasto. Gotta port that to the Palm or Mac!

Will a Windows adaptation work for you?

http://www.nuloen.com/blasto3d.html

I haven't gotten it to run as of yet, I seem to be missing an .OCX file.

[shooraijin]

I saw that and played it. It's not a bad adaptation, but the 3-D slows it down unnecessarily. 2-D would work just as well and be just as good a way to blow schtuff up.

[madphilb]

I saw that and played it. It's not a bad adaptation, but the 3-D slows it down unnecessarily. 2-D would work just as well and be just as good a way to blow schtuff up.

Agreed... and a good 2D version (say, even in Java) would not require me to hunt down the MSCOMCTL.OCX file that it says isn't loaded (some sort of Active X thing or something?)

Anyway, the game seems simple enough to program for, bet it wouldn't be too difficult to port.

[shooraijin]

It's a Visual Basic control for handling, well, common Windows controls although when I installed it on my parents' PC, it didn't seem to need it there ...

The one change I *would* make is to allow the tank to keep shooting while things are blowing up. It really used to annoy me, at least in the TI 99/4A version, that I couldn't fire while the explosions were raging. Seems like it would be much more fun to just be crazy go nuts shooting everything!!!!!1! on the screen.

[Photosoph]

How could I forget Scorched Earth? Me, Creature Art and my brother used to all play it together; first eliminating the computers then attacking each other, or something like that. I remember always being the blue tank for some reason...

Also remember Commander Keen and Jazz Jack Rabbit very well. I went through and played the entire Keen series last year... but there was one that was totallly impossible without cheats, so I gave up and went on to the next one.

Old platform games... nothing beats them! One of my favourites is Bubble Bobble -a member of our family has borrowed our old NES (I think that's what it was) and the Bubble Bobble game catridge... but I actually have it! *Whoots!* That and Mario Bros 3, Mario Bros 1 or 2 and Duck Hunter. Lol, we had the gun for Duck Hunter, but it was so easy: all you had to do was go right up to the screen, put the gun against the TV and totally annihalate any ducks that came your way *evil grin*

[Mr. SmartyPants]

i had jezball for my ti83 a while back

[blkmage]

Nethack.

[Felix]

Lemmings my friends, Lemmings...

[Arnobius]

I had an old Atari 800XL that took 5.25 floppies. Ultima III and IV, Hercules, Sid Meier's "F-15 Strike Eagle", Spy vs Spy: The Island Caper, The infocom text adventures (anyone out there remember the Babel Fish puzzle in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"?) were all fun

For Apple II, I remember some old series of Public Domain text adventures. It was made to be modular as the basic disc to build your character, and a bunch of other discs that had adventures on it. I can't remember the name, just that you had to sign in the game with some guy at the front desk who'd kill you if you kept goofing around. I think it started with an "A" but I'm not sure.

[shooraijin]

Okay, let's shoot for more cerebral fare. Any original System Shock fans (not the sequel, which was good, but not as good)?

"This is Edward Diego from Tri-Optimum. The charges against you are severe ... but they could be reversed, if you perform a ... service ..."

[madphilb]

Sadly the original doesn't run on my new machine (doesn't seem to want to run for me under Win98), and at the time it came out it didn't run on my machine back then (my computer was too slow, no VGA, that sort of thing).

I did play it some at work, it was pretty cool, but no audio and whatnot.

SS2 I played a couple of times... I'm a big Looking Glass fan, SS2's a great game, played it after Deus Ex, thought the playstyle was very similar (FPS/RPG crossbreed).