May 30, 2004

• I don't like the newer games, mostly - they seem to only be the old games with slightly better graphics. Here's my top 10 favorites, of all time. 1. Alpha Centauri 2. Princess Maker 2 3. Black & White 4. Civilization II 5. Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure 6. Designasaurus II 7. Alter Ego 8. Executive Suite 9. Kingdom of Loathing 10. Oregon Trail III Many of these, I've played several in the series, and chose the best entry. 2, 5, 6 and 8 are available for download at Home of the Underdogs. 9 is an online game playable at kingdomofloathing.com, and Alter Ego can be played online at theblackforge.net - just in case anyone's curious. 1, 3, 4, and 10 will cost you under $10 apiece.
• I used to play them a lot, but I lost interest and now I never do. The only game I'm curious about now is a biofeedback game, Journey to Wild Divine.
• Currently, Star Wars Galaxies, more as research than anything else. After sinking a significant portion of my savings into starting up a fledgling company, I need as much dirt on the mistakes made by companies such as SOE, Funcom and others so I don't do the same. Games that have stood out over the years: As I said in the E3 thread, anything by Bungie. Standouts being the Marathon series and the Myth series. And of course, Halo. The fact that a few of those guys are friends of mine just makes it cooler. Most of the stuff by Bioware. More friends at this company, a company that's turned out consistently good RPGs for years. Standouts here, Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights. Other memorable games, Fallout and Fallout II and their spiritual ancestor, Wasteland. SimCity, Civ II, the Escape Velocity series...the list goes on.
• In no particular order-- NES-Ikari Warriors, Contra,Kid Icarus, Elevator Action, Super Mario Brothers, Coleco Vision-Congo Bongo, Looping, Artillery Duel, Turbo Grafix 16-Bonks Adventure/Revenge, Apple/PC/Mac-Oregon Trail, Kings Quest series, Space Quest Series, the first Police Quest, Number Munchers and now my mind has blanked out.
• Owned Myth and Riven, but gave them away because I lost interest after about 30 minutes, just not what I find rewarding, though the scenery's handsome. Really enjoy playing games around a table with living people. On the notebook, have Scrabble and Boggle to amuse me when I travel, and two other games I keep loaded for the sake of other people who like playing them (can't recall their names at the moment -- one's about people in a sanatarium, and the other's about a vampire, by Dreamcatcher, I think). Haven't time for online games so have not tried any. When stuck on phone, have been known to play solitaire and such.
• I used to be addicted to the Internet Scrabble Club. I don't play much anymore, but Jesus. I am, in real life, the sort of person who WILL beat you at Scrabble (yes, you), and I used to get my ass handed to me 2/3 of the time I played online. The Internet Scrabble Club is like the fucking Scrabble Mafia. It is a dark underbelly few in this bright, clean world can imagine, and its members are very, very good at what they do. Oh, and I love Oregon Trail.
• Star Wars Galaxies right now. I've always had a liking for the SW games, right down to the flight sims, but the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series was an addictor, particularly the versions playable online. I like highly customiseable, complex games that can be played many times with different results. I played Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls for a long time because of it's multiple variant storylines. I also enjoy strategy games such as Alpha Centauri & its expansion, but I haven't played it in several years. After a while, those sorts of strategy games become samey. A nice variant on the genre is the Total War series, which I picked up with Medieval: Total War & it's expansion. No doubt I'll come back to them, due to the table-top wargame like element, which I always enjoyed years ago rolling dice & pushing models around a big board. No one real super-favorite. As long as it's not too linear and not too twitchy, I'll give it a go. Black & White was *nearly* one of my favorites but it was far too taxing on machine resources as the game went along, and rather frustrating in the forced quests. I always wanted to create a totally new line of events, but the game really didn't allow that. Infinite possibilities, I suppose, is the key.
• Was addicted to the Ultima series, until Ultima 8 totally peeved me off the game. Totally obssessed with Civilisation II for a while, then Civilisation III. Tried Baldur's Gate I and II (borrowed them from a friend), but just couldn't get the coordination in place to get past level 6 or 7 for my party. Now I mainly play "one-off" games, like Tontie and Loop :) although I do indulge in The Sims from time to time. I do love board games and table-top role-playing games, but most of my friends have grown up, so I can't find anyone to play with. *sigh*
• I used to play videogames, but only inasmuch as that's what most kids did when I was growing up. The fact that I didn't own an NES made me a bit of a weirdo until I finally convinced my parents to get one. But then I didn't have the same fervor for playing it as others seemed to. I beat super mario brothers in fairly short order, and managed to get to level 69 in clay shooting (part of Duck Hunt), and the next game I got was tetris, which seemed to be all I needed game wise. I graduated to an SNES and then a playstation, getting a little more into some games, but then in second year university I worked for a term full time, and would get home at around 5:00, after cooking supper and such it would be about 6:30 before I could relax. To get 8 hours (thanks to carpooling I had to be up at 6) I had to go to bed at around 10. That term I had just bought the latest RPG from SquareSoft, Xenogears, with an estimated 50 hours of playing time. Well, the math worked out quite well, and I realized after finishing the game that I had effectively wasted an entire term of my life on one stupid game. Haven't started any long-ish games since. Then again, I'll still pick up Tetris now and then for a quick 10 minute distraction.
• I getting my phd on videogame players, so of course I spend a lot of time playing videogames. However, because of schoolwork I can't spend as much time as I'd like. I still play a lot of Counter-Strike but I usually wait untill games are discounted to buy them. I'm playing through Alice for the PC and Grand Theft Auto 3 for xbox right now.
• Pretty much RPGs for me. Currently Sacred. There's something soothing about going out and killing monsters, and I like shopping for new gear. Though, I really don't enjoy the AD&D based games - the strictures annoy me. I've spent some time in the past with the Civilization, Caesar I-III, Emperor, and The Sims. but they become too repetitive after a while. The only one of the simulations I'll occasionally go back to is one of the SimCity versions. I keep thinking I miss the old Nintendo games, but when I've found PC simulators, they seem a bit primitive. Except Uncharter Waters - the only game that made me stay up for 48 hours with just a little nap. Luckily, there was an ice storm, so I had a real excuse to not got to work.
• Diablo II: Lord Of Destruction is the game I keep returning to. The skill system allows for massive replay value. I've been stuck halfway through Ninja Gaiden for three weeks now. Darn you, Alma. The game I dream of seeing is Dungeon Keeper 3. But I'm not holding my breath.
• "Uncharted Waters."
• in college many years ago I must've fed a thousand quarters into "Joust" and "Berserker" at the Student Union. (The sound effects alone were marvelous!) Met a girl and just stopped playing. Got a Palm IIIe and downloaded "Zap 2000" and spent one glorious unemployed August playing daily. Started teaching again and just stopped, cold turkey. LOVE playing Monopoly on long rainy afternoons with a couple blunts and three close friends. i still miss "Joust", however-- I'm sure even a newbie like me could find a version for Mac OSX...(?)
• I am hooked on the Sims. I have all the packs for the PC. I got the Gameboy version for my birthday, which I've been playing since then. The Gameboy version is different in that it's much more structured and goal oriented than the PC version. There used to be an online game I adored - Acrophobia. ILTG (I loved that game). I used to play it on IRC, then when one was created with a GUI, I played that one. Then it disappeared. I bought Quake. I installed it. I played it for about a week. And that was the last of that. American McGee's Alice is very.... creepy. As for the influential game - Oregon Trail hands down. That was my first experience with computers. I then went on to write own little mock-up in BASIC when I was 12. And I've been joined at the hip with computers in one way or another since then.
• Heh, Oregon Trail has marked us all... =)
• Dizzy- Here's a flash version of Joust. Hope you don't break your control key!
• Hey, Alnedra! You can come over and play board games any time! Do you like Settlers of Catan? Monopoly? Even Parcheesi can be a lot of fun with the right people. Call of Duty is the current PC (well, Mac) game, but it's too realistic for me, so even though well designed probably won't be finished. Prince of Persia on the Gamecube is about 2/3 done, and it's such a beauty I expect to play it through again when done.
• You all up for a game of freeciv sometime? (based on civ ii, multiplayer shareware) And Settlers of Catan rawks.
• Yes, i played die Siedler with my gf and her family in Germany and it was quite engrossing. When i got my first computer, i was hooked on civ II. I've enjoyed playing warcraft 3 and the frozen throne expansion. I recently bought a cheap copy of Deus Ex and didn't mind that. I'm not really big into video games, but if i hear of one that people enjoy, i will wait for it go become cheap, or go looking on ebay for it.
• I went through university playing Doom (Batman .wad!) and Duke Nukem ("I don't have time to play with myself") in my flat, which was full of engineering students. We had a computer in every room but the kitchen and network cable throughout. So I guess they were the most influential games for me since they got me into PC gameplay. Now when I have time for a game I play Sims (I have the expansions up to Unleashed in varying levels of legality), 1602AD, Transport Tycoon, Theme Hospital (yeah) or Cultures (similar to Vikings). I tried Black & White but didn't like it at all, and tried Warcraft III and will always prefer the second Warcraft. I'm a mid-nineties game player. Oh, and I recently broadened my horizons and bought Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA. It's cute.
• I'm playing through Harvest Moon on the Gamecube and I'm still trying to work out if I'm bored or not. Trouble is, I don't have enough room on the memory card to save my game, so I'm having to play through it without turning it off. I don't think I'm quite going to get through all 150+ hours of gameplay that way. Personally I'm not a huge games player, but I'll buy three or four in a year and keep up with the news regarding them. I don't like the newer games, mostly - they seem to only be the old games with slightly better graphics. - is that such a bad thing?
• If I had the time, I would try to get into some of these games, but I don't. I have to do the short little distraction games where I can go in and out like a flash (I get bored so fast). I do, very occasionally, get into Sims. My husband has a serious addiction to Asheron's Call. My mom is addicted to something called Myst. My brother and father are both into A.C.II. Once in a great while, I will get on the XBox and race cars or something, but my all time favourite is golf. Go figure. I can watch it all day on tv, too. I never get bored with golf.
• Metal Slug 3, Neverwinter, PSO ep. 3, and most influential was Super Mario World. I love the new stuff, but Mario World was it for a while. That Lunar Magic post made me really happy.
• nintendo's entire zelda series owns my ass.
• Recently, Star Wars: Kights of the Old Republic had me transfixed before my Xbox for a little over 60 hours. The storyline really drew me in, something that all the prior Star Wars stories have not been able to do and I am really looking forward to the The Bard's Tale series. In 1985 it provided a nice rock for this akward kid to scurry under for at least three years. That role was later picked up by the SSI Gold Box games for Dungeons and Dragons, in particular Pool of Radiance.
• Zed-- Muchas Gracias for the "Joust" heads-up!!!! (And many curses from my lovely wife, who wants me to clean the kitchen floor. "That will have to WAIT, sweetie...")
• I'm definitely a firm believer in the "older is better" axiom of games. While the graphics will never be anywhere near as jaw-dropping, the playability of those older games was, IMHO, far superior. Loved the Sid Meier games like Civ and Colonization. The old Leisure Suit Larry games were a blast. And people! Legend of Zelda! Greatest NES game ever.
• I could never get past the sixth dungeon.
• Playing Manhunt recently, wich is like being in a John Carpenter movie, quite unsettling. Wario Ware for some quick high score action. Most influential...probably Boulderdash or Bubble Bobble. All time fave: Super Mario Kart.
• Newer games that I've recently been addicted to: Metal Arms - A Glitch In The System. I didn't think much of it when I picked it up (the store clerk recommended it to me), but holy cow is this game fun. It's got a good sense of humor, and good action. SSX3. This game is gorgeous, addictive, and massive. It took me a solid month of playing straight before I was satisfied that I had done all there is to do in SSX3. DDRMax2. I'm hooked like Courtney Love finding a new drug. Uh, that's about all I say. As far as most influencial game, it's got to be Quake. I was running an ISP at the time (which tanked) out of my home, and I had T1 access. Every night after getting home from school, I'd be gibbing heads and making llamas cry cheap.
• Just picked up X2: The Threat, which is a neat Elite/Frontier style game with the added fillip of being able to buy everything from ships on up to space stations, and run whole fleets. It does have some weaknesses - no actual landing on planets, none of the star system reality of Frontier (but then, none of the bugs, either), the documentation is pretty shoddy (I've wasted a bunch of credits discovering you mount doo-dad X here to get the benefit, not there) and the built in plot is pretty naff - but it's still great fun. Age of Mythology is fun, but I find it less challenging/satisfying that its predecessor, Age of Kings/Age of Conquerors.
• does Gameboy count? that's how lame i am. that's one of two computer games i've played, the second being Pacman. i'm such a dorkus!
• Through emulation and a lifetime of packrat-ery I have several thousand games. I play them still, and would probably play more if I had more time, but my life right now is too hectic. I kick back every now and then and play something old, of the new stuff, i actually managed to get through Neverwinter Nights and Arcanum last year, mostly through periods of low creativity and money and giant heaping helpings of unemployment. Newer games I have more of a problem with because they seem well reasearched and incredibly detailed, but impossible to play for just a little while. I still keep up on, and get demos for most things just to see how things evolve (but i do the same with most other kinds of media, too). In case you all didnt know, the rise in video games has had a hugely negative impact on the comic book market (except in japan).
• When I was a kid, I have fond memories of going to be and hearing my dad cranking away at Asteroids on my Atari 2600. I'd wake up the next day and he'd have a new high score I'd have to break. I hope to do the same with my child and I can't wait until he's old enough for us to start gaming together. I'm all about the God games: Populous, Age of Empires, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and of course Sim City; does anyone remember SimAnt? God games are like crack for me, especially The Sims...I can't touch them or I'll lose hours. It's a problem. I do better with puzzle games. One of my favorite games ever? Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions. I tried Grand Theft Auto, but I couldn't manage to get past the nausea; I don't know if it's a "girl thing" or the dark environment of the game or what, but I switched to Simpsons Hit and Run, which is essentially the same concept and enjoyed that. I just hopped aboard the DDR bandwagon and got DDR: Ultramix and a dance pad for our X-Box; I'm enjoying it, but I'm terrible at it and feel like a hopscotch-playing dork. My husband just sort of rolls his eyes and goes back to his Battlefield: 1942.
• I too just picked up DDR: Ultramix, and retarded hopscotch would be exactly how I describe my playing "style". I like to think of it as a specialized form of dancing, kinda like drunken boxing is to matial arts. Grand Theft auto is another favorite, but I've never been able to actually complete any missions. I usually get too distracted by going on rampages. I haven't played in a while, but my favorite pasttimes were standing in the back of a moving truck unloading bullets, or using the low grav code and flying the tank. Good times, good times. Currently I've been playing a lot of Battlefield. I tried Call of Duty, but ended up just going back to BF. I got BF:Vietnam and have been playing the heck out of it. Anyone who has 1942: I highly recommend playing online in the Moon-grav Omaha beach board. It's named something like Wagogees' Flying Omaha.
• I used to play computer games, but now find that I must avoid them. When a good one siezes me, I will go without eating, bathing, or sleeping for days. Work and family life suffer as a result (understatement). I seem somehow vulnerable, somehow addiction-prone, to something that these games offer. I'm like a lab rat pressing the "pleasure" cortex-stim button while ignoring his food pellets. Cold turkey is the only safe way for me. While I played arcade games in highschool, the slide into addiction started with Hack and Moria on the college VAXen. To this day, I find myself uniquely vulnerable to turn-based, tty-encoded roguelike games. Hack was certainly an enabling factor in my academic meltdown. Significant games for me include Wasteland, for the way that it unfolded its story; Darklands, for its historical approach to fantasy, and the open nature of its quest development; Half-Life, for obvious reasons; the first Civilization; and a roguelike called Crawl. I am growing stronger. I played Halo for a while, but found myself able to set it aside when I saw it threatening to take over. I left it on the computer for a couple of months, just to test myself, before deleting it. (I still won't let Crawl back onto my laptop, however.) I see Half-Life 2's pending release with a mixture of fascination and fear. Will I play it? For a few months, I worked at a game development company, slinging code (specifically, embedding Lua into a fork of Lithtech's Jupiter engine, if I remember correctly). It felt to me like working in a cocaine refinery.
• I like cute and structured games or games from way back like Pong, Centipede and Gauntlet. Give me Super Puzzle Fighter or Bubble Bobble any day! No wandering around-figure-it-out-yourself-Halo-stuff for me. I must have my anthropomorphized characters.
• zelda series - i bought an n64 just for "ocarina of time" after spending an entire weekend pissing my wife off while i played the game on my friends machine. the zelda series is indeed cool - still have the original gold cartridge for the first game (BBF - you have to know where the hearts are, to get the cool sword early. that makes the 6th dungeon easy.) too bad my old nintendo isn't reliable enough to play it; odds are the thing will either not start or delete the saved game. ah well. pretty much anything from blizzard is good in my opinion - in the old days apogee and id software owned my free time. learned DOS commands so i could get doom 2 running (wouldn't start on my friend's 386 if we booted windows first). duke nukem was my first experience with a game that had a sense of humor - the darker humor in half life i enoyed thoroughly, and look forward to the upcoming half-life 2. quake, quake 2, and i can spend the longest time just plain fragging people in quake 3. 'course i'm trying to finish a degree here, which makes it hard to keep up. loved playing starcraft and diablo online, but i'm so behind that by the time i get to playing every other gamer i know has been thoroughly done with the game for months or even years. for example, sad to say i had warcraft III on the shelf in a box for an entire year before i actually installed it in february; frozen throne is likely to go the same route as i haven't finished the orc campaign yet and am not likely to have much time to get to it any time soon. sigh. why did all the cool games have to come out now that i have real life matters to attend to? (oh yeah... "cool games''... how quickly i forget how many hours i burned playing mario bros. 1, 2, and 3, not to mention contra, [up up down down up up down down left right left right a b b a start]... and double dragon... and oh hell i loved them all...)
• Just (re)started on Fool's Errand. It's a wonderful game. I don't know why it's wonderful (except for the Tarot card game), but I find it awfully fascinating.
• I was a no-party guy until LAN parties where invented. And I prefer a good game that a lame date. That pretty sums up how much I love games (and how bad I'm at dating).
• and how bad I'm at dating Believe me, when you meet the right girl, you'll become a dating god. No effort other than the courtesy you wish to pay her because you like her and she's your actual friend is necessary. But you'll make a little more effort, because you really like her. This advice is freely offered. That means it wasn't paid for. If you end up a bitter old man, please don't attempt to sue me, as the cache will have long since expired. (Maybe!)
• My two big unfulfilled crushes involved, oddly enough, gaming. Back in the Pleistocene, used to hang around in arcades. There was this slim, olive-skinned, exotic looking girl that played pinball. Oh. My. Never had a chance, since she always hanged around with his brother, and the most contact we had was during some multiplayer game of 'Flight2000'. Later I hung around with two brothers that copied C64 software. The sister of the main pirate, a slim geekette that kept trying to hide the fact she was a girl via baggy blouses and sweaters, seemed to be more receptive but, seen from the distance, was obviously scared to death of becoming too acquainted with some nerd that competed with other guys trying to break some 'Summer Games' record and punched holes on floppies in order to double their capacity. And so nothing came to pass. Mmmhh... what were we talking about here..?
• Wow, thanks for the free advise Wolof. Also, thanks for giving it for free. I wouldn't have given you a dime for it :)
• It all started with pong at my uncle's house. Then there was the tank arcade game that my mom would have to come pull me away from at the gas 'n sip. Years later, my brothers and I saved up for months to buy an Atari 2600, and Adventure was my crack of choice. At school and friends there was Bards Tale and Wizardry. I got a Commodore 64 for Xmas one year and Fantastic (?) Forest and Castle Wolfenstein were faves. All through college on the Mac SE/30 I played Tetris and some solitaire. After college, with my various other Macs, there was Lemmings (LOVED Lemmings -- all of the versions), and when I wrecked my knee and my marriage died a home-made Ultima-like RPG game that I can't remember now (my first shareware purchase), Myst, Carmageddon2 (still one of my all-time favorite games, disturbing and funny and great physics models, I wish they'd come out with a new one for OSX)... and then when I started working at the PR firm (before the internet bubble burst) we would stay after and play Unreal Tournament for hours, hooked up to a LAN. I finally gave in and bought a PS2 about two years ago. Originally sharing it with a friend, so that it wouldn't take over our lives. But it's pretty much never left my apartment. Right now I'm addicted to MVP Baseball 2004 (2/3 of the way through a season), and the games that have most addicted me are Ratchet & Clank 2, Ico (amazing game), and MetalGear (the game that made me get a PS2). There are others, but this is long enough, I think.
• A video game that makes you make life's choices: Fable, the latest project from the makers of Black & White.
• Man in South Korea dies after 50-hour MMORPG gaming session. Lee, a resident in the southern city of Taegu who was identified only by his last name, collapsed Friday after having eaten minimally and not sleeping, refusing to leave his keyboard while he played the battle simulation game Starcraft. All you Urban Dead junkies, take a break!
• I can take a break when I'm dead, man....*click click click*
• hehe. He levelled up.
• See, if he hadn't taken a break, he'd still be alive today.
• Did he Ascend?
• Why are we talking about this? Stop bringing this up. I don't have a problem. Who are you talking to? *stomps out of room, slams door* *sounds of clickety mouse*
• Violence, conspiracy theories, spies, commandos, playable on Windows, that's my thing. --Thief and sequelae --Deus Ex 1 and 2 --Splinter Cell and Rainbow 6 Series (until the Clancy politics drive me away for a while) --Full Spectrum Warrior --Half-Life and expansions: Although now quaint, Half-Life the original was the most profound gaming experience. I was there, man. HL 2. --Liked the GTA series, loved and miss Interstate '76 , a ca. 1997 game. But I'd never buy a console game. That's for addicts. About your age, Roly.