What’s the oldest game you’re playing?

[mrbadger]

Looking at my own list of active games (as in installed with current on the go savegames, not just in my set), It’s Starcraft Brood War (1998).

I would previously have included both of the Dungeon Keeper games (1997 and 1999), but Since War for the Overworld came out, which basically is Dungeon Keeper, down to having the same in game narrator, I’ve stopped playing those.

They were crashing too often now anyway, which was spoiling my fun somewhat.

There were plenty of older games I only stopped playing because they stopped working, not because I stopped wanting to play them.


Doom and Heretic I loved, but they just started to look awful on higher res machines a while back. The future has not been kind to those gems, so they were retired to treasured memory long ago.

If you consider games I keep re-installing and playing then it would be Zeus Master of Olympus (2000) (in fact all of the games in that series) and all the older Command and Conquer games.

Thanks to GoG I have Total Annihilation (1997) too, still love that game. I never tire of base building. But Tiberian Twilight showed that EA tired of making games with them in.

[insert typical EA CnC fanboy rant here]

Possibly the most irritating thing missing from this list is Warcraft 2. It isn’t being sold any more by Blizzard. I keep looking. I so want that game but when I had to move house after I left hospital my install discs were lost. I retain hope I may yet find some.

That is a game I would play till it wouldn’t run on anything I had access to.

[Xenon_Slayer]

I still play the classic Sonic games now and again, so that's early 90's. They've been ported to almost every platform under the sun, so I've never really had a problem with them.

I guess the oldest PC game I'm playing is Star Trek: Star Fleet Command 3. That's 2002 and the last patch never made it out of beta, but it's still a fun game to watch a podcast with while taking over the quadrant.

[mrbadger]

At least it still runs, lots of things from the 90's don't now, unless you get them from GoG.

I need to keep in mind that home computers, or at least operating systems have changed massively in the last 17 years. I'm not so keen on the rate of OS change, In the case of MS it's driven more by commercial/profit needs then any real need for change. Linux and MacOS change, but less drastically, and of course they don't charge for the changes.

I'm not so sure computers themselves have changed so much. Moores Law has been in play for some time. Improvements have been there, but each generation of improvements have been so slow it's taken detailed analysis to show the difference to anyone but performance junkies.

In the early days you didn't need benchmarks and detailed stats, the difference was blindingly obvious.

That is at least one advantage of upgrading as rarely as I do (as in once every 8 years roughly), I get to see a change.

[greypanther]

I guess that the oldest I am playing at the moment is Civilisation 3, which was around 2001 I guess. I am going to try to find Civ 2 though, so that would be even older, though I cannot remember when.

[Ripskar]

Elite 1984 (Emulated)
Also have a selection of games from the Atari 2600 on my 3DS though none of them have savegames. It includes Missile Command from 1980, Asteroids 1979 and Air Sea Battle 1977...
I also have Space Invaders 1978.

[Usenko]

Easy. Bureaucracy. Dates back to at least the Babylonian Empire.

Oh, you mean COMPUTER game . .

[OmegaKnight]

Old games with current on going saves:

Rome: Total War (2004) but the save is for the total conversion mod,
Europa Barbarorum (2005) (v1.2 patch 2008)
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress (released 2006) (latest updated July 2016)
UnReal World (released 1992) (latest updated March 2017)


Games that permanently live on my machine that I fire up on a semi-regular basis:

Cannon Fodder (1993)
Close Combat II: A Bridge Too Far (1997)
Evil Genius (2004)
Medieval II: Total War (2006)
Uplink (2001)

[Golden_Gonads]

I've got the Megadrive emulator off Steam installed right now, but it's probably been a year or more since I actually played any of the games on it... I should probably uninstall it but I like to have the option to load up one of those games for a quick spin.

Other than that about all I'm currently running through is Mass Effect 1 (Which turns 10 this year!) with the vague intent of playing through the trilogy again in preparation for picking up Andromeda next year(ish). (I was playing through Terran Conflict (which turns 10 next year! but the Player HQ made me cry, so)...

I've been trying to keep off my older games I've played through a dozen times over, over the years with the intent of completing some of the newer ones I've picked up in recent years, but it doesn't seem to be working well. On the plus side I seem to have gotten my brain to cotton onto the fact I don't play that many games and so I don't need to keep buying them!

[red assassin]

I'm playing Startopia (2001) at the moment. Oldest game I went back to in the last couple of years is probably US Navy Fighters (1993), or Ultima VII (1992) depending on when exactly replaying those were.

[greypanther]

I was assuming you meant PC games, if not only PC, I have just remembered I have a copy of a game called The Bards Tale on my tablet, which I first played on my Sinclair Spectrum in 1985 or so.

[pjknibbs]

I'm not playing anything particularly old right now, but in the last 2-3 years I've replayed TIE Fighter (1994), Might and Magic VII (1999) and System Shock 2 (1999). I've got some old games installed on my laptop (like Fallout: Tactics), but those only tend to get played when I'm away from home and don't have access to my main gaming PC.

[clakclak]

Knights of the Old Republic I&II (2003, 2005). I know, what a surprise.

[Morkonan]

I haven't been playing much besides Terraria, lately. But, I have a slew of old games installed on my PC. Some favorites:

Diablo II - Almost always installed on any PC I own. I love this darn game, though I've haven't replayed it in awhile. (Played quit a bit too much of D3, methinks, and waiting on the Necro patch expected out this year, IMO.)

Star Wars Battlefront II - Always installed on my PC so I can get a quick few minutes of stress relief blasting away at Filthy Rebel Scum... It's still a wonderful game. (Needs a quick setting change for one's sound system to be crash free on most systems. For AMD graphics users, needs either a driver rollback or, IIRC, an additional .dll to combat the "placeholder" material settings forced by incompatible AMD driver updates.) (SWBF:EA is fun, but doesn't have quite the same flavor as SWBFII. SWBFII's campaign is great and the modded campaigns out there are good, too, for singleplayer enjoyment.)

Sword of the Stars (with full expansions) - One of the best Pseudo-RTS-4x games in its genre... A truly fun game.

Civ IV - Modded, always. (Generally RISE)

Sins of a Solar Empire: A wonderful 4x-rts hybrid with good tactical and strategic depth. There are some really wonderful mods out there.

Children of the Nile: 'nuff said. Great game and the one I was playing before I started in on Terraria again.

SimCity 4 - A great standby and likely one of the best "city builder" games ever created. Must be modded, though, but you can elect just to mod it to fix certain bugs that can be fixed no other way. To run stably on most systems, it's best to use a launcher. Necessary mods: NAM (User-configurable installation menu so you can pick and choose what you want), SimCity4 Launcher: Allows easy on-the-fly editing of the cfg menu with a GUI interface, essential for troubleshooting, but it also, importantly, provides crashless autosave features and allows the user to troubleshoot mouse-pointer issues.)

Medieval Total War: I keep coming back to this title... Love this game. Works well unmodded, but Stainless Steel fixes some unit combat/weapon issues that the devs didn't correct after release. And, the LoTR mod is wonderful.

Star Wars: Empire at War - Outstanding game and I still marvel at how much gameplay and depth it provides, even with a seemingly simple "rock, paper, scissors... shotgun" approach towards unit balancing. It really boiled down the essence of good gameplay in a 4x/rts title with the most simple mechanics yielding some of the best depth-of-play opportunities. I return to this, often.

Mount&Blade:Warband - 'nuff said. If you don't like this game, and haven't played at least fifty-eleven mods for it, then "I will drink from your skull..." There is no way that someone couldn't enjoy this game, especially if they've availed themselves of any of the bajillion different mods there are out there for it. (Best standard, vanilla, modpack is Floris with the "Expanded" install option, updating many aspects, including graphics, and adding a lot more depth, player options and capabilities and unit variation.)

Notes For:

Dungeon Keeper II, IIRC the GoG version has a fix for crashing and, IIRC, the Steam version has now incorporated this fix as well. There can still be some issues, but the fanbase has a lot of different workarounds. IOW - Crashing issues can be fixed, but it may require a little effort.

Evil Genius - (Have this installed as well) - There's a full community patch that fixes all the bugs in the PC version. It's pretty necessary, IIRC. (Linked on the Steam forums and elsewhere. If it can't be found, let me know and I'll dig it up.)

Heretic: I saw a mod for this, not long ago, that basically rebuilds it. Either its a mod or a complete rebuild, not sure. But, it's worth investigating for anyone who liked this game. (I loved it when it came out.)


PS - I love good, older, games. Gamplay > Graphics, every time.

[mrbadger]

Diablo II - Almost always installed on any PC I own. I love this darn game, though I've haven't replayed it in awhile. (Played quit a bit too much of D3, methinks, and waiting on the Necro patch expected out this year, IMO.)

I never actually got on with that. I loved the first game, played it constantly, but the second one never really gelled with me. I have thought about getting Diablo 3, but haven’t yet.

Civ IV - Modded, always. (Generally RISE)

I think I’ve established I’ve got my hands full with Civ 5 I can’t be getting Civ 4, but I’m not ruling it out. There is a better than good chance I’ll buy the entire series in a steam sale at some point. I have looked at it, but right now the non sale price it a tad steep.

Sins of a Solar Empire: A wonderful 4x-rts hybrid with good tactical and strategic depth. There are some really wonderful mods out there.

Seen it played, but I was really busy when it came out and never had the time to try it myself. I suppose I could now.

Children of the Nile: 'nuff said. Great game and the one I was playing before I started in on Terraria again.

Oddly enough this is the only game by the people who made the city builder games by Tilted Mill I haven’t played. I tried the demo, but on the laptop I had when I was an undergrad, and the performance of that was appalling, which put me off somewhat.

Silly of me to never go back to it given the durability of all their other games for me..

SimCity 4 - A great standby and likely one of the best "city builder" games ever created.

I have never played a sims game, apart from simcopter, which I suppose doesn’t count, but I did enjoy that one. I never liked the idea of the micromanagement aspect.

Dungeon Keeper II, IIRC the GoG version has a fix for crashing and, IIRC, the Steam version has now incorporated this fix as well. There can still be some issues, but the fanbase has a lot of different workarounds. IOW - Crashing issues can be fixed, but it may require a little effort.

Love it, played it for years, in spite of the crashes, even though they were increasingly irritating, but War for the Overworld is Dungeon Keeper.

The only reason it isn’t called that is that the IP owners demanded some ridiculous amounts for the rights to use the IP, so the guys remaking it just started again with their own original IP.

But they got the guy who did the voiceover for the original game, and the gameplay is identical, just with new monster types. I honestly can’t tell the difference now, except it doesn’t crash and it looks better.

PS - I love good, older, games. Gamplay > Graphics, every time.

This is true, but it isn’t just because they are older games, it’s because the games industry has been in one of its periodic declines for a while, this decline is just taking longer to hit bottom and force a self correction.

It’s rare that a game is so good that you just can’t tear yourself away from it. Even Egosoft managed to screw that one up with Rebirth.

I don’t know or care if they’ve fixed it now, it’s too late, they screwed up at the time, the world has moved on.

I remember a Microsoft news conference a couple of years back where they lauded that online players were spending 8 hours online in their game as a huge success.

8 hours a success? That would barely have counted as two evenings of warmup matches in Quake 1 days…..

[OmegaKnight]

Children of the Nile: 'nuff said. Great game

Never played Children of the Nile, but I did enjoy the heck out of Caesar III and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
And speaking of enjoyable city builders, reminds me of Anno 1503, which I prefer to the modern 2070
as well as Tropico, which again, the newer ones fail to catch the 'magic' of the orginal.

and the one I was playing before I started in on Terraria again.

The more you mention Terraria the more you remind me I haven't finished/ beat that game yet

SimCity 4

Loved that game but it refuses to run on this computer

Mount&Blade:Warband

Odd, I don't even think of Warband as an old game

Gameplay > Graphics, every time.

+1 to that

This is true, but it isn’t just because they are older games, it’s because the games industry has been in one of its periodic declines for a while, this decline is just taking longer to hit bottom and force a self correction.

It’s rare that a game is so good that you just can’t tear yourself away from it. Even Egosoft managed to screw that one up with Rebirth.

I don’t know or care if they’ve fixed it now, it’s too late, they screwed up at the time, the world has moved on.

I remember a Microsoft news conference a couple of years back where they lauded that online players were spending 8 hours online in their game as a huge success.

8 hours a success? That would barely have counted as two evenings of warmup matches in Quake 1 days…..

I blame the bean counters, everything now has got to have mass market appeal, the widest demographic.
So they end up on being watered down slop, instead of doing one thing well they do X, Y & Z mediocrely.
And/or it catches consolitis with it's terrible control choices and infuriating menus.
Which makes the very act of playing the game a chore, combined with mediocrity it's no surprise they can only stomach it for 8 hours.

[Morkonan]

...stuff..<sic>

Diablo 3, great game. Better with friends, though, to run Rifts with. (Instanced, on-demand, mini-dungeons with great rewards, etc. Currently how players "rank" each other on the "Ladder.") Necro class should be up, soon.

Civ IV goes on sale, often, for cheap. Once the Civ VI craze dies down, look for it during the Summer Sale. You won't be disappointed.

Sins of Solar Empire (SoaSE) - Great game, make sure to get "Rebellion", the latest incarnation of it. Goes for cheap, fairly often.

CotN: As expected, it's deep and you can spend hours tinkering with it. Usually insanely cheap on Steam.

SCIV - If you don't like micromanagement and rushing around, putting out fires and keeping your rich people's hi-rises from turning into slums, then this isn't for you. BUT, there are some really fun little additions, like operating the vehicles yourself and taking little "mini-quests" with them so you can get special buildings or city perks. Plus, it's not just one city you're building - You're in charge of an entire region. Build as many small/med/large cities you want, connect them together for profit, trade, jobs and commutes, build connected utilities and transport between cities, ship all the garbage from all your cities to just one... so nobody has to deal with the stink except those poor sods. BUT, it's insanely complex, under the hood, and can be troublesome to get going on modern systems. In truth, though, AFAIK it will run on anything. Though, I've never troubleshooted for an Apple and they don't have good track records with this game. (Though, has its own Apple users base, so help is prob there.)

... I honestly can’t tell the difference now, except it doesn’t crash and it looks better.

IIRC, they still update the game, from time to time. Last time I was considering it, back during last Summer, they had just patched in a freebie. Good on 'em.

..This is true, but it isn’t just because they are older games, it’s because the games industry has been in one of its periodic declines for a while, this decline is just taking longer to hit bottom and force a self correction. ...

It's bigger than the movie industry... Video games and new vid-card are symbiotic, but only for the AAA titles/devs, these days. Indies are huge, having a disproportionate impact vs their initial valuation. The increase of the number of possible platforms has also gained attention, with a lot of devs funding a lot of cash with games for phones, tablets, etc..

IMO, money is still growing hand-over-fist, but the environment hasn't stabilized and the big devs are still dealing with troublesome "console" issues. IMO - The idea of a "gaming console" may have its days numbered. They've been moving into the living room for awhile, now, and more of their content is focused on streaming media and accompanying apps than ever. If devs didn't have to deal with console ports, they'd have a field-day.... But, that'd irk the console publishers something fierce.

...stuff.. <sic>

OH ANNO! I forgot all about Anno! 1404 is one of my favorites, for sure.

If you have a PC, SCIV will run on it. Natively, without fiddling with its config or using an easy-to-use launcher, it will NOT run on modern systems out of the box. But, once it's fixed, which just takes a couple of minutes, there's no issues on PC OS's under Win10. The community may have figured out the Win10 fixes by now, too.

You're right - Warband is NOT an old game! Holy crap, the mods and mods and mods... They keep that game fresh.

[Redvers Ganderpoke]

X Tension

[berth]

I'm playing Xcom Apocalypse still. 1997?

I've also been trying to work my way through the missions in the first Settlers ('94?) but I haven't played that in a while.

[mrbadger]

X Tension

Weirdo

Who doesn't still have that though? It was on the superdisk after all. Ah, so many memories.

Probably the most amazing for me was an entire fleet of assumed lost fighters emerging through a jumpgate days after they went missing in Xenon space after a battle.

They were gone for so long I'd already replaced them. I must have been so new to the game I didn't know how to check my resource list to find that they still existed, because seeing them appear was a complete shock.

I haven't tried to install it for years, didn't even know you still could.

[pjknibbs]

Who doesn't still have that though? It was on the superdisk after all.

*raises hand* I never actually bought the Superdisk because I'd already bought and played the games separately, and I rather foolishly never kept all my old games when I'd finished playing them, so the only boxed copy of X I still own is X3TC. I really regret that now--one game (I forget which now) had an actual cloth map with it, and I bet that would have been worth some money in decent condition now!