h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One classic that will probably be obscure to most is "Night Mission Pinball", mid-80's, by the same programmer who did the original "Flight Simulator". It came on a 5.25" disk for the IBM PC, and was amazing in its physics (it ran well on a Hercules monochrome grahpics card). My current favorite pinball is "Big Race", requiring a 3D accelerator like a VooDoo2 or 3 for best effect, but way cool graphics. "Night Mission" was, at the time, at LEAST as impressive.

- Steve K.

It is kind of strange how nostalgia for all of these old games makes us forgive the lacking graphics and often compleate lack of sound. But I say that just proves that the old games had better game play biult into them.

Hey some one else who still plays castle, tho I have mainly moved onto a more adavnced one(s) the exile series, ok the graphics may not be the best in the world, but the game play and a decent storyline more than made up for that. some of these modern games designers should have a look back at the older games, and put into their efforts some of what made the classics so great.

Exactly right, the game play is the thing. I'll admit it, I enjoy flight sims (save the flames, please A non-PC gamer friend years ago played "Their Finest Hour" (a WWII combat sim) on my 486. The game allows the player to be pilot, gunner, bombardier, etc. My friend got so wound up trying to do all parts he had to sit down and cool off - seriously. And he WAS a private pilot. If he played the game today, on the same 486 (which I still have for just such games), I have no doubt he would react the same way. I do. (And I have a long history of breaking joysticks in the heat of the action). There is some magic in some of these games.

- Steve K.

Arggh! I can't believe I just read through this whole forum and couldn't find a single mentioning of two of the greatest classic games of all time: Frogger and Q-Bert! What better way to spend your time than guiding a frog (he wore a necktie on the classic arcade machines, but new releases seem to ignore that) across a street full of traffic, or some weird little guy with a big nose up and down a pyramid avoiding everything else that wasn't green?

We've all been amiss in skipping Frogger.One of the greatest.

Why all the mentions of the C64 above? I had a ZX Spectrum, clearly a far superior machine .

Classics from this had to be Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Atic Atack. Also, no one seems to
have mentioned Hunchback, surely a fine game to be remembered. I would also like to add my
support to those advocating, Scramble, Space Invaders, Asteroids and Spyhunter. I would be a
rich man if I'd saved all the money spent on theses games.
Does anyone out there like Nethack? Who needs graphics, roguelike games live!

ZX Spectrum. I remember it well, especially playing Atic Atack but I could never finish it. Who'd have thought from looking at that game that the Stamper brothers would go on to the big business of working with nintendo as Rare.
Is there anyone else from the 8-bit era still producing games?

Was that the 1st Atari cartridge that came with the system?

Actually I think that the game was called Combat not battle, my weary mind gave out on me.

Chuckie egg! Lots and lots of it!

I agree with whoever it was who said the computer games lost gameplay for a while but have been improving over the last few years; people were satsfied with just graphics 'n' stuff for a while, but then things settled down and programmers really had to come up with good ideas...

You can look out for some amazing new games in the next ten years, 'cos as soon as I get grown I'll be writing 'em

Why has nobody mentioned Wolfenstien and Doom? Okay, they're relatively recent... but they're milestones in computing history, both as the first *really good* shareware games, and as the first proper 3D shoot everything games...

Incidentally, I wrote an essay on this very subject for my English exam. Okay, it was wildly inaccurate, but I got an A* so it can't have been all bad

Wolf 3d and Doom were games that set the level of one particular genre, but what about the old console arcade games like P.O.W. and Vendetta. Truley, these are the precursors to todays shooters. A friend of mine has an old arcade console of Gold Axe. I have played that soooo much that I can beatit on three credits. I did miss that game.

WOW! Atic Atack! SOOOO COOOOL! I played that once ever, when I was about seven or eight. I was on the machine for nearly three hours. Really pissed of my friend, who I was supposed to be visiting.... I have never seen or heard of that game since. Any ideas where I can get some kind of clone/emulator/thingy?
Goth

Try visting www.spectrum.lovely.net. Not a bad emulator and lots of classicm games, including Atic Atack.

Wolf 3D and Doom, surely the inspiration came from 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81....
As for Chukie Egg it's one of the few things I play on the spectrum emulator these days, mainly cos sitting in front of a computer at work and having to think makes me not want to think too much at home.

Phil

Nostalgia is great, but I think games designers have turned a corner recently and started to marry visuals and gameplay with decent storylines at last - witness Half-Life. BTW my real test of how fast a new PC is isn't based on the frame rates of 3D games, I like to see how quickly it chucks cards around when you win a game of Solitaire

Wow, 3D Monster Maze a true classic, I remember it well, for those of you too young to remember, ZX81 graphic were teletext style, black and white, and no sound. the game consited of running around a maze looking for an exit pursued by a T Rex, scary stuff.

On Half Life, yes good game, but do we need all this story stuff to go with it. All I want to do is shoot some things and be nice to others. Has anyone who has complete HL any idea why half way through you have to launch a saterlite?

I have given up on the 1998 BattleZone and have gone back to the 1980 one, no story line, simple controls and game Over in 15 minutes, 5 if I'm having an off day.

Back to the ZX81 I typed in a 1K program for space invaders, from PCW. Thats 1K not one MB or anything, 1 Kilobyte! The game worked and even persuded the ZX81 into High Res graphics. Whoever wrote it was a programmer worthy of maximum respect.

CH

Back in the day of 8 colour graphics and beep sound from the pc speaker, there was a game called Montezuma's Revenge. I remember it as a puzzle solver that got quite difficult at times. Does anyone remember what platform it was on?

Also, the new habit of game manufacturers to blend two (or more) games into one has resulted in some interesting results. Puzzle fighter, for instance. Street FighterII meets Tetris. I love this game. Also I have a game called "pong kombat". You guessed it, Mortal Kombat meets Pong. An entertaining way to waste two hours.

Every ones failed to include the text adventures where you nearly always start off next to a post boxx with a letter in it giving you information about the game. In my opinion they still one of the best types.

xyzzy