Retro Games

I've recently been playing some reallly old stuff - Red Alert (The original - the terrible Stalin lookalike still makes me laugh) and The Ur-Quan Masters - hard as hell but as a DKS nut that appeals to me.
 
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This; the first game I ever played and the first one I played to death. An old 90s release. TA is widely considered by many to be one of the Granddaddies of modern RTS. And quite frankly, it still holds it's position as one of the greatest RTS games ever devised. The AI was brilliant for it's time, and the campaign missions might have begun easy; but even veteran RTSers would have a nightmare finishing them; they were then greeted by the Core Contingency expansion, with another full campaign even harder than the first.

Build your army of robots, tanks, ships and planes, and go blow up some other guy's robots, tanks, ships and planes.

Win.
 
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LEGEND OF KESMAI

So the early 1990s was the age of America Online (AOL) and Netscape, some of the earliest corporations specializing in internet access. These were the days of relatively slow dial-up modems, where even logging on was a manual process requiring a dial tone from your computer, a physical landline, and the temporary elimination of your phone's ability to make calls while the internet was running.

In those days, the prototypes of what would become Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs were born. Initially text based or ASCII based, some went so far as to have graphical interfaces. Legend of Kesmai was one of these. The original Island of Kesmai was an ASCII based interface with alphanumerics forming a rough map of various dungeons that you could adventure in. In time, the sequel, Legend of Kesmai, was released on America Online as a pay-to-play at the low, low cost of $1.99 an hour.

That's right. You played this game for two bucks...AN HOUR.

Today, that would be highway robbery. But back in the early 1990s, this was one of the few MMOs that even had graphics, will full four-color tiled-based maps that you could move your character around instead of ASCII or text-based MUD-like interfaces. You even had (gasp) a drag and drop style inventory.

Adventuring players had a multitude of races (with various stat boosts and stat decreases to balance each other out) and classes to pick from (though the names are more flavorful, they came in the typical archetypes of healer, mage, thief, martial artist, and warrior with warriors eventually being able to upgrade into a warrior/healer hybrid). At the time, archery and other ranged combat fighting styles was difficult if not impossible to implement in most MMOs, and Legend of Kesmai had no less than fivemethods of achieving it: archery, thrown weapons, flying kicks, magic, and bomb-style potions, giving it a tactical advantage over other games at the time.

In addition to an at-the-time more sophisticated fighting system and a graphical interface, the world itself was MASSIVE. Four unique realms with a variety of dungeons made for hours of exploration and monster hunting. There were also many quests and relics to be found...but good lord were they difficult to figure out sometimes. And the world itself was dangerous. While the monster AI wasn't exactly genius-level, they had no problem ganging up on you. You had to be very careful as a solo player and even in some small groups, because wandering monsters were not shy about engaging you - even if you were already fighting a different pack. All too often, the game was very quick to make a battle between you and four goblins into a melee against goblins, trolls, skeletons, and several undead, all ganging up on you like nobody's business. This game was lethal and did not pull back punches.

Unfortunately, if you died, you DIED. Coming back from the dead meant stat losses, EXP loss, and other detrimental effects, not the least of which was you dropped all your loot at the spot you died in. Either your gear was stolen by other adventurers or you died so deep in a deadly dungeon that it was nearly impossible to get back to the spot you died in safely.

Because of the high lethality, the game was kind enough to have a unique means of restoring you to full strength if you died and came back. There was a special quest to travel to a fifth realm, the land of the dead, where you had to travel through an Egyptian-themed land to collect your organs and be restored to life with all of your EXP and states restored. The quest itself was done in such a way that you had no gear and very limited stats, making you at your weakest in a dangerous land.

So even the kindness of full restoration was still a challenge.

This was an immensely addicting game with unique quest lines and a level of lethality not seen in gaming today.

World of Warcraft, eat your heart out.

At this time, Legends of Kesmai is still available in a free to play emulator mode.

However, be warned that there are nowhere near enough players as there were back in the day. You will almost be guaranteed to be a solo player for much of the game and at most you'll group with 1-2 other players at any one time.

Tread into this world at your peril, brave adventurers.
 
I was very surprised to find that this thread is still active. A lot of folks put in their two cents on their favorite retro games. What a trip down nostalgia lane, old time gamers!

For ease of use, here are my reviewed on order of appearance in this thread. I encourage all of you to post one for each of yours too!

Parasite Eve - page 1
Ace Combat Zero - page 2
Metal Gear Solid - page 2
Chrono Trigger - page 3
Marvel vs Capcom 2 - page 3
Baldur's Gate Saga - page 3
Mega Man X - page 3
ICO - page 4
Shadows of the Colossus - page 4
Final Fantasy 6 - page 4
Ace Combat Zero - page 4 (repeated it by accident)
Resident Evil 2 - page 4
Legend of Kesmai - page 5
 
A review for every Nintendo game I've played coming right up! ^u^
 
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BREATH OF FIRE II

The Breath of Fire series was Capcom's answer to rival Squaresoft's balls-breakingly popular Final Fantasy franchise. The original Breath of Fire was a lackluster, but serviceable JRPG with a very basic premise: A hero from a doomed town goes on a journey to defeat an evil empire, with the twist that both the hero and the empire are humans with the ability to turn into mighty dragons. With less than optimal graphics for the time, a simplistic plot, and rather dull characters, the Breath of Fire series was, at best, a mediocre addition to the JRPG canon.

And then came Breath of Fire II.

Breath of Fire II kept many of the same principles that originated in Breath of Fire I - anthropomorphic animal races, humans capable of transformation, a hero who is part dragon, and a world at constant threat from powerful forces. However, the sequel took these concepts and expanded upon them, and even dared to go into places where most JRPGs - and indeed most video games of the time - had yet to tread.

Namely, the game involved religion, a big no-no in the 1990s video game scene. Outright allusions of a Judeo Christian esque god were integral to the storyline of Breath of Fire II, along with a harsh deconstruction of cultlike belief in religion. The characters had to go up not only against evil dragons and monsters, but the various dark servants of an evil God masquerading as a benevolent deity. They had to go up against an entire world's religious belief before the end of the game.

Death was also something that the game delved into without fear. Instead of quietly shuffling characters aside when they "died," Breath of Fire II was bold enough to have death on screen as a matter of course.

Finally, Breath of Fire II began the tradition of the franchise to incorporate a universal timeline and canon that linked (most) of the games in the series. The events of Breath of Fire I had direct impact on how, thousands of years later, Breath of Fire II was formed, right down to how certain characters' abilities manifested. This same continuity would remain in its future sequels (mostly).

However, Breath of Fire II, for all its bold choices, was far from being a blockbuster hit. It was cartoony at times and relatively basic in design and gameplay, especially compared to its premier rival, Final Fantasy 6 - which arguably undertook many of the same challenges with a broader, more epic scope.

Breath of Fire II is a solid, if not outstanding, entry into any JRPG library and paved the way in terms of storyline for more mature themes that we will later see in Breath of Fire III, Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy Tactics. While it won't make every top 10 list, we should not ignore its own impact on the history of video games.
 
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TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES


...No, not the super fun four player arcade game that was in every freakin' Chucky Cheese's since time immemorial.

This one.

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A Nintendo beat-em-up where you can play any of the four turtles, each with different weapon strengths and ranges. It was a classic beat-em-up where you had to save April O'Neil once again. Not much else to say about that.

It did have recognizable mooks, bosses, and characters, so they did all of that correctly.

The controls were not too bad for the time period, either.

What drove everyone crazy was the unbalanced weaponry between the brothers. Who the hell wanted to be the arguably-awesomer Raphael when his dinky sai involves getting point-blank to an enemy? Especially when the usually-less-cool Donatello had a staff that could kill bad guys from across the room? Let's be honest. Everyone played Donatello in this game because of weapon range. There was at least one boss fight where all you had to do as Donny was jump on a stack of boxes and stab downwards until the boss died.

The other thing people remembered about this game was the Dam Level.

You had to swim through a literal underwater maze lined in electric seaweed that can kill you faster than a can of Raid on a cockroach. AND you had to disable a bunch of bombs. AND you had to do it under a strict timer. AND those electric seaweeds were sometimes bunched super close together, meaning it was inevitable that you died trying to make a tight corner. AND the underwater swimming controls sucked and involved a lot of unnecessary and unplanned drifting on your part.

No one liked the Dam Level.

At any rate, this game pissed me off at times, but I was a huge turtles fan in the day, so I still owned it.
 
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POOL OF RADIANCE

The late 1980s was THE time of the Forgotten Realms, a D&D shared universe property spanning D&D gamebooks, comics, miniatures, novels, and computer games. Back in the day of the IBM computer and MS-DOS, Pool of Radiance started the "Gold Box" series of Forgotten Realms computer games as the precursor to such immortal games as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect.

Based on the 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons tabletop ruleset, Pool of Radiance allowed you to create and customize an entire party of adventurers to investigate the source of an ancient evil conspiring against the beleaguered city state of Phlan, which has fallen to banditry, ruin, and monsters. You kill your way through sections of the city and its environs, pacifying them for settlers to reclaim, eventually learning that most of the evils plaguing Phlan are part of the machinations of an evil dragon controlling the titular Pool of Radiance, which is giving it immeasurable power.

Selling points to the game are its customization features for your party and your ability to export these same characters to future games in the Gold Box series - feature rarely seen at the time. The game also utilized a tactical map for battles, allowing an element of strategy and positioning in combat situations. The game also relies on a password wheel for access and a rather useful hintbook and journal that the game tells you to refer to as you play, allowing you to piece together the larger story. Both the password wheel and hintbook/journal are included in the game itself as "feelies," little toys, maps, soundtracks, and other goodies packaged with a game as a novelty item to increase marketability. The inclusion of feelies has since declined in the gaming industry.

The game, as you can see in the pictures above, is incredibly ancient with primitive graphics and even more primitive sound.

It is an interesting look into the history of D&D computer gaming, as now D&D and its clones have reached a level of sophistication in gameplay, visuals, sound, and storytelling as to essentially be a tabletop session placed on the computer monitor.

This is where all of that began.
 
Duck Hunt, loved that game but hated the dog laughing at me
 
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Wow I have quite a few.

FF8, Oddworld (Abe's Oddesy) , Icewind Dale, Diablo 2, Morrowind, Spyro, Echo Night, Super Mario Bros., Need For Speed (The very first), Baulder's Gate, the list goes on but those are my top 10.
 
AwesomenessKON said:
Why don't you just go beat him up? You can do that now *He says glancing over at the new Smash Bros. Game*
Click to expand...
O.O for real?! I use to just shoot at him as he laughed...didn't help at all
 
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THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST

In 1991, the Zelda franchise got a boost into the Super Nintendo era in a big way. Long beloved as one of the greatest entries into the series alongside Ocarina of Time, A Link To The Past steps away from the less-beloved Zelda II's side scroller playing style and back toward its original roots as a top-down exploration game. Unlike the original gold-cartridge Legend of Zelda, A Link To The Past brings in a solid, but open, story. You are a young peasant, Link, out to avenge his slain uncle and save the Princess Zelda. This simple mission quickly becomes complicated as your foe, an evil sorcerer, not only sends his troops against you, but also slanders your very name in the local villages. For much of the game, you are alone, save the telepathic advice of Zelda and certain sagely characters you meet along the way. Throughout the first half of the game, your quest to save Zelda is incumbent on claiming a staple of the franchise: the Master Sword, the Sword of Evil's Bane, said to have banished a great evil long ago - now retcornned into possibly being Ganon of Ocarina of Time.

Unlike the prior entries to the series, Link to the Past holds your hand more than Zelda I. In Zelda I, you literally started without any weapons and no idea what you were doing. Most of the dungeons were located by sheer exploration and the harder to find ones could only be accessed by lateral thinking and clever use of your items. Link to Past gives the illusion that you can explore the various dungeons in any order, but they definitely push you toward a specific path, even going so far as to number some of them sequentially.

In actuality, most of the time you can break the sequence and in fact break the game by doing so - some of the relics you are "supposed" to acquire later in the game can be absolutely devastating in the earlier dungeons.

The game plays identically to Zelda I with the addition of more relics to expand your ability to maneuver through the field or conquer challenges. The Hookshot is easily the most memorable of the new items, as it functions as weapon, retrieval device, and a means of rapid short-range transportation.

Visually, Link to the Past showcases the best of the SNES' then-potent graphics with very bright colors that give life and vibrancy to the game world. The music, while trapped in the age of MIDI, was eloquent in its primitiveness. Many of the tracks were evocative and easy to listen to for long stretches of time, given how often you are in a given dungeon or on the overworld map.

Overall, The Legenda of Zelda: A Link to the Past was one of the major backbones of the Zelda franchise, establishing the canon that would grow into Ocarina of Time and beyon and created new ways of use the original system of gameplay to give a player a fun and fast-paced gaming experience.
 
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FINAL FANTASY TACTICS

No, not the remake War of the Lions, I'm talking about the original 1998, grammar professor-rage-inducing, glitchy goodness that was the original release.

Final Fantasy Tactics was my introduction to RTS-RPG hybrids, even though it was preceded by such luminaries as Ogre Tactics and Fire Emblem. This game sold me on its complex combat system, a hex-based topological map structure in which you must take into account distance, attack range, height, terrain type, and unit composition in order to secure victory through superior tactics.

At least, that's the idea - all too often people just go with the Accumulate trick and make Ramza into a Calculator with Holy. But trust me, the fun of the game is trying to outmaneuver your opponents through clever use of your abilities and positioning. Basically, the game was like chess with lightning bolts, and therein all the fun lies.

The other solid selling point for the game is the storyline. Unlike other entries into the Final Fantasy franchise, Tactics was game of kings and nations, embroiled in war on the front lines as well as in the political arena. Characters were constantly outwitting one another in an increasingly complex array of gambits that were as intriguing as the actual battles themselves.

Unfortunately, much of the nuances of such scheming is lost because of one, small, nearly insignificant problem.

The translation is a bunch of shit.

Grammatical and spelling errors abound! Nonsensical sentence structure reigns! At times, reading the English version of this game is like reading another language. However, some hilarity and gaming memes did spring forth from the epic fail that was the English translation:

...l...i..t...t...l...e.......m...o..n...e...y......

"This was the darkened items won't appear."

"Defeat Dycedarg's elder brother!"

and

"I got a good feeling!'

All come to mind.

Given how much unintentional humor the translation provides, perhaps it is better to count it as a quality fail.

At any rate, this was a fun game trying something different with the story compared to the other Final Fantasies of its time.

Also, Agrias Oaks is super hot.

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NINJA GAIDEN

...no, not that one.


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That one.

Back in the day when sidescrollers were nuts-to-the-grindstone-with-some-salt-just-to-rub-it-in hard, the NES had a wonderful little game called Ninja Gaiden. You are Ryu Hayabusa, a modern day super ninja, who has to save his girlfriend from other ninjas.

Or something like that.

To be honest, this was also the day when sidescrollers had shitty storylines and all I cared about was fighting ninjas.

And I got to fight ninjas.

Ironically, it wasn't the mooks and bosses that killed me the most, but the goddamn flying birds that would knock you into a pit of death whenever you tried to leap over a gap during some of the later levels.

Ninja Gaiden was one of those games where muscle memory and pattern recognition meant instantaneous victory, but you probably ended up dying a couple of times before you got a chance to memorize the full level. And while dying by itself will respawn you somewhat close to where you died, losing all of your lives and continuing from the VERY BEGINNING was a fate that every Ninja Gaiden player was all too familiar with.

Before battery backed saving, save scumming, and emulators, we had a generation of muscle-memory masters born from hours upon hours of frustration when they had to start at the very beginning every three lives.

The game itself was fairly basic, with four-directional movement, a variety of item-based special attacks, and the unique feature to the game: wall clinging. In these early days of gaming, adding another dimension to movement literally separated the product from every other in its class. Wall clinging allowed much larger arcs of movement when you leapt over enemies or attacks, allowed for an additional way to dodge attacks by clinging to a nearby surface, as well as adding another dimension to traversing the level environment.

I mentioned a similar element being present in Mega Man X, and advise you to look at that Retro Game review as well.
 
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I didn't believe my brother when he told me about this game. I thought it was a complete joke and he was just pulling my leg. He kept telling me that he played this back in the day and I said "YEAH RIGHT! Who would make a game like that?". Boy...was I wrong

 
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