/vr/ - Retro Games

Been there done that. For me its all about PS1 nowdays.

You get old and lazy and its simpler with just a console and cds.

Also a lot of the Home Computer threads end up with Trolls tring to start arguments. But I remember I used to play consoles primarily (Sega Genesis, we were a Sega neighborhood apparently) until Command and Conquer came out for the PC, it was at that time we had enough PCs (that weren't DOS) to play LAN, and it was a blast. Anyone start with Windows 95 PC Games?

Well, in the early retro period of computer gaming, text adventures were one of the most dominant genres, and nintenyearolds don't play video games to read.

Early computer RPGs also required a lot of reading, what with manuals being used as copyright protection (snicker).

But yeah, the obese clapping american manchildren with striped t-shirts and Sonic/Pikachu idolatry don't like having to exercise their literacy skills while gaming.

>>1109632
>But yeah, the obese clapping american manchildren with striped t-shirts and Sonic/Pikachu idolatry don't like having to exercise their literacy skills while gaming.
Even Chris had a C64

The only reason is because it's not as trendy and slightly harder to get going than consoles.

>>1109630
>Anyone start with Windows 95 PC Games?
The first video games I ever played were on Win. 95. Games like Prince of Persia, King's Quest 5, Commander Keen 4, Jazz Jackrabbit etc. I never even owned a console until I got PS2 for my 13th birthday.

If it makes you feel better OP I can say that I lay my foundation for todays retro console gaming in the home computer area. I had them all, ataris, commodores, amigas. Several different version of them, Amiga 2x500/600/1200 Two models of Atari wich I dont even remember the number of. I had the 5.25 inch floppy for commodore 64/128. Never got it working tho.. I had NES, Super NES, Megadrive, Saturn, Dreamcast, Playstation.

When this shit got antique I took the step over to PC, today I am a mac user and will never go back. Its just mac and PS1 for me now. And its fucken sweet to be releaved from the overflowing PC gaming jungle. It was just a lot of pressure and it took to much time to be able to play everything.

>>1109672
See, I was actually more the opposite; I had consoles as long as I could remember (more aptly my family did), we did have a DOS computer I would play F-19 Stealth Fighter (or F-17 stealth fighter, don't recall), then got the good PCs in 95'ish. From then on, whilst I had consoles, PC were the way to go. Command and Conquer, Warcraft 2, Total Annihilation, Baldur's Gate, Diablo. Best stuff

>>1109679
>From then on, whilst I had consoles, PC were the way to go.
See, I'd be lying if I said I didn't envy the kids who had consoles back then, but at the same time I always had enough games on PC to keep me occupied. Now looking back I'm really glad I had PC when my friends didn't because I was exposed to a ton of awesome games that most of my friends have never even heard of.

>>1109619
Because it's more of a pain in the ass to emulate well.
Look at that keyboard. Then look at your keyboard. Notice a problem? It gets worse with other computers with even different layouts.

PC/DOS is generally the most discussed for that reason. Because it works.

Also older computers generally required some rudimentary knowledge to use. It wasn't as simple as sticking in a cartridge and powering it on.

>>1109632

>(snicker)

>>1109701
>Look at that keyboard. Then look at your keyboard. Notice a problem? It gets worse with other computers with even different layouts.
>Implying nearly all old 80's computers didn't have a joystick interface
And besides, loading games is usually a case of 'load, ready, run' in that order, barely harder than inserting a cartridge

>>1109632
>text adventures
Reading is for dorks.

>>1109632
>manuals as copyright protection

Ultima's spell ingredient system was an awesome anti-piracy system that didn't even feel like anti-piracy.

>>1109706
depending on what your doing. It's not hard, it's just not point and click easy. Also depends on what you want to do with the computer. You might even then attempt making some of your own games or typing up some games.

>Why aren't home computers more talked about on /vr/?

The majority of this site is made up of North Americans, and the majority of those grew up with consoles as a kid.

As a European PC kid, I wish there was more DOS stuff being talked about, but you can't really do much.

>>1109753
There's a lot you can do. Like, you know, make threads.

>>1109753
I don't remember a lot of DOS games. ENLIGHTEN US ANON, what were the best DOS games you remember

>>1109776
The best games were not pc/dos. The best games were commodore/amiga/atari.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amiga_games

Educate yourself!

>>1109753
Pretty much this. Home computers didn't really become common place in North American homes until the better half of the late 90's

I didn't have a computer until 1998, because mommy and daddy wouldn't buy me anything.

>>1110772
I'll agree. We had a computer as a kid, and I had a few games, but I always played on my hand-me-down NES, when it worked, and Game Gear.

>>1109672
>The first video games I ever played were on Win. 95. Games like Prince of Persia, King's Quest 5, Commander Keen 4, Jazz Jackrabbit etc.
Those are all DOS games...

My first gaming device was a 386 "IBM compatible" PC in '91. I lived in Saudi at the time, where PCs were quite common and piracy was rampant, which favoured floppy-based systems (mainly PCs and Amiga). I remember the shop we used to get games from would copy them for you right there at the counter for about 5 Riyals per disk.

These days I still have that PC (only just got it working again recently, a cap blew on the HDD), a BBC Micro, a ZX Spectrum +2 and a C64 but I rarely bother actually taking them out and using them, and don't even emulate the latter 3 (whereas I have entire ROM sets of most 8/16-bit consoles).

Here in France :

=8bit computer market was largely dominated by the Amstrad CPCfrom its release in 1984. into early 90's games still were released because of the huge parc.

16 bit :
=Atari ST because cheap.
=amiga500 because better than Atari ST
=PCs because of Amstrad PC1512 or because dad could sometimes get one from his Job. But VGA was getting a common sight at homes only in the early 90's (91-92)

VGA and CGA sucked asses, EGA only because of its retrocampatibility.

PCs could have a better earlier gaming history if most PC had a soundchip like amstrad CPC or Atari ST (even an AY could be neat) and if EGA managed to get real access to its full palette in low resolution mode (was limited to the 16 colurs of the CGA palette in vertical 200pixels modes, WTF ?) and a more standard High resolution mode (640x400...)

Fucking IBM !!!

Amstrad could have made even more if they equipped the PC1512 with a proper "almost EGA" video card and an AY for the sound.

They tried too hard to stick to the IBM standards and got shat on despite they made it better (640x200x16 video mode possible on PC1512... and a potentiometer for the sound level...)


Most French companies sticked to the CPC-Amiga-ST-PC formats.

Zombi was the very first UBIsoft game, and was first released on the amstrad CPC.

There were some very good computer games, sadly most of them weren't as polished as console counterparts

>>1111610

I loved Zombi. After Project Firestart it was one of first survival horror games. France had good companies like Delphine Software (of course) and Cryo
France was known for producing some strange games. Do you remember Kult?

>>1111634
Drakkhen.
Also Captain Blood.
Another world.
Alone in the Dark.

Companies like :

=Loriciel : many great games such as l'Aigle d'Or, Jim Powers, Skweek

=Titus : blues brother, Prehistorik

=Silmarils : windsurf willy, Thargan, Ishtar

=ERE - EXXOS : captain blood...

=Microids

=Infograme (now Atari?)

=UBIsoft (do they still exist ?)

>>1110772
>Pretty much this. Home computers didn't really become common place in North American homes until the better half of the late 90's

that's not true. at all. 25% of American households had a home computer by 1990.

>>1111707
I suppose he meant for gaming.
My parents had a computer, but it was mostly for work. I got to play games on it only every so often. I stuck to my gaming machines instead.

>>1111707
>that's not true. at all. 25% of American households had a home computer by 1990

Well, while that might be true, I doubt a lot of them were used for anything more than business/work/school purposes

>>1111707
Thats bullshit.

We had a Commodore 128 and had to do the code so we could play games on it. So many double-sided compilations with text adventures.
The floppy drive got hot if playing a game too long.

>>1111725
>The floppy drive got hot if playing a game too long
That normal for floppy drives or just for the Commodore?

>>1111736
I dunno. I remember putting wax paper on the top with several paper towels on top to keep sandwiches warm whenever I played Tass Times in Tone Town, The Last Ninja and The Faery Tale Adventure.

>>1111738
>I remember putting wax paper on the top with several paper towels on top to keep sandwiches warm

At least it had a practical use for you it seems

>>1111747
Very useful when I was a kid in the 1980s and especially useful for a handwarmer during snowy winters.

>>1111669
>not saying Wings
Man , I miss my childhood

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

>>1111565

Indeed. But Windoes 95 was barely a OS anyways.

Windows was more like a frontend until the NT Kernel became standard. Which was, for civilians, XP.

The Atari ST had the best color monitor I ever used. To this day, even counting LED, 3D panels and whatever you want, nothing has those colors. That deep black and its fire red. Barbarian's green fields and snakes. So amazing.

Everything looked amazing.

Actually, AMOLED (Samsung) and OLED (vita) screens look just as good, but fuck... how long did that take?

27 years?

I had this fucker here. No idea who other ST monitors looked. Did anybody else notice it? Does anybody know why?

I've tried looking up it was so amazing, but google gives me nothing. Maybe nobody cares, but as a designer I've been looking forward ever since for a monitor as awesome as that one.

Do you guys know of any games for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a? I've got one that I've never gotten around to playing with, although I should since it's such a cool machine.

>>1111926

There was a side scrolling space shooter in the vein of R-Type for it that was amazing. It came in a cartridge. I remember some enemies looked like icecream cones or something.

I though they were rat-ice-cream because V (tv series with aliens from 85) was playing back then on TV.

>>1111917
I thought the colors on that thing were annoyingly eye searing

>>1111939

They were. You had dials to change that to taste anyways.

But it also had great contrast with pretty much no bleeding.

If you used it with the lights off. when the picture was black, the monitor might as well be turned off, because it emitted no light whatsoever. If it was black and there character or something on the screen, you saw only that character.

Todays displays, you see this gray-square. Black and gray are pretty hard to tell apart.

>>1111926
There was a good dungeon crawler called Tunnels of Doom. I remember loading it from the cassette.

>>1111934
>>1111960
Now I'll just need to figure out how to move software to the TI-99/4a through the cassette recorder.

>>1111934
>>1111960
Dang, I didn't think anybody would respond so quickly.

Now I'll just need to figure out how I can load software from my computer through the TI-99/4a cassette reader.

Did anyone play this based game?

I want to buy a C64
What to know/What to look out for?

>>1112023
Yep, loved the repairing aspect to that one.

It's "SunDog: Frozen Legacy" in case other people want to know.

>>1112401
Buy one of the new models (ie. not the breadboard one) and the matching new floppy drive (ie. the square one with external power supply). Other than that, you will need some cable to connect the floppy drive to PC if you want to write all those diskimages from romsites on floppy, most Amiga eshops have them in stock for like, 10 bucks.

>>1112401
Try looking for a C128. It can play C64 software and gives you some further options. BASIC 7 is more useful than BASIC 2 if you want to program yourself. It also has a RGBi output.
The D model has the disk drive built in and the keyboard detached instead.

Remember Red Baron?

*fapfapfap*

Always gamed on PCs. Ever since I was a kid, I hated gamepads and besides, never really found any games I liked on consoles.

Played fucktons of:

Commander Keen series
Prehistorik 2
Disney's Masochist Platformer Collection, especially Aladdin
Cannon Fodder
F29 Retaliator
Civilization
Colonization
Simcity 2k
Carmageddon
Quake, Duke, Doom, Blood, Redneck Rampage, Nam, etc, etc.
Worms 1, 2, etc
Lemmings, various installments
Lotus

And so on and forth. I really think consoletards were missing out on a vast variety of gameplay in favor of dicking around in mindnumb platformers almost exclusively.

>>1113056
>It also has a RGBi output

Is that really an advantage? It's not a very common standard, and is only really available on monitors either specifically designed for CGA PCs or C128s, or pro stuff like older Sony PVMs.

>>1113161
For you Amerifats yeah. For us glorious Eurofags RGB grows on trees.

>>1113171
I'm not an Amerifat, and RGBI, a.k.a. "Digital RGB" is *NOT* the same as RGBS (RGB with composite sync - what you get through SCART). I've never seen a consumer-grade TV with RGBI inputs.

>>1113176
Did not see that "i". My bad.

>>1112416
It had a surprisingly large "world" (worlds?) for being so old. Heavy on the Phillip K Dick vibe.

>>1111904
> Which was, for civilians, XP.
You mean 2K.

>>1113176
There are still some modern TFT CGA monitors being made that work fine with C128 (brown is shown incorrectly, though). Question is if it's worth blowing 200 bucks for 80 column mode that almost no games use.

>>1113056
>>1113042
Thanks. Is there any hope if I want to run a PAL game in murrica?

>>1111610
Britfag here. I grew up playing on an Amstrad CPC, which was probably the 4th most popular home computer of the era, after ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and BBC.

I went to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle recently. They had a great collection of home computers from that time, but the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum were conspicuously absent. I met a local gaming group and they also had no idea about them.

Not that the CPC makes a big difference to your perspective (within the English-speaking world), as almost any good game originating on it was ported to Spectrum/C64. But you probably miss out on a few classics by not knowing about the Spectrum.

Pic related. It's Total Eclipse, an early fully 3D puzzle game, developed on Amstrad CPC, but widely ported.

>>1113621
One really classic game of that era (recently remade for mobile phones) that's definitely worth playing is Lords of Midnight, originally for ZX Spectrum.

It's a turn-based fantasy strategy wargame. The most novel aspect was that, rather than seeing a map of the game world, you could only see the view from where your generals were standing. The AI was also pretty good for the time.

Former Tory MP Louise Mensch on how she remembers the game:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/louise-mensch-tells-how-mike-1385182

>>1113621
>They had a great collection of home computers from that time, but the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum were conspicuously absent. I met a local gaming group and they also had no idea about them

Yeah British computers really aren't all that well known here, it really isn't anything personal. You'd also be hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about the Amiga except diehards

PCs were far above our income bracket and I didn't know anyone who had one for any non-professional reasons until the very late 90s. My family got a computer through an educational network back in 2000. It was a little on the old side but better than nothing. But it was a pretty long time before I ever bothered with games. I just wanted to use the internet.

We did have consoles though. Even if we didn't have a lot of money we still could wing something on Christmas and birthdays. All my friends had consoles too. I guess I missed out on some stuff.

The K-8 school I attended in the mid 80s and early 90s didn't really have computers for regular use. There was one in the office for the receptionist. She was probably the only computer literate staff member. There was no computer lab. However the CORA trailer did have computers. The only thing was, you had to be in CORA to get to use them. So the kids that weren't lagging behind or having issues with participation never got to be in the best place in the school. That was my only experience with them until years later.

>>1109824
In the early 80's DOS couldn't even play games like those machines could either.

>>1111669
>No Ocean
They had some bretty gud original games

>>1111718
Not at all considering those computers would likely be a IBM PC, although C64 was considerably popular in North America too.

>>1113527
Well, if you're buying an NTSC C64 some PAL games might run okay but timing issues may occur on others, sometimes crack groups applied NTSC patches to games too.
>>1113621
>They had a great collection of home computers from that time, but the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum were conspicuously absent
Of course, they're British computers that never really got introduced here in the states.

>>1112023

The programmers of FTL most likely

>>1114198
Lightforce, an excellent vertically-scrolling shooter released on 8-bit home computers by FTL.

Hydrofool, an isometric arcade/maze/puzzle game released on 8-bit home computers by FTL.

Played by a drunk northerner who doesn't understand the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2S24nteRNs

Shockway Rider, a horizontally-scrolling and controversially violent game, possibly inspired by airport travellators, and released on 8-bit home computers by FTL.

Played by a drunk northerner who isn't very good at video games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_g6IwwAWOY

>>1113195
For most it progressed like so
DOS
Win 3.1/3.11
Win 95
Win 98
Win XP

very few people ever had 2000 in their homes

I've got an Atari 400... I can't seem to find any good games for it... any games PERIOD, that is. There's a huge game store near me that has hundreds of every cartridge for every console ever, even european stuff (I'm in the US), but he only has THREE Atari 400 carts, and they're 3 that I already have. I have 5 total...
And floppies? forget about it.

>>1115075
I've only ever come across one Atari 8-bit computer cartridge in all my days of flea market scrounging, and I wasn't even the one who found it. My friend called me from some tiny flea market in the mountains of buttfuck nowhere and said there was a Donkey Kong cart and asked if I wanted it.

Hell, I've got more 800XLs than I have games at this point.

>>1115075
I guess people don't sell their pirated collections and the lifespan of floppies wasn't that great to begin with.
Flash cartridges are probably your best bet aside from programming some games yourself.

>>1115019
I did

>muh y2k

Best RPG to-date never gets enough love in these threads.

>>1115368
2000 was simply never popular.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

>>1112023

Yes and I actually finished it! Did the same with Dungeon Master!

>>1115019
Yeah but most people are fucking morons. So who cares what they do.
2K was available earlier and it was better and had a smaller footprint.

>>1115375
>simply never
>had the largest market share on that link from July '03 and earlier.
Your never and my never mean something different.

>>1115371
>Darklands
My nigga. I love that game. Remember this song? It's my favorite from that game. I love how 100% of the soundtrack was actual medieval songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-E2_iNmYOE

>>1115469
>2K was available earlier and it was better and had a smaller footprint.
I can agree with that

>>1112023
My favorite from them was Oids!

I was considering performing some mods on my C64 DTV even though I discovered the European version is far more cost effective to mod since it keeps it uses flash memory and my US version uses ROM. I'll post some pics from some other people's projects.

I'm way late for this party but the first mod I would do would probably to put an IEC port on it since I have 1541 floppy drives and a few boxes of C64 floppies.

I figured that you could just write C64 disk images to 5 1/4 floppies in a PC that had a 5 1/4 drive but in the course of my research I discovered this isn't true, PC floppy drives cannot write m IEC format disks and a cable to connect a PC to a 1541 is like $30+

If I were dumping real money into my C64 stuff I would just get a SD to IEC adapter that lets a Commodore see SD cards as floppy disks.

>>1111917

Agreed Atari bro!
I personally have a Commodore 1085S monitor, it's a wonderful CRT screen too. Most of the Atari and Commodore monitors were pretty good

>>1115338

Most of my C64 and Amiga floppies still work. There's a difference between "Floppy don't have a great lifespan" and "people stock them in shitty humid places".

>>1109619
Because most people grew up with a console not a computer

>>1118736
Vic 20/Apple IIc all the way, baby. Apple IIc's biggest thing was that it was portable-at eight pounds. lol.

>>1118736

So peopke aren't here because they grew up with these machines, but because they're enthusiasts who are interested in this kind of machine. No one here would have grew up with X68000 or PC-98, but these are still discussed here and there.

Well, while I'm talking about the Glorious Sharp X68000, here's some of it's awesome music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIdL6jdImus

>>1118736
It's basically this. The majority of the people on this board grew up after home computers were on the way out or gone (in non-Japanese countries), so most of the people here grew up with Japanese consoles and games. And most of the people just come here to be nostalgic about the old Japanese consoles and games they grew up with or that they would be familiar with, not to actually discuss retro gaming in general. It's kind of driven me away from the board, because I get tired of just seeing the same nostalgic conversations about the NES/SNES/Genesis/Playstation/N64 and the same games over and over again. And a few dos games that are so popular that they get talked about to death everywhere else anyway.

>>1118775

Well the only way to get something new on this board is to have retro computer threads that talk about many computers at the same time.
I posted one or 2 that became really good, with no trolling and cancerous stuff.

>>1118739
So, it was about as portable as a gallon of milk, then.

>>1118740
>>1118775

Older gent here, I grew up with a few home computers. BBC micro, Atari ST, Commidore Amiga Then onto Dos and windows based PCs

My top games were;

Imogen (BBC Micro)
Red Baron
Lemmings
North and South
Gunship 2000
Syndicate
Populus
Magic Pockets
Sim Ant
Sim City


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-PPJAVOTE

Because they are bad. Part of the problem is that they were mostly popular in Europe, so they're all designed for 50Hz, which means they're flickery shit on any monitor with good motion quality.

Even without that problem they are still bad. There's a reason "Euroshmup" is an insult.

>>1119018

50Hz Amiga or Atari monitors don't strain your eyes. I work all days long on these, coding and making GFXs, and I still have a good vision.
Also, Euroshmups aren't that bad: Hybris, Katakis or X-out for example are pretty good shooters.
Then, don't forget that computers like the Apple II, the C64 and early IBM PCs were very popular in the USA.

>>1118739

Apple II's had some good games - and even dominated the gaming market in the late '70s / very early '80s, when only the Atari 8-bit series was the alternative with any color worth a damn (and better sound) and didn't have as many people developing for it - but the Apple II barely registered in the home market because it was just so. fucking. expensive. and for no real good reason. Shit they were even offering IIe's above $1k after the far more powerful IBM AT came out

But as another anon pointed out, IBMs had jack shit for games in the early to mid '80s because they were absolutely business computers first; they didn't really start getting their game on until they became the defacto computing standard overall, over the '90s

I'm out of the mainstream though, my dad was a computer geek and we had an Apple II+ in the house and then a Laser 128EX clone and boxes and boxes of pirated games, many of them even good. We never had a console even though I fucking BEGGED for one when I saw an NES + SMB1 at a friend's house. not even an Atari 2600 or anything. We finally moved to PC compatibles sometime in the early '90s and that was all I gamed on then

>>1118736
While I didnt have a computer at home they where still all around me, alot of my friends had some kind of computer. I played paperboy on the c64, California games on a 286 pc, Shufflepuck, Glider and dark castle on a Macintosh, Moonstone, North & South and Speedball 2 on the Amiga 500. And of course those shit DOS educational programs on IBM 386 that we had in school. I think it depends alot on which country you grew up in whether you had access to computer or not.

>>1119028
They do. I imported console games to avoid this problem back when 60Hz option wasn't standard. 60Hz flicker is just barely tolerable, 50Hz is unacceptable.

>>1118775
Almost nobody talks about any of the pre-NES stuff on here either. I would like to have some more conversations about the 2600, Odyssey 2, and Intellivision, as well as retro computers, but most people seem to only care about the game consoles from NES on up.

>>1112023
Sun Dog owned, but it was super difficult and hard to figure out what to do. Still, super expansive universe. If yer an ST kid, try Brataccas too.

>>1113637
>One really classic game of that era (recently remade for mobile phones) that's definitely worth playing is Lords of Midnight,
I had no idea it was ported to android, downloading to my phone now.

>>1119154
I admit I've fallen into that trap myself. I do have fond memories of a lot of really old computer games I played, mostly text-based adventure games and Rogue and its derivatives.

I did grow up with an Atari 2600 but I mostly like RPG and strategy games now, so there's only a few 2600 games I would go back and play again.

>>1119032
IBM intended the PC Jr to be more of a game machine and let Sierra develop King's Quest for it. The PC Jr failed but it gave way to the Tandy 1000 and compatibles.

Most Badass Logo?

>>1122987
fuck yes every time I see that i hear the rush song in my head
"FLY BY NIGHT AWAY FROM HERE!"

Commodore <3
http://youtu.be/azFIAbbjFDw