/vr/ - Retro Games

>Safecracker (1997) - PC

This game is from the charming time of gaming when Quicktime was actually a thing, and kind of two parts puzzle game and one part point-and-click-adventure.

A basic description of the game would go as follows: You find yourself in a Quicktime "room" in which you can look around in any way you wish, as long as you don't move - you have a full 3D view of every "room" available to you. In this "room" you look around, interacting with objects and moving to other "rooms" - that's the "point and click adventure" part. The main point, however, is to find safes and solve their puzzles - that's where the "puzzle game" part comes from, obviously. The over-arching goal is to find the combination to the Crabb master safes that are strewn about in the mansion, locked in the minor safes.

The game does a great job of building atmosphere and making the Crabb offices seem alive, the puzzles are fun to solve, the graphics still look pretty good, and the music - despite only being short loops - is memorable and pretty good at giving the rooms character.

And yet nobody really seems to know this game.

You'll want to grab the installer to install these off CD for best performance: http://www.squirtthecat.com/index.html

> Shivers 2:Harvest of Souls
> Horror Survival PUZZLE game

No, really. Solve puzzles, listen to decent rock music, and try not to get killed by evil stuff eating your soul. Puzzles range between easy as pie to throw-your-mouse-through-the-monitor hard. Keep an eye on your life bar: it does NOT regenerate!

Your friends made a band. A fan offeredf to make them free music videos if they come to his home town, so the band decides to go. They never return. What happened? Pic is from Shivers 2.

> Amber: Journey's Beyond
> Horror/Adventure Puzzle game

Yes, there were more than one of these in the 90's. What? A scary game in which you don't SHOOT things? OMGWTFBBQ! Joking aside, this one is less "puzzles in a game" than Shivers 2 and more "adventure game with lots of puzzles".

Help some lady using the Amber device appease restless spirits seeking the afterlife. Starts out sort of standard but can grow to be pretty haunting, no pun intended.

You'll want to grab the installer to install these off CD for best performance: http://www.squirtthecat.com/index.html

> Shivers 2:Harvest of Souls
> Horror Survival PUZZLE game

No, really. Solve puzzles, listen to decent rock music, and try not to get killed by evil stuff eating your soul. Puzzles range between easy as pie to throw-your-mouse-through-the-monitor hard. Keep an eye on your life bar: it does NOT regenerate!

Your friends made a band. A fan offered to make them free music videos if they come to his home town, so the band decides to go. They never return. What happened? Pic is from Shivers 2.

> Amber: Journeies Beyond
> Horror/Adventure Puzzle game

Yes, there were more than one of these in the 90's. What? A scary game in which you don't SHOOT things? OMGWTFBBQ! Joking aside, this one is less "puzzles in a game" than Shivers 2 and more "adventure game with lots of puzzles".

The Amber device allows you to see the spirit world and interact with it. Use the Amber device to appease restless spirits seeking the afterlife. Starts out sort of standard but can grow to be pretty haunting, no pun intended.

>>1233295

Yeah i'm down for that.

Mega lo Mania

Light and colorful RTS from '91 originally for the Amiga and ported to PC and a bunch of other platforms. You start off in the stone age and progress trough nine ages going forward. Each age or epoch you must beat 1-3 AI opponents on a number of maps through conquest.

The gameplay is basically this: each epoch you start of with 100 people and you must decide how many you you want to commit to each island (there are usually three islands if i recall). Then you pick your starting point on the chosen island. Each site has different resources that can lead to different research options and inventions. You have to manage your people between research gathering, research, production, defense and a standing army. The AI will ally and fight each other as well as you.

All in all a fun game with colorful design. Difficulty isn't too bad and can be altered by using fewer people and picking bad sites. Pretty much a must try if you like RTS, it's a bit different from what's considered standard today. I've only played the Amiga version and that should be better than the pc port.

Check out the wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Lo_Mania

Herc's Adventures.

It was made for the PSX and Saturn. Play as Hercules, Jason (of Argonauts fame), or Atlanta. Travel across a giant map to defeat Hades. It's colorful, charming and funny. I'm shocked it doesn't get more love.

>>1233295
Phantasmagoria I, II
Grim Fandago
Little Big Adventure I, II
Quarantine
Rescue Rover( nice puzzle games )

>>1234978
this game is tyrants for the genis i love this game

>Stir Crazy featuring Bobo

Infogrames game based of the belgian cartoon character and prisoner Bobo. It's basically a set of mini-games taking place in a prison. You have to peel potatoes, serve soup, clean the floors and other good things. Nice control, different and funny games, good and charming graphics.

Perfect party game to play with your friends hot seat while having a couple of beers. Available only on the Amiga and the C64 (?).

Legend of Legaia for Playstation

It is easily in my top 3 favorite games of all time yet it was never all that popular

Battles consist of four input options: high, low left, right. Certain combinations enable you to use special moves (arts) to inflict more damage upon your opponents. Some arts can only be gained as the story progresses; however, most of them can be gained by experimentation.

As well, certain enemies with elemental attributes can be killed for a chance to absorb their powers and be used as magic later on. I think this is a great mechanic because some of the enemies do not get absorbed easily and it presents a challenge to collect all magic. especially the high-powered endgame spells.

The music is enjoyable and helps immerse the player in the world.

A big thing for me as well is the exceptional difficulty of the game. Even as a seasoned player, doing a low level run can be quite challenging and the boss fights can be downright terrifying.

A definite must play if you enjoy turn based JRPGs

>APB; All points bulletin

No, not that shitty MMO. Originally an Atari arcade from '87, two years later ported to the Amiga and various formats and through the years available to a number of consoles through Midway bundles.

A top down driving game where you play a police that has to arrest or ticket a number off different criminals before the time runs out. Be careful to no run into other cars or ticket innocent cars or you will get demerits, too many demerits and you're fired i.e. dead.

Funny game with a bit of humor, cartoony and colorful graphics. I remember this being quite hard when you get a bit into it. I've only played the Amiga version but like i said it's available on pretty much everything from the pc to the PS3.

Zen The Intergalatic Ninja on NES.

A very unknow action game based on a comic book and released during the end of the NES lifetime. It has several type of gameplays, some stages are boss battles à-la Street Fighter 2010, then there is one stage in isometric view which is a sort or cart action inside a mine, etc

It's a challenging game but you can play on easy and give yourself more lives if you feel like it.

In any case it's solid on every single aspect (graphics, music, controls, gameplay) and certainly deserves more attention.

Oh gosh, I need more. Thank you, guys.

Prehistorik 2 for DOS

Many people I know played this, but DOS games aren't very common here so I dunno.
Just a solid platformer with silly themes and levels.

>>1235287
>Prehistorik 2
The controls are kinda loose, but it's very good game.

Lords of Magic

Like HoMM, but with real time combat (with active pause). MUCH more complex, you can finish the game without ever going into spell research, thieves or trading. Great music. 8 factions. There is only one map which is the entire planet, if you go south from your starting position you'll eventually come back from the north. One of the resources is ale.
It's buggy and balance could be better.

I know these two come up a lot, but they should be mentioned as outside of /VR/ nobody really talks about them.

> Blood (by Monolith)
First person shooter with a nice gothic horror feel and "weird west" setting. Made in the heyday of politically incorrect 90's shooters, this one doesn't skimp on the parodies, outside references, jokes, and crazy unrealistc amounts of blood. Sure, it's hitscan, but it also was one of the first actual 3D shooters with groundbreaking visuals at the time and a sound track that Type O Negative (the definitive 90's goth band) helped make. Ignore the second game, play the first one only.

> Rogue and/or Nethack
When I heard people praising "Deep Down" for being a free to play game where you pick your race and class then try to fight your way to the bottom of randomly generated dungeon to get the artifact I laughed my ass off. Guys, you just described ROGUE!

Rogue is the offline original. Nethack is playable online and does allow some extra features for it. Both are hard as nails. You won't make it past the first town for a LONG time. Are the worth playing? YES. There's a fansite called thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.com for a reason.

Help wiki: http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
Play online: http://alt.org/nethack/

Pic related: she's here to steal your stuff. KILL HER WITH ARROWS!!

>>1235164
>Zen The Intergalatic Ninja on NES
I need to play this. NAO. Also making a suggestion.

>Moon Crystal
Beautiful anime-style metroidvania platformer with a steep learning curve. Very fun once you get the hang of it!

>>1235348

tfw entire legion of armored bloodveteran order knights massacred by shitty fucking elven life archer legion without making it halfway across battlefield

>>1235348
I had this game, its so much harder than HoMM as well so mayn times getting raped at the start

>>1235057
I remember seeing this in mags back in the day and thinking it looked brilliant, like a Grecian Zombies Ate My Neighbours.

Also, OP and the rest of you chaps ought to be commended: actual reasons given for why you like something, rather than lists and shit-flinging.

>>1236075
Agreed. This is a quality thread and I mean it.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin on PSX. This is my favorite of the Persona series. A large part of the story is about spreading rumors and they become true so a lot of strange things happen. The battles are defaulted to auto-fight, as in you input each character's commands and let them fight. It's useful if you don't like to keep choosing specific commands, but it's tedious if you forget to change it when you want. I've wasted items by mistake because of it. Conversing with the demons is fun, a lot of them have funny dialogue. The soundtrack is nice too. The game never made it outside of Japan, but there is an English patch. The second part, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was localized, so check it out after completing Innocent Sin.

>>1237431
>The game never made it outside of Japan, but there is an English patch.
There is the PSP version in English though.

>>1237449
I know, I'm just talking about the PSX version because I haven't played the PSP version. I can't really comment on it since I don't know if there are any significant changes between the two.

>>1235816
>Moon Crystal

Moon Crystal is really fucking good indeed. Gameplay is kind of slow but you get used to it.
It has animations for characters that look really good even though they are obviously inspired by Prince Of Persia, varied environment with beautiful graphics AND musics, and lovely cutscene told in a Ninja Gaiden style. There is really nothing original in this game, rather it takes "bits of greatness" from several other games and puts them all together.

I actually never beat it, I remember getting far but the bosses got me.

>Metal Storm - NES

I'm not totally sure how obscure it is, as I've seen it on recommendation lists on other websites, but it never seems to get the attention that the other big action games on the NES do. This is strange because it's just as good, or even better than any of the more popular ones like Mega Man, Contra etc.

It's basically a run n gun, sidescrolling action game, with puzzle elements. The puzzle elements come from the game's main gimmick, which is the fact that instead of having the ability to jump, you have the ability to switch gravity of the entire stage; that means the player, enemies, and often parts of the level will switch flip to the ceiling (or floor) at the press of a button. This makes it some of the most fun platforming ever, imo.

The game is pretty challenging as far as I remember, especially some of the later boss fights, but not exceptionally hard.

>>1237468
I saw this game featured in GCCX and gave it a try. I'm not very good at it, but it's a pretty good game.

>Eternal Ring - PS2

This was one of the launch titles for PS2 as far as I remember, and seemed to get a handful of negative reviews and then fade into obscurity. That lack of love does have some positive aspects, however, as it meant I was able to pick it up for 49p with very low expectations and come out really surprised.

It's a Japanese 3D first-person action RPG, similar in gameplay to King's Field (it was developed by From Software); in fact, it's basically a linear, easier, shorter version of the King's Field games. This might sound like a bad thing to you, but as someone who's always liked the idea of the King's Field games but found myself just too bad at them to enjoy them, this was great.

The specifics of the game seem kind of lackluster and somewhat like the ingredients of what you would expect a forgettable and bland launch game to be; bad graphics, stiff animation, very slow and clunky action (not quite as slow as King's Field, however). Somehow, these all come together to create something with a wonderful, dark, measured atmosphere. I can't really explain why, but I've never been immersed in a game world as I have in this one. It could be that all the awkwardness adds up to create something which is so synthetic and clearly a constructed game-world that it actually adds to idea that you're stuck on this mysterious island unlike anywhere you've been before.

1/2

>>1237501

The main downside to game is that it's short for an RPG (at around 9 hours). You probably won't find you had enough time or reason to fully explore the ring-creation system, or like me, you'll feel like you only started needing it towards the end. It's also very easy for a lot of the game (especially when you compare it to the King's Field series), although there are certainly a few challenging sections. The lack of difficulty didn't bother me too much, as it allowed me to more fully enjoy the game world, but if you're a King's Field fan and looking for something to mirror the challenge of the series then this will definitely be disappointing.

2/2

>>1235348

This guy knows what's up, seconding Lords of Magic.

Go Order or go home.

Bump

>>1235154
I remember seeing this cabinet at a video rental store ages ago.

>>1235164
saw this one at an estate sale a while back and got it based solely on the manual and that it was a konami game. i was not disappointed in the slightest

>>1241407
You coulnd't get wrong if a game had "Konami" written on it back in the days. Same for Capcom. The only bad thing Konami ever did was the laserscope, and that's not a game.

More suggestions, guys?