For me, it was the game Rocket Jockey released by Sega Soft in '96. It was perfect. The game featured a surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale. The entire premise of the game was to ride around on rockets and using long cables to yank your opponents off theirs. Referees were also fair play. I don't think I've met anyone else who has played the game, so if you have, let me know!
I was a big LucasArts graphic adventure game fan.
Maniac mansion, Zak McKracken, Indiana Jones, Loom, Monkey Island
Then all the Sierra games:
leisure Suits Larry, Police Quest, King’s Quest, Camelot….
Good times.
I really loved Tie Fighter from 1994. The music was pretty cool because it changed based on the state of the mission you were on and star wars music was a cheat code to my feelings.
I also thought it was so cool when you'd complete secret objectives and they'd bring you in to the emperor's secret order and tattoo your arm. I thought that was just fucking great. Those cut scenes were so cool.
Also thanks to all of you who posted cool older games im going to try some of these. I'm thinking about trying fallout I've never played any in that series.
Yeah, the unfortunate downside to the Fallout games is that it gives you a wide variety of potential character builds, but unless you're somewhat proficient in combat, your odds of survival are slim.
Which, I suppose, would be accurate to a real-life post-apocalypse scenario
I played the shit out of Rocket Jockey. We only played it once together at a Lan party because I kept tying my friends together. Fun for me, not for them!
I've tried both Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation.
I think what mostly bothers me about updated versions of the concept is that there are too many "this type of unit counters that type of unit" pairs. You'll start a campaign level, build yourself a nice mixed bag of versatile units, and then an enemy will show up with a horde of some specific unit X that completely overwhelms you, because you didn't have enough Z artillery which is like the only effective thing against X.
I rarely had that problem in the original TA. Generally, all units are vulnerable to all other units, so you have to use geography and consistent resource-denial strategy to your advantage.
Oh heck yeah, nothing beats the original Total Annihilation. My dad would play LAN against each other and online. We would absolutely destroyed cause we sucked, but it was fun! Nothing beats picking off the enemy command with a Big Bertha!
The Moraff adventure games. Moraffs World and Moraffs Dungeons of the Unforgiven.
Also Castle of the Winds.
It's either tough or impossible to get purchased copies of any of them now, but that means there are sites willing to host the full unlocked versions of them now. As far as I know, the creators of both are still alive though. So I suppose if you tried really hard you might still be able to get money to them.
In both cases they were games I played when I was a kid and they stood out as games I wanted to come back to when I was less bad at stuff. And in both cases I did, and little me was right.
I remember the death messages of Castle of the Winds: RIP Killed by Huge Ogre or RIP Killed by Kobold. I had never seen or heard of an Ogre before and thought it was "org" so I pronounced it that way too for the longest time. Until Shrek was released.
I played one of the Moraff games (I think Dungeons of the Unforgiven) and remember it being like an acid trip. In retrospect I probably didn't have the colors set up right.
Only by accident? :-) I recall setting up the lemmings in a pattern that would produce pretty confetti/fireworks from the nuke button was half the fun of the game. Or at least it was after I got very frustrated with a particular level!
Rebel Assault 1 and 2 -- they're total crap, but if you were a Star Wars fan at the time, they were epic. FMV in RA2 was so good, and introduced story unique to the game.
Descent is really hard to beat for me. I put it above Doom/Quake in terms of actual gameplay. It felt so nice to rush to the exit when you're really good. Only Majora's Mask 3-days mechanic has rivaled the anxiety factor of Descent.
Releasing the T. rex and plopping guests into the shark tank and removing the ladder were important parts of a successful zoo. I wish the Zoo Tycoon series kept the same level of freedom the original has, the new one was depressing to play.
I was totally sucked into the world when I first played it as a kid. The balance and trade offs between tech and magic are awesome and the incredible dialogue and (OK from what I remember) story makes this one I come back to every once in a while.
I don't think I ever actually have beaten the game though -- but I do that with nearly every game.
Oh and King's Quest V (and really all the Sierra games, for that matter) have honourable mention because I played it ALL THE TIME at my dad's and I miss those days.
FX Fighter, Enemy Engaged: RAH-66 Comanche vs. KA-52 Hokum, Sim City 3000, Descent, and Carnivores 2. Just love the janky 3D, complicated keyboard bindings, goofy UIs, and crunchy textures.
For me personally, that has to be Broken Sword 1 and 2. There’s always been something about those games that keep me coming back on yearly basis - there’s few games that can do that for me.
So there's this old DOS game called 'Archipelagos'. You just wandered around this weird checkered liminal space looking for obelisks. I dont remember much more than that but it was just such a weird and different game and I loved it.
Settlers II is the one I go back to from time to time (though nowadays I'm playing the "History" version on uPlay). And of course, all those old Lucasfilm/-arts and Sierra games.
Also there was this 3D-ish platformer called Sky Roads I used to play a lot back in the day. But I haven't played that in ages. I don't even know who developed it.
Oh, and Wing Commander 3 and 4. Both really good games.