What games do you have the most nostalgia for?

[Sarex]

Baldur's Gate 2/ Icewind Dale 2

Red Alert 2

Pharaoh

Devil May Cry 3

Heroes of Might and Magic 4

Prince of Persia PC series

 

[marelooke]

Hmm, nostalgia.

My first ever games were pitfall.exe (this is not the Pitfall most people would apparently think of) and Elephant Herding on an XT (we did have a monochrome screen though, no fancy colours like in the Youtube video)

My parents didn't really upgrade away from that XT for aeons (we went from DOS3.1 or so on that XT to Windows 95, I pretty much skipped everything in-between). The first graphical, and mouse driven game I played was Abuse when we were on holiday in the UK, by Crack Dot Com (which is open source nowadays), still love that game and fond memories of playing that with my dad (taking turns, of course).

When they finally did upgrade we got Jazz Jackrabbit with the new PC, still got fond memories of playing that with my sister and still love the music (though if I play that around the house my gf is liable to kick me out ;))

Next up was the first Tomb Raider, my first real 3D experience, never finished that game, but lots of fond memories.

Then there was Dungeon Keeper (the first one, and the best one, by far) first game that utterly hooked me. Game balance was "meh", but if balance in a single player game gets in the way of fun it can go take a hike as far as I'm concerned.

I did dabble in RTSs a bit, mostly under the assumption that, being a chess player, I'd enjoy the S-part but I didn't really find one that hooked me (in retrospect would have been better if I had stumbled upon some turn based strategy game, but RTS were all the rage back then) until I ran into Warzone 2100 (also Open Source nowadays, heh). Played that start to finish, the pacing was just right and the setup with the persistent maps that opened up gradually and returned for multiple missions (with all your units and base still on it) was just awesome. It was also one of the first 3D RTS games and it's use of LoS was pretty neat.

My introduction to RPGs was Baldur's Gate 1 in a cyber café, the combination of story with RTS-like combat (and pausing! PAUSING!) appealed to me and I saved up and got Baldur's Gate 2 (good thing too, in retrospect, doubt I'd have enjoyed BG1 as much) and that blew my mind. Being able to exchange tactics with a friend (who's unfortunately not much into games anymore) certainly helped there. I'd never replayed a game this much before, and I don't think I've ever replayed one as much since, especially such a long one, well, except maybe...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. One of my friends in college had this tendency to acquire...demos...of new games just because he could, occasionally we'd gather up and try out a bunch of them. I vividly remember us being at my place (yeah, we're a few years further down the road now ;)) and starting this and just getting utterly destroyed in the first mission. Out of the three of us present I'm the only one that actually finished that game (not sure if anyone else even gave it another go, honestly), and again and again. I played a few more hours on that, errr, demo version and just ordered the CE. Probably finished the game before that arrived and just started over on a higher difficulty.
I think that's one of very very few games where I ended up turning up the difficulty to the maximum with absolutely zero regrets, and if I get in the mood for some Stalkering this is still the one I'll reach for, despite Call of Pripyat being technically superior. The first one just oozed atmosphere, especially with all those labs.

[Humanoid]

I could never finish Snake Rattle 'n' Roll. Bloody ice levels.

 

Random nostalgia: I remember as a kid that the magical key sequence to start up the PC (the 286) was T-enter-T-enter. I didn't twig until yeeeeeears later that my dad had simply set the username to T, and the password to T.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Humanoid

[LadyCrimson]

21 hours ago, Ophiuchus said:

I guess it's aligned with whatever was going on in your life at the time, and you can anchor the game to it. For example, whenever I think of Super Mario RPG, I'm reminded of that summer playing it: my grade school friends having fun in the pool; my mom cooking a humongous breakfast (bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, fried mushrooms, hashbrowns) for us.

Ah, (fond) memory association. I'd connect that to stuff like remembering that awesome vacation and wishing you could go back to it. I guess generally speaking I don't get that way with games since almost all my game playing has been me alone in a room ignoring the world - there's no other association, outside of the rare hubby gaming moments.

I do get nostalgia for certain gaming years because I preferred the gameplay trends those years, tho.

[joels344]

Earthbound 

Portal/Portal 2

Metal Gear Solid 1-3

Half-Life 2

Pokemon Gold 

Doom

Street Fighter II

 

[Gorth]

Being in a nostalgic mood today, I guess this thread got resurrected just in time 

 

My first two purchased games were for the Commodore 64 (in 1983). A cartridge with a game of two vs two soccer. Aptly named  International Soccer by Commodore. The other game was called Beach Head, published by a big name of the time, called 'US Gold'. Took my a bit to get through all the levels. I remember some frustrating late nights trying to dodge tank traps when getting my tanks off the beach.

 

The game I spent to most time on until the age of MMO's was a game called 'Doomdarks Revenge'. It was a hybrid of a strategy game and a crpg. You started out with 4 heroes and their armies in a "fake" 3D world. No mean feat in 1985 or thereabouts.

In my book, the best game ever made.

 

Forbidden Forest was a game that managed something no other game ever did since, not even the Penumbra games, it sent a chill down my spine and gave me bad cases of goosebumps. The pacing of the building up the difficulty, the increasing darkness and tempo of the music was just genius.

 

Elite was a class of it's own. A decent port from the Acorn BBC computer, I spent months doing trading, smuggling, getting chased by Thargoids and cursing the malfunctioning drive that left me stranded light years from the nearest system.

 

Nato Commander by Microprose. My brother and I spend waaay too many nights sitting up and playing this, being complete wrecks the day after at school/work

 

On the Commodore Amiga, the biggest time sink was probably a shareware game called Mechforce. A brilliant adaptation of FASA's (the IP holder at the time) Battle Mech. Turn based combat goodness with environment effects, including destructible terrain.

 

Speaking of the latter, X-Com 3: Apocalypse share the spot with Jagged Alliance 2 in turn based combat done right. Including clever use (and destruction) of terrain and terrain effects.

 

Master of Orion 2. Nuff said.

 

Just my $0,25

 

In the 1980's, there were so many great games by EA and US Gold, as well as Epyx (Jumpman and the Summer Games franchise), it was just impossible to pay tribute to them all.

[Melusina]

Not really fitting, but it fits worse on other threads

 

[daven]

And thank you Poland for Kabanos as well.

[ktchong]

Ultima, specifically, Ultima IV to VII, which were the pinnacles of the series.

The Quest for Glory series.

Edited September 21, 2019 by ktchong

[Wormerine]

Oh boy. Some real gems in here.

• Asterix: The Arcade Game
• Spy vs Spy
• Rick Dangerous
• Alladin
• Prince of Persia
• Flashback
• English with Rayman 
• Croc: Legend of the Gobbos
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (german dubbing because...?) 
• Tomb Raider 2
• Pharaoh (Dubbing PL)
• Ancient Domains of Mystery
• Baldur's Gate 2 (Dubbing PL)
• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink (Dubbing PL)
• Tony Hawk's Pro Scater 2
• Colin McRae Rally 2

There is also UFO: Enemy Unknown and Another World, but nostalgic part is watching my brother play them. Didn't play them myself until years later. 

EDIT: Add Witcher1. Some memories, playing it at nights onlyon a borrowed laptop during my freshman year in Uni. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Wormerine

[Amentep]

Pong,  First video game I ever played.  

Asteroids and Warlords on the Atari 2600.  One of my uncles had a 2600 and we played four player Warlords a lot when we visited.  

Adventure on the Atari 2600 - beat it and found the "secret" by myself.  Quite chuffed over that at the time.

There was a proliferation of local arcade in shopping centers that had video games; remember playing Crazy Climber and some of the off-brand Pac-Man titles that I think were technically bootleg mods and Mr. Do's Castle.

Spy vs Spy on the Commodore 64, playing against my brothers with the winner being able to keep playing and losers switching.  Phantasie as the first RPG I tried playing that I had some success on (had tried Ultima but wasn't good at it).  Loved that I could have monsters in my party!  

I remember the first time I solved a particular puzzle in Time of Lore that had vexed me regarding needing a weapon to advance and the relief I'd felt after hours of trying to solve the puzzle.  I remember playing Bruce Lee and my brother vowing to play the Green Yama to help me beat the game and then always double crossing me (until I got good enough to deal with it and still beat the game).

I remember my mom and dad coming into an arcade (rare!) to watch my brothers and I try to beat Dragon's Lair (and later Space Ace) on the large TV screens they had set up so other people could watch the game as it was being played (crowds gathered around it just to watch). 

I remember when the Street Fighter II Championship Edition came out having a series of tied matches with an opponent using M. Bison where I finally lost because I butterfingerd the attack that would have tied us the last time (and got me the win).  I broke the reset button on my SNES because when SFII came out I kept messing up the code to unlock the bosses and kept reseting until I got it right.

Playing Golden Axe in a small pub in the UK.

Had a Shining Force II game where I'd gotten every character to level 99(!) by retreating in the last battle repeatedly to build up each team member.  Also participated in building a FAQ for rec.arts.games for SF II, my first experience with trying to connect to game fans online.

Being shocked at how poor the translation for Breath of Fire II was (to the point that I'm still not exactly sure what happened in it at the end). 

Console war fights on rec.arts.games and the fights with Working Designs/Victor Ireland over their translations (particularly their use of humour and pop-culture references that were very different from the actual Japanese games).  Fallout, BG and IWD brining me to the old Interplay threaded forums before Black Isle started their message board...

[Gorth]

11 hours ago, Amentep said:

Spy vs Spy on the Commodore 64, playing against my brothers with the winner being able to keep playing and losers switching.  Phantasie as the first RPG I tried playing that I had some success on (had tried Ultima but wasn't good at it).  Loved that I could have monsters in my party!  

Ah, Spy vs. Spy. I already put up a list of the most nostalgic ones, so just some honourable mentions (I mentioned some of my favourite publishers of the age).

 

From Electronic Arts:

Archon I+II - chess was never the same again for me, although the second game was a bit different

Skyfox - It was like a cold war thriller/war movie/simulation, oozing atmosphere.

Alternate Reality - First crpg where I didn't care that it had almost no story and no discernable plot. Exploring was fun!

Heart of Africa + Seven Cities of Gold - Similar type games in different settings. Again, exploration was a large part of the fun.

My little brother at some point got Mail Order Monsters and I bought Racing Destruction set - Just endless hours of fun.

Realm of Impossibility - Take that "Wistrik"!!!

 

From Activision:

H.E.R.O. - Something about going underground and rescuing trapped people was never more fun than this. Watch out for the lava!

Pitfall - What is says on the tin

Trailblazer - A "surreal", futuristic ball game. Fast and furious

Hacker - Play it in a dark room. Pull a blanket over your head and monitor. Creates the right atmosphere for this gem of a game.

Little Computer People - I didn't have it, but my brother got it as a Christmas present. This was The Sims more than a decade before The Sims. No idea how many years "Alfred" lived in that Commodore 64

Rescue on Fractalus - Early attempts at real, 3d landscape and exploration on 8bit machines. Fractals were a thing back then.

Alter Ego - A game that somehow managed to weird me out. Really, really well done for it's time. Several floppies big and that's for a text only game!

 

US Gold:

Zaxxon - Side scrolling done right!

Chop Lifter - Sort of the opposite of H.E.R.O. open air rescue of people on the surface

Beach Head - mentioned in previous post in this thread

Fort Apocalypse - Don't want to remember the obscene number of hours trying to penetrate the fortress, shooting your way through enemies and destructible terrain.

Impossible Mission - After a few years of trying, it was a relief to finally hear the "Noooo!" (game had digitized speech)

Solo Flight - A flight simulator that was FUN to play. Just strolling around in your little plane, taking off, landing etc. Advanced for its time.

Nato Commander - Probably saw regular play for almost 10 years. This was during the cold war after all.

Silent Service - I still remember dreading the engine sound of destroyers!

 

I could probably list scores of additional games, but those sprang to mind when jogging down memory lane.

 

 

 

 

[redneckdevil]

Morrowind and Fallout New Vegas.  Those 2 flawed gems is what I have been wanting more of and still play because I’m wanting more games of those with what they did right.  Thankfully the shadow run games and Witcher 3 came out to distract me of them.