The Retro Game Thread

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
So, many of us grew up with Elite, and/or Frontier Elite II.
But what other retro games do you remember?

I used to play a random game, i forget which platform, where you was a random guy, in a snowy post apocalyptic world, and you had to ski around, and do "stuff". It was all first person, flat shaded like FE2.
It was brilliant. I was to young to understand it, but i loved playing it.
I've been trying to find it again for ages, and only recently remembered it's name, it turns out typing "retro skiing game" in to Google doesn't help much.
The game was called Midwinter. Which was due a remake in 2015, which never surfaced.
It's long since abandoned, so i don't think anyone will mind me borrowing it and using dosbox to play it. :D


What obscure games do you remember, or don't remember?

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
 

Hellhawk666

Hellhawk666
The original Civilization and Railroad Tycoon from the early 90s were probably the first computer games (along with Elite) that really hooked me.

There was also a weird little game called Floor 13 from the same era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_13_(video_game) which was devilishly hard to win but strangely compelling. I think I completed it twice - every other time I was thrown out the window.
 

clivewil

clivewil
i'll still have a game of Quake 1 or Unreal now and then. Populous 2 and Syndicate also, and i'm sure there are others...

CMDR_Cosmicspacehead said:
I used to play a random game, i forget which platform, where you was a random guy, in a snowy post apocalyptic world, and you had to ski around, and do "stuff". It was all first person, flat shaded like FE2.
Click to expand...
that sounds a lot like 'Midwinter' or perhaps its sequel, 'Flames of Freedom' i think they were called. on Amiga if i recall correctly?

Midwinter had a really horrible intro theme that sounded like a synth accordion. terrifying stuff.

---> ah. i see you already named it.
 
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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
I should have named the thread "Obscure Retro Games" because all the popular ones will get listed now. Lol

I downloaded (borrowed) Midwinter.

I still have no clue what I'm doing, and i can't kill anything with my random pike of grenades. Lol

I also remembered i used to absolutely love Carrier Command.
So i borrowed that off the interwebs too.
(I'll put them back, i promise!)

I'm much better at it. Lol
That had a remake, but i never tried it.

I was quite happy with the original, or its "spiritual successor" Hostile Waters.
It was one of those games that somehow was almost perfect. I keep an eye on it on GoG, it's £5 now, but i wont pay more than £2.50. lol
I used to own the hardcopy of all these games. No idea where the commodore 64 ended up though. Jeez that was ages ago. Lol

I tried playing Populous 2 and Syndicate (and Syndicate wars) a while back, but they just won't run right for me.

Can't forget good old XCOM or UFO. Classic. :)

Only started looking at these retro games again, because ED no long runs on my potato laptop. But then my screen died, so now i just have to talk about them. Lol
 

Don Alvarez

Don Alvarez
X-Com, X-Wing series.. I was also a big fan of the early Heroes of Might and Magic, Warcraft and Warcraft II, Lords of the Realm 2, Earthsiege/Starsiege (NOT Tribes) MissionForce: Cyberstrom and I loved Total Annihilation (and the fantasy reskin for that, I can't remember what that was called.)

Going back to my C64 day I play the livin crap out of Sid Meier's Pirates, Red Storm Rising and the Bard's Tale series (and am looking forward to BT4!) a host of other games I cannot remember now.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Not very obscure, but rarely mentioned strategy called Z. Loved that one. Also some fun adventure games like Legend of Kyrandia(I think that's how I spell it)
 

MickyG1982

M
I remember Starglider II on the A500, I also remember (being very young) having absolutely no idea what to do so just ran about shooting everything - they exploded in glorious triangles!

Mega-Lo-Mania, Syndicate (great game on the Amiga), Theme Park - I actually discovered how to get into the full game from the demo disk with that. Sensible Soccer (& most of it's incarnations).

Dammit, now I'm at work & really want to boot up the emulator!
 

Zenith

Zenith
Going back to my first computer was a VIC20. 2 games I used to play a lot were JetPac and Gridrunner.

On the Amiga I had Captain Blood, Starglider/Starglider II, Millennium 2.2 and many many other games that were really impressive. 2 that were standout in terms of execution were Shadow of the Beast, and Warhead. Warhead had a strange flight system, but it also had some real moments. When I got hyperdicted in January, I was reminded of Berserker from Warhead for some reason.
 

clivewil

clivewil
there was another oldie called 'Armour Geddon' - i resisted a while because i hated the name, but eventually caved in and bought it.

build and pilot fighters, bombers, or two types of tank, all the while researching projects and collecting resources. the end goal was to build a nuke and then drop it on the enemy base to win. simplistic by today's standards but very wow way back then.

also a couple of 'views of the future' that turned out to be inaccurate, but were still fun games: F-19 Stealth Fighter, and F-28 Retaliator. in fact i think i bought every available flight sim available back then... 'Back to Baghdad', what a steaming pile of gannet pooh that was.
 
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Komemiute

Komemiute
Too many to name... but by gods what a lucky generation of -tards we are!
Born in time to see the rise and decline of the C64, fight between Amiga vs Atari ST, the timid growth of the PC to Master Race...

:cool: Hell yeah.
 

Mysturji

Mysturji
Can I mention any arcade games?
Missile Command. I loved Missile Command.
Also Joust, which was just so silly I spent stupid money (at the time) playing it. You were a knight riding a flying ostrich (only 2 controls: Left/Right, and Flap wings) and you had to joust other knights and collect eggs before they hatched.

My first computer was an Amstrad PC 1512
8086 processor, 512Kb RAM (I upgraded it to 640Kb :D), and two (count 'em! TWO!!!) 5.25" floppy drives! (I couldn't afford the 10MB hard disk, and the 20MB was WAY expensive!)
Elite was one of the first games I got on it but 3 others spring to mind:
Pool of Radiance: A D&D based game with warriors, wizards, clerics, magic swords & armour, monsters, dragons, maps & puzzles.
Starflight: Explore the galaxy (in 2D) andsolve the mystery of why suns are exploding (It was the ancients: A crystalline life-form we've been using as fuel. They acted in self-defence.)
Bouncy: I subscribed to a computer mag, and this came on a free floppy disk with one issue. Re-route the bouncing ball by placing walls ("" and "/") for it to bounce off. Hit the targets and avoid the deathtraps. Sometimes when you died, you got a "Trancendental Replay".
 
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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
So many games you guys mentioned that I remember. Heh.

Can't forget The Settlers (and Settlers II).
Or Utopia. My mate played that game to death, but i never understood it. Lol

Here was also a weird tank game, 3D, polygons like FE2, that was on the C64.
I plugged in two joysticks and used them both for steering. It was hilarious.
No idea what that was called either.
It seemed to be a newer version to the wireframe Battlezone, but it wasn't called Battlezone.

Also can't forget the hugely racist, Mr Wongs Loopy Laundry. Probably the oldest game I remember playing on my eldest brothers ZX Spectrum. Lol

mr_wongs_loopy_laundry.jpg

No idea why I remember that one more than the others he had. Lol
 

MickyG1982

M
I also remember the game "EPIC" on the A500, I remember being mesmerized by just how good the graphics were, & absolutely horrified by how difficult it was to play - until I got used to it. It reminded me a lot of Battlestar Galactica (not least because it came close to the bone with some of the ships of the original BSG, and also Star Trek)

Oh & possibly the very best game in the world (one that I can still only complete by cheating), the original Wing Commander, awesome sound track on the Amiga, pants graphics compared to FE2, but one hell of a story.
 

Riedquat

Riedquat
Ye-ar Kung fu and International Karate.
Bruce Lee
The Bards tale
Mr Do, DigDug.
Infiltrator
Gauntlet
Spy vs Spy - loved that one.

And so many more...
 
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mp4x

mp4x
This was my new 'Elite' when I got a bit older. Played the hell lout of this, got the voice pack add-on, the Righteous Fire add-on etc.

828-wing-commander-privateer-dos-front-cover.jpg


Interestingly, 20-something years ago, Origin was able to add a speech pack to turn the NPC text (comms text chatter, same as Elite) into voice chat that added great atmosphere to the game.

2773-wing-commander-privateer-speech-pack-dos-front-cover.jpg


... Heads up, Frontier Devs...
 
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rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
All the Sillmarills games <3

Ishar series and Transarctica in particular. In fact, I'm in the middle of Transarctica playthrough right now :)
 
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