Oldschool PC games, post your faves!

[Dryad]

I never typed in games from a magazine or loaded them with tapes or punch cards, but I have played one called "Adventure" over a phone line, using a dumb terminal that printed everything on old-fashioned fan-fold paper. My Dad brought the terminal home from work. The game was running on a DEC-20 at what was then the Loral Defense Industries plant in Goodyear, AZ. (I hear Lockheed owns the building now.)

[LordXenophon]

Originally Posted by dowekeller

After spending hours trying to find out why they wouldn't run on your system just to find out that the magazine listing had a wrong value somewhere. Debugging them was half the fun. I used to subscribe to Ahoy and Compute!.

I saved a lot of time typing those in with the discovery that Applesoft automatically replaces ? with PRINT.

I had no money for magazine subscriptions back then, though. Fortunately, my public library carried Compute! and I could photocopy parts of it for only a nickel a page.

I'm sure that's going to draw some flames from someone who just will not believe that photocopies were ever a nickel.

[dowekeller]

Originally Posted by Dryad

I never typed in games from a magazine or loaded them with tapes or punch cards, but I have played one called "Adventure" over a phone line, using a dumb terminal that printed everything on old-fashioned fan-fold paper. My Dad brought the terminal home from work. The game was running on a DEC-20 at what was then the Loral Defense Industries plant in Goodyear, AZ. (I hear Lockheed owns the building now.)

Adventure is a fun game, I used to play it on my last PC, A version of it comes with FreeBSD distros along with another adventure set on a space-ship. Adventure and Zork are pretty widely available for almost every system under the sun. Go out on the net and find it, just make sure to pack a bird, you never know when a huge green snake may block your way.

[dowekeller]

Originally Posted by LordXenophon

I saved a lot of time typing those in with the discovery that Applesoft automatically replaces ? with PRINT.

I had no money for magazine subscriptions back then, though. Fortunately, my public library carried Compute! and I could photocopy parts of it for only a nickel a page.

I'm sure that's going to draw some flames from someone who just will not believe that photocopies were ever a nickel.

I might be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, that trick will work with all Microsoft BASIC across the board. I didn't program in Applesoft much because Integer BASIC was quite a bit faster than it, and I didn't often need floating point variables. To tell the truth, I mostly didn't use basic for more than to type CALL-151 to jump into the monitor. Using Applesoft kept you from being able to access the mini-assembler, another fault against it.

BTW, my own list of Classic PC games:

These games may have been available on other systems, but listed are the machines/OSes I was introduced to them on:

BC: A Quest for Tires on the Commodore 64
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the Commodore 64
Loderunner on the Apple ][
Duke Nukum, and Duke Nukem 2 on DOS computers
Biomenace on DOS
Wolfenstein 3D on DOS
Doom on DOS
Adventure on MINIX
Sim City 2000 on Mac OS 7.6
Angband on Linux

That's it, there are other games I really loved, Quake, the Sims, but they are just too new.

[WILDMAMMOTH]

The only PC game that I really played and enjoyed was The Neverhood, but maybe that is too new.

[Vegeta]

RuneScape

Heretic 2 (really fun with co-op, for back in the day). Also online multiplayer was free (something rare these days).

[PompousKristina]

The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain. "Nuff said.

[MechaHandz]

Duke Nukem 3D, and Worms Armageddon!

[Lianna]

Oregon Trail?!??! lol. seriously though, that game was sick.

omfg there was this one game where you're this little guy and you go through mazes, and you have this ability to like.. shoot something out of your hand so that little blocks of the ground will disappear, and then you have to avoid these red monks, and the mazes get more ridiculous and frustrating as you go. for the life of me i cannot remember the name!!

of course Starcraft :3

and Shivers! does anyone remember that game?! freaking scary as balls.

[jimothyjim]

Fantasy World Dizzy and James Pond: Robocod or something. I remember enjoying them back when I used to play on my Commodore 64