Old games you still love to play

[JasonM]

A bit like the re-experience thread, but different... I guess.
Basically, what are some old games that you still love to boot up and play every once in a while. It might be because it's still getting modded, or simply because the original game has held up so well that it's still an awesome experience.

My main pick for me is Jagged Alliance 2, in part because the modding scene is still lively and they've made the game better than it ever was to begin with (And it was a pinnacle game when it came out). It's just a blast to play and damn challenging even on lower levels, there's multiple ways to go through the game and plenty of challenges to give yourself to make for an interesting playthrough.

Another game that I often pick up when I'm with friends is NBA Street V3 on the PS2, it's still a blast to play both on my own and in a group of players. And whilst no-one I know are real basketball buffs, there is always great excitement in the room when we're going for gamebreakers and just doing crazy shit in that game.

Finally me and my friends still love to play C&C Generals: Zero Hour. Such a fine game to play and friendships will end when someone decides to hoard up 20 of those Chinese Mammoth Tanks and just roll over any sort of defenses you might've build up.

[Benji]

Final Fantasy VII gets re-played once every year at least. I constantly go back to old Pokémon games too.

[stokeriño]

Played this only last week:

(Note: may have been called 'Star Wars Supremacy' in the UK)

[Rich]

Theme Hospital, that shit is like crack

[badotori]

Until my PS2 died, I would complete at least one of the first three Spyro games every year.

Me and a few friends still occasionally play XIII, Timesplitters 2 and Soul Calibur 2 when we meet up. Mario Party 6 is still probably my favourite game to play while drunk.

I recently played through Dark Cloud for the third time, got far too much love for that game.

[JasonM]

Theme Hospital, that shit is like crack

Thanks Rich, now i've gone off and dusted off my copy of that game. There goes the next 2 weeks trying to beat those final levels, when everything explodes around you, and everyone is dying in the hallway because the GP had decided to play a game of pool...

[DavidMarrio]

Theme Hospital, that shit is like crack

Nothing like fixing people with Steve Bruce head syndrome. Catchy music too!!

I don't know how many people have played it but The Oregon Trail. The amount of times I played that as a kid naming the people after friends or family and getting annoyed when someone gets the shits and dies.

[Rich]

Theme Hospital, that shit is like crack

Thanks Rich, now i've gone off and dusted off my copy of that game. There goes the next 2 weeks trying to beat those final levels, when everything explodes around you, and everyone is dying in the hallway because the GP had decided to play a game of pool...

I'm not even angry.

I may have the King Complex though

[Mick]

Played this only last week:

(Note: may have been called 'Star Wars Supremacy' in the UK)

It was. Oh, Rebellion was such a glorious game. I could never really decide which side I liked more, though I tended to prefer the Empire just for the fact that I could build Death Stars .

I remember my strategy well. Have Palpatine and Vader recruit like mad, start exploring the Rim for planets to strip mine and set up massive production facilities, build a shit ton of Star Destroyers, and laugh as I make Thrawn the admiral and just go off crushing the bejesus out of the Rebels.

Alliance was pretty much the same way, except once I had blockaded Coruscant, Luke would run mission after mission, only to be foiled by the confrontation with the Emperor. The beauty was Luke became some kind of super Jedi from the whole thing. Leia never learned the truth, Han always avoided Bounty Hunters, and once I had B-Wings that was pretty much it. Still, fun game.

Anyway, I play a lot of old games, ranging from NES classics to, I guess 'newer' games that could be considered old by today's standards. Every year I do a run of the original Legend of Zelda. I fire up any of the Dragon Quests, old games like the NES Mega Man series, and so on and so forth. Basically if I played it during my childhood, I'll play it now. The only game I really don't play from when I was a kid is the original Sims, simply because Sims 2 was everything the first game was and so much more.

The biggest problem I have with games, mainly RPGs, is that when I was a kid, I would just play it for the sake of playing. Now, I try to find some kind of super optimum strategy and stick to it, and it annoys me to do that. I mean, Final Fantasy VI is a game I love. Playing it normally, I suppose, I see no challenge in it, since everybody getting access to every magic spell really overshadows the skills that makes the characters unique, with a couple of exceptions. I tend to do Natural Magic now, because it allows otherwise seemingly 'useless' characters *looks at Gau* to become absolute monsters *looks affectionately at Gau* .

[RPS]

I used to play the old school TFC once a week or so. I haven't the last few months or so. There is basically only one or two servers left standing, but I still get a kick out of it. I hear they are modding the sequel to be more like the original. Should be interesting.

[Mick]

There's a couple of unlockables in TF2 that are from TFC, namely The Original for the Soldier and The Classic for the Sniper. HIllarity is watching TF2 players play TFC and having them freak out to the differences, like Engineers being unable to move buildings

[Schlitzbrille]

RollerCoaster Tycoon.

I made such a mess out of my first Dynamite Dunes path network....park's profitable as fuck, though.

[lanky316]

Headcoach on the Spectrum. It introduced child Lanky to American football and as a simple management game I was hooked and would play through seasons of the thing, there was a save game feature but I never did it because I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of changing tapes which meant I'd play through a few years have England as champions for a few years (never understood the "New" part ) and then would do the same the next day. It's still incredibly playable and can easily play through a year or two in a quiet couple of hours in the background.

Sensible World of Soccers career mode. Always used to enjoy taking over a random team from all sorts of weird countries and seeing what happened. It also led to an irrational hatred of Mart Poom after seeing an AI goalkeeper run the length of the pitch and scoring past me. I might have just about got over that but the depth of it is still a great engine and brilliant fun to play. It's just loaded up on the other tab now... and crashed

A strange one but I always preferred Colonization to Civ growing up and still get a kick out of it. I think it was the micromanagement of colonies and the trading elements. The remake was good as well so I boot that up occasionally.

Theme X, any of them. Theme Park, Theme Hospital and I'll include Dungeon Keeper in the mix. All of them had so much fun and humour while being dangerously addictive and really well worked games.

The Internet Archive putting on old Dos and Spectrum games is the worst thing ever, yet more distractions

Edited April 30, 2015 by lanky316

[Whisper]

Outside of my more obvious ones (FF7 through X and Silent Hill 2), I still have a blast on Flashback at least once a year. Probably my all time favourite game.

[RPS]

There's a couple of unlockables in TF2 that are from TFC, namely The Original for the Soldier and The Classic for the Sniper. HIllarity is watching TF2 players play TFC and having them freak out to the differences, like Engineers being unable to move buildings

Oh, I would love to have those. I've never gotten into TF2 like I did TFC. I think that is largely because I played so much TFC when I was younger that I just expected it to remain largely the same game, with some additions. TF2 just changed the whole formula of the game. I think anyone who never played TFC and bought the game would hate it. TF2 is way more user friendly.

[MalaCloudy Black]

At some point every year I go back and play Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Advance. Tactics, most of the time - one of my favorite games of all time. Batshit crazy plot to follow, but I looooove the gameplay so much.

[thatshortguy]

The original SimCity, Goldeneye and NBA Live '96 spring to mind. If I could find Hardball 6, I'd play that way more than I'd play OotP.

[ZJ Penn]

Championship Manager 01/02. It has the exact balance of depth, difficulty and speed that I want from a football management sim. Might be my all time most played game.

[John Stones' Paint Trophy]

Me and my friends play older games together pretty frequently. Fighting games are always good and we tend to go to Soul Calibur 2 because you can make Tali do huge front flips out of the arena if you're careless. I'll usually plug the Wii in, load up the emulators and we'll play a fair amount of Base Wars, North And South, Mario Kart and Super Smash TV.

Timesplitters 2 is one I haven't played for years but that was always in the mix a while ago. Tony Hawk 3 still gets a quick airing every few months on a bored Sunday as I try to remember all the old lines I used to pull off.

For my sins, I know my way around Final Fantasy VIII like the back of my hand so I tend to enjoy breaking that every year or so. I usually get up to the Disc 3 sidequests and remember how fucking ridiculously obtuse they are and put it down.

Tetris. I like to make my friend play Tetris and beat him.

Worms. My friend likes to make me play Worms so he can beat me.

There's more from the last generation that I go back to more often; I always replay the Mass Effect trilogy when there's nothing out. Gears of War 1 is still an incredible multiplayer shooter but the people still playing that thing are insane masters who have made it...not fun. Rock Band 3 is something I actually play, just to make sure I don't get too rusty as a drummer. I should really play Lost Odyssey more, I love that game.

[Skummy]

Theme Hospital, that shit is like crack

Absolutely! I'm currently on a play-through as we speak, and I suck after so many years not playing it, but it's so much.

"Old games you still love to play" pretty much sums up most of my gaming these days; I probably play Tetris and Dr. Mario more than any other game right now.

Prior to my current Theme Hospital game, I recently finished Dungeon Keeper, which is still as brilliant as it ever was, and before that, I started the first Gabriel Knight game for the umpteenth time.

I could happily play Alex Kidd In Miracle World on the Master System every day forever, and a thousand other old games too.