RETRO GAMERS: Stop Here!

[DeafPoet]

Okay, what are you guys ripping through that maybe you haven't played in a decade or two?

For me, it's Secret of Mana, I haven't played this in ages and I remember it being one of my favourite games of all time. It holds up. Big time. I don't wanna besmirch the Zelda games because I love them dearly too but how Secret of Mana didn't catch on as a huge action/rpg franchise in North America is a mystery to me.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I played Deus Ex a couple weeks ago; not quite as retro as Secret of Mana, but still a great game anyway.
On the other hand, I used to be a huge fan of the Jagged Alliance series, but those games are almost unplayable anymore imo, the first one even held up better than the second imo. I tried again some time ago, but I just couldn't do it, it's not fun.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64. Despite living in the shadow of it's spiritual predecessor, Goldeneye 64, Perfect Dark is an excellent game that rewards you for playing on harder difficulty by introducing new objectives and putting a spin on missions that you thought you knew everything about, in addition to providing a coherent plot (which Goldeneye utterly failed to do with it's little subtitles and briefings).

I've also been playing a bunch of Mortal Kombat. Those Test Your Might!!!! challenges still piss me off

 

[Canadave]

^ Goldeneye had a plot?!

 

[Sean Aaron]

I occasionally fire up MAME OS X to play some old arcade games; most recently a few weeks ago. I played Jail Break, Snow Bros., Defender, Robotron 2084, Joust and I, Robot.

I also have a fair number of Virtual Console Arcade games on my Japanese Wii, but it's been months since I played any.

 

[Amasov]

It's been close to a decade since its release, but I just whipped through Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. As a huge Zelda fan, I didn't enjoy this one as much as I did the other entries. I'm prepping to start playing through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the first time since it came out in 1992. It'll be like playing a whole new game as I forgot just about everything.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

^^

I've been thinking about charging up my GBA just for the purpose of playing Link to the Past again, for some true nostalgia.

 

[Geck]

I just reinstalled Heroes of Might and Magic III last week...haven't played it in years. Still the highpoint of that series. I'm really disappointed they're not releasing Heroes VI on Mac.

 

[Amaris]

Sunset Riders (I'm always Cormano).

 

[{ Emilia }]

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
One of the best games ever.

 

[Canadave]

It's been close to a decade since its release, but I just whipped through Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. As a huge Zelda fan, I didn't enjoy this one as much as I did the other entries. I'm prepping to start playing through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the first time since it came out in 1992. It'll be like playing a whole new game as I forgot just about everything.

For me, I think Wind Waker is behind only OoT. It's just such a unique and atmospheric game.

 

[donners22]

Planescape: Torment.

I find that with a lot of modern games, I couldn't even recite major plot aspects - I skip or just skim the dialogue and cinematics, and just focus on the gameplay.

Here, I am hanging on every word. It is brilliantly written, thought-provoking and engrossing, and the game mechanics are innovative and interesting.

Simply one of the greatest games ever.

 

[Kirkman1987]

Sunset Riders (I'm always Cormano).

One of my favorites growing up! I always play as Cormano too. That game had really creative bosses.

 

[Aldo]

Reading what some of you guys consider retro games makes me feel old

Retro to me is Pitfall, Space Invaders, those types of games. Secret of Mana a retro game? Good grief, lol.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Reading what some of you guys consider retro games makes me feel old

Retro to me is Pitfall, Space Invaders, those types of games. Secret of Mana a retro game? Good grief, lol.

I count anything SNES era and earlier as retro. My first gaming experiences were on NES, Master System and Atari 2600 back in the very early '90s, so anything 3D still feels way too new to me to be considered retro/oldschool. Then again, there are people my age whose first gaming experiences were on the 64 and PS. Poor guys.

 

[Jadzia]

I'm not sure how retro is defined or should be defined.

How about this:
New -- Current incarnation of something (eg PS3/Wii).
Old -- Previous incarnation (eg PS2/NintendoGameCube).
Legacy -- two incarnations ago. (eg PS1/Nintendo64).
Retro -- three or more incarnations ago (eg SNES/MegaDrive).

But I prefer the terms 8-bit and 16-bit, rather than retro.

8-bit is early 1980s, including C64, NES, AtariVCS, MasterSystem. They generally have a small colour palette (2-16 colours), a 256 pixel wide screen resolution, and synthetic "chip" sounds, and tens of kilobytes of memory. The 256 pixel width is because that's all that one byte (8-bits) can address. Going wider than this would be messy and slow so it wasn't done. Graphics is generally not fast enough to allow smooth scrolling of the entire screen, so games tended to use fixed screens with slower paced, precision gameplay.

16-bit is mid 1980s upto mid 1990s, including the Amiga, SNES, AtariST, MegaDrive. These generally have 16-64 colour palettes, and typically 320 pixel wide resolutions, the ability to use some sample sounds, and several hundred kB of memory. Graphics is generally fast enough to allow smooth scrolling of the entire screen, which allows for fast colourful 2D games.

 

[Canadave]

^ The N64 seems very retro to me, seeing as I was 9 when it came out.

 

[T.Geiger]

Reading what some of you guys consider retro games makes me feel old

Retro to me is Pitfall, Space Invaders, those types of games. Secret of Mana a retro game? Good grief, lol.

I can understand. I grew up with an Atari 2600.

I suppose we can extend the car analogy to video games. Classic is 20, Antique is 25. So entering the Classic Games club later this year would include:

Super Mario World
Final Fight
Final Fantasy IV
Actraiser
Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts
Super Castlevania IV

And uh... Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

I've started playing The Bard's Tale (1985) because most people within walking radius of my apartment complex aren't all that enthused about playing Dungeons and Dragons with me (also because I don't own any of the three books, or miniatures, or grid paper, or character sheets for D&D). At 26 years old, I would have to say that it's pretty retro...

 

[Brandonv]

I'm not playing through any retro games at the moment, but last year I did hook up my SNES and play Super Castlevania IV.

It was one of my favorite games when I was a kid and I think it still holds up great. The music and sound effects are awesome (I just love the SNES sound chip), and I think the game still looks good too. I think that most of the 2d 16-bit era games have aged very gracefully graphics wise, much more so than some of the early 3d systems.