do y'all remember Midtown Madness? I loved that game so much. it was literally the gateway drug to my love for games. I had played games before but Midtown Madness helped truly appreciate the art. I first learned about the game through a Microsoft Demo Disc but then we eventually bought the full game on PC. I credit that game even more knowing that that studio who made Midtown Madness (Angel Studios) went on to make Midnight Club and most of their driving mechanics became standard in Rockstar Games. only later did I realize that Angel then became Rockstar San Diego and made Red Dead Redemption later down the line.
It also paved the way for open world driving games too
Fuck I really miss good combat sims. There's barely anything out there for combat sims, in space or not. You either have super technical simulators or you have dumb as rocks simple games. There's nothing really in between and with good story and mission design.
Some great suggestions, especially Wheel of Time and Shogo.
For me the first thing that springs to mind that really should get more love is Severance/Blade of Darkness (it had different names in different territories), released in 2001.
For a time Darwinia was THE indie game with Cave Story. If you wanted to make an impression as "the guy who know games that you can't buy ina store", those were the two names to know. Now it's almost completely forgotten.I was huge into Introversion Software games. Darwinia, Uplink. So good.
10Six, a game on Sega's Heat.net matchmaking platform. It had rts elements, resource collection, base building, and the weird 3rd person hover board shooting. It was pretty ambitious in 1998, especially as an always online game.
I remember it being pretty terrible all around though, and we definitely faced a ton of disconnects and server issues. I don't think they ever developed it further and was eventually shut down.
For when you need that racing game hit, Slipstream 5000, Big Red Racing and POD are still genuinely fun and rewarding to play.
I played this gem, too, Deathtrap Dungeon. It was terrible, but so fun.
I've a real soft spot for obscure ports - did you know Jersey Devil got a PC port?
French game from 1997, it was a huge success in France but failed in the US, don't know why.
Dark Earth - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Oh shit, those were the 1st games that came to my mind.Citizen Kabuto with it's humour and vistas and Sacrifice was just so different.Sacrifice was pretty cool back in the day and no one talks about it anymore. Didn't play it in a while, I wonder how it stacks up today (and Citizen Kabuto as well, for that matter.)
French game from 1997, it was a huge success in France but failed in the US, don't know why.
Dark Earth - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I have to bring this up again, because of a feature that never got the widespread adoption it deserved. The different unit AI settings! You could toggle different AI modes for units. They had scouting, harrassing, search and destroy modes and you could give them damage thresholds that would tell them to come back to base to repair before they would go back out on whatever job you had them doing.It's been mentioned but Dark Reign (1997) was a fantastic RTS with features ahead of its time such as waypoints, build queues, terrain types that affected units differently, highly moddable as well I spend ages creating new units etc. I spent 1000s of hours playing this game.
Seriously. There's something about old PC games I find particularly fascinating. Especially RPGs and adventure games with elaborate lore and world building. I love reading through the manuals.Man this is fun going through.
Ever get a sort of "fake" nostalgia for something that was just so clearly the era from other things you are nostalgic for? Stuff you may have seen but could never say? Kinda getting a lot of that in this thread.
Nocturne - 3rd person action adventure fighting Vampyres, werewolves etc as the trench coat wearing, dual pistol w/laser sights weielding "Stranger".
I'm genuinely not sure if I've ever met anyone else that knew about this game, let alone played it.
Fitting:
Do you remember the Wheel of Time PC game?
Over two decades ago, while Wheel of Time, still unfinished, was fairly popular in fantasy lit circles, a video game adaptation was made, for PC only. It was a first-person shooter. You played an Aes Sedai (a non-canon character invented for the game, IIRC) who fought Darkfriend/enemies with...www.resetera.com
Seriously. There's something about old PC games I find particularly fascinating. Especially RPGs and adventure games with elaborate lore and world building. I love reading through the manuals.
Are there any good YouTube channels besides DF Retro and Lazy Game Reviews that talk about old PC games? Someone with the quality/style of Jeremy Parish?