Just when I thought I was out, they sucked me back in!

[Colonel Green]

There a few older games that I loved years ago, played to death and abandoned, but still get sucked back into every once in a while. Some little (often only slightly related) thing will remind me of a game and I will be filled with an overwhelming desire to play it again. I'll usually play it non-stop for a week or two and then return it to the dustbin of my subconscious, only for it to rear its ugly head again a year or two down the road.

Common offenders for me: X-COM: UFO Defense (also known as UFO: Enemy Unknown), Sid Meier's Colonization and SM's Pirates. I'm sure more will come to mind shortly, to the detriment of my social life.

Are there any games which have a similar effect on you? At the moment I am feverishly attempting to beat UFO on Superhuman difficulty, which would be a first for me.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I fucking love X-COM. Well, the first two games. Apocalypse is dead to me.

I am playing through Deus Ex again. I can never get enough of that one.

Civilization II is another perennial favorite of mine.

I also hit Master of Orion when I want a challenge. The first sequel was too easy, and the second sequel was... well, the less said of it, the better. But the original will still kick your ass.

I go back to Morrowind a lot, too, though less for the original game and more for the shitload of mods there are for it.

 

[TheBrew]

I used to play Star Wars: Rebellion every few months until I lost the disk. Conquering the galaxy never got old.

I also replay Monkey Island 1 and 3 everyone once in a while.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Speaking of Star Wars games, I love to go back and play through TIE Fighter every so often. I got really good at that game. Shields are for suckers--err, Rebel scum!

 

[TheBrew]

Man, I wish I could find a copy of that to run in DosBOX. I played the hell out of those games.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Get the Collector's Edition. Runs under Windows--with improved graphics and 3D acceleration.

Amazon link

You'll need a patch to run it on XP but I can link you to that if you get the game.

 

[TheBrew]

I think that DosBOX would be better since right now I run OS 10.6 and my windows "install" is the release candidate for Windows 7.

 

[Holdfast]

I occasionally play a bit of Birth of the Federation, Burnout2: Point of Impact (esp. the Big Surf Shores track), and some old edition of Tiger Woods, all completely out of the blue. And then not again for ages.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I once had a go at firing up Frontier: Elite II a while back, only to realise I'd forgotten how to play it.

But I often find myself going back to some fo the great oldies, like Deus Ex, DOOM and its sequels (less so Quake), Elite+, Morrowind, the Monkey Island games, Grim Fandango, Civ II, Master of Orion II, and the completely underrated and excellent Planescape: Torment (one of the few games that I will never delete from my hard drive).

 

[Holdfast]

I once had a go at firing up Frontier: Elite II a while back, only to realise I'd forgotten how to play it.

I'd so do this if a) I could find my disks, b) find a floppy drive, c) get it to run easily without having to learn how to use dosbox and change weird settings. I had enough trouble getting it to run first time round, by futzing with various memory settings. I have NO desire to go through THAT process again.

In fact, I've no idea how I managed to do it the first time, since it must have been before we had internet access so I don't know how I learnt what to adjust in the memory settings without being able to search for the answer online! Life is so much easier these days.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I once had a go at firing up Frontier: Elite II a while back, only to realise I'd forgotten how to play it.

I'd so do this if a) I could find my disks, b) find a floppy drive, c) get it to run easily without having to learn how to use dosbox and change weird settings. I had enough trouble getting it to run first time round, by futzing with various memory settings. I have NO desire to go through THAT process again.

In fact, I've no idea how I managed to do it the first time, since it must have been before we had internet access so I don't know how I learnt what to adjust in the memory settings without being able to search for the answer online! Life is so much easier these days.

There is a ready-made batch process file for DOSbox that allocates enough memory as the "base memory" needed to run the downloadable (shareware) versions of Frontier available. That said, I couldn't remember how to launch the ship from Ross 154, so it was all a little bit futile.

 

[Holdfast]

I once had a go at firing up Frontier: Elite II a while back, only to realise I'd forgotten how to play it.

I'd so do this if a) I could find my disks, b) find a floppy drive, c) get it to run easily without having to learn how to use dosbox and change weird settings. I had enough trouble getting it to run first time round, by futzing with various memory settings. I have NO desire to go through THAT process again.

In fact, I've no idea how I managed to do it the first time, since it must have been before we had internet access so I don't know how I learnt what to adjust in the memory settings without being able to search for the answer online! Life is so much easier these days.

There is a ready-made batch process file for DOSbox that allocates enough memory as the "base memory" needed to run the downloadable (shareware) versions of Frontier available.

Really? That sounds like something even I could manage.

That said, I couldn't remember how to launch the ship from Ross 154, so it was all a little bit futile.

I guess I'll have to dig the manual out too.

Surely someone must have uploaded this by now. Actually, I remember the game came with a few different booklets... a manual, some short stories, a map and I think a few other little things too.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I guess I'll have to dig the manual out too.

Surely someone must have uploaded this by now. Actually, I remember the game came with a few different booklets... a manual, some short stories, a map and I think a few other little things too.

Yes, you'll have to, else the Space Police will be onto you again.

I still have my old manual, the Gazetteer, and the map, but I lost my copy of the short stories book a while ago - it's available for free download somewhere, though.

 

[Holdfast]

I guess I'll have to dig the manual out too.

Surely someone must have uploaded this by now. Actually, I remember the game came with a few different booklets... a manual, some short stories, a map and I think a few other little things too.

Yes, you'll have to, else the Space Police will be onto you again.

I still have my old manual, the Gazetteer, and the map, but I lost my copy of the short stories book a while ago - it's available for free download somewhere, though.

Remind me, what was the Gazetteer?

The manual was the copy-protect system on the game, wasn't it. I remember having to count words or something like that.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I guess I'll have to dig the manual out too.

Surely someone must have uploaded this by now. Actually, I remember the game came with a few different booklets... a manual, some short stories, a map and I think a few other little things too.

Yes, you'll have to, else the Space Police will be onto you again.

I still have my old manual, the Gazetteer, and the map, but I lost my copy of the short stories book a while ago - it's available for free download somewhere, though.

Remind me, what was the Gazetteer?

The manual was the copy-protect system on the game, wasn't it. I remember having to count words or something like that.

The Gazetteer was the slim book detailing the histories of certain star systems as well as detailing what happens to Earth and the Solar System during the next 1200 years.

Yes, at certain points in the game, once you landed at a station, the space police forced you to refer to the manual and enter the 3rd letter of the 7th word on the 14th line of page 15 or something before you could continue to play the game - but once you entered your answer it let you play without telling you if you got it right - you only got it wrong if they ask you again after you land at your next station. If you got it wrong three times in a row the game ended with your arrest when you land at the fourth station and describes you having to clean out toilets or something.

(I remember the BBC Micro game Exile had something similar with the attached novella, when you started a new game or loaded an old game, but if you got it wrong three times it went into demo mode.)

Ah, copy protection built into games. That's just so early-90s.

 

[Holdfast]

Yes, you'll have to, else the Space Police will be onto you again.

I still have my old manual, the Gazetteer, and the map, but I lost my copy of the short stories book a while ago - it's available for free download somewhere, though.

Remind me, what was the Gazetteer?

The manual was the copy-protect system on the game, wasn't it. I remember having to count words or something like that.

The Gazetteer was the slim book detailing the histories of certain star systems as well as detailing what happens to Earth and the Solar System during the next 1200 years.

Yes, at certain points in the game, once you landed at a station, the space police forced you to refer to the manual and enter the 3rd letter of the 7th word on the 14th line of page 15 or something before you could continue to play the game - but once you entered your answer it let you play without telling you if you got it right - you only got it wrong if they ask you again after you land at your next station. If you got it wrong three times in a row the game ended with your arrest when you land at the fourth station and describes you having to clean out toilets or something.

Oh yeah, that was it. I think I remember trying to guess whether the empty line between paragraphs counted as a line or not... or that might have been on Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, which used a similar system.

(I remember the BBC Micro game Exile had something similar with the attached novella, when you started a new game or loaded an old game, but if you got it wrong three times it went into demo mode.)

Ah, copy protection built into games. That's just so early-90s.

One of the Monkey Island's had a potion-recipe cardboard wheel thing you had to line up. That was actually a pretty nifty idea, very much in character with the storyline.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

(I remember the BBC Micro game Exile had something similar with the attached novella, when you started a new game or loaded an old game, but if you got it wrong three times it went into demo mode.)

Ah, copy protection built into games. That's just so early-90s.

One of the Monkey Island's had a potion-recipe cardboard wheel thing you had to line up. That was actually a pretty nifty idea, very much in character with the storyline.

Some games, X-Wing in particular, had codes on the pages of the manual where you had to match up an on-screen code with the codeword then enter the word at the start of the game.

I think that some other games, such as the Lemmings games, required that at certain points in the game's hard disk life, you re-inserted the original installation floppy disk before you could continue playing the game again.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

What about code wheels? Some of the old D&D games had those. I have the wheels sitting on my bookshelf right now, in case I want to play Hillsfar or something.

 

[Colonel Green]

I fucking love X-COM. Well, the first two games. Apocalypse is dead to me.

I've never played either of the sequels. I recall hearing that Terror from the Deep (or whatever the hell it was called) was pretty much the exact same thing. True? What was the problem with Apocalypse?

I'd kill for a turn-based squad combat game with modern graphics along the lines of X-COM

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I fucking love X-COM. Well, the first two games. Apocalypse is dead to me.

I've never played either of the sequels. I recall hearing that Terror from the Deep (or whatever the hell it was called) was pretty much the exact same thing. True? What was the problem with Apocalypse?

I'd kill for a turn-based squad combat game with modern graphics along the lines of X-COM

TFTD was similar, but harder. They swapped out the graphics and amped the difficulty.

Apocalypse was a real-time game and it was just... really different. I never liked it.

I bought a game called UFO: Aftermath which is pretty much a more recent X-COM ripoff. It's okay. Got universally bad reviews, though.

There is an open source game called UFO: Alien Invasion that's the same basic idea, too, but with modern graphics. It's pretty good, but exhibits the lack of polish inherent in most open source games.