Retro Games Worth Playing

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So now it's had a few revisions but a classic adventure puzzle PC game is Broken Sword Shadow of The Templar, or Circle of Blood in Europe.

You play an American in Paris who gets dragged into a weird mystery after witnessing an assassination of someone by a clown. From there the game takes you on an adventure solving the mystery of the ancient Knights Templars in order to prevent a modern break away order from repairing a Templar artifact and using it in a plan for world domination.
 
Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost said:
So now it's had a few revisions but a classic adventure puzzle PC game is Broken Sword Shadow of The Templar, or Circle of Blood in Europe.

You play an American in Paris who gets dragged into a weird mystery after witnessing an assassination of someone by a clown. From there the game takes you on an adventure solving the mystery of the ancient Knights Templars in order to prevent a modern break away order from repairing a Templar artifact and using it in a plan for world domination.
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"Paris in the fall..."

Other way around - it's Circle of Blood in the US, and Shadow of the Templar here. Apart from in Germany, where it's Baphomets Fluch.

Excellent game. If you liked that, there's four sequels of which Broken Sword 2 and 5 are definitely worth playing. 3 is a bit wonky and 4 only slightly less so.

Also try Beneath a Steel Sky, from the same developers. A cyberpunk mystery with plenty black humour written by Dave Gibbons (who also worked on Watchmen with Alan Moore.)
 
Ginger Piglet said:
"Paris in the fall..."

Other way around - it's Circle of Blood in the US, and Shadow of the Templar here. Apart from in Germany, where it's Baphomets Fluch.

Excellent game. If you liked that, there's four sequels of which Broken Sword 2 and 5 are definitely worth playing. 3 is a bit wonky and 4 only slightly less so.

Also try Beneath a Steel Sky, from the same developers. A cyberpunk mystery with plenty black humour written by Dave Gibbons (who also worked on Watchmen with Alan Moore.)
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I knew it was one or the other.
I never tried the others, it's a shame really because the genre of point and click were always my favorite and as I've gotten older I find myself wanting to go back to them. It's just having the time.
 
Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost said:
I knew it was one or the other.
I never tried the others, it's a shame really because the genre of point and click were always my favorite and as I've gotten older I find myself wanting to go back to them. It's just having the time.
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I believe they're all on GOG.com.
 
GOG's been a good platform for reviving a lot of older titles.
Much better than Steam to be honest, though you'd think that would have been in their interests.
 
dysentery said:
Dragon Warrior IV is phenomenal. I heard it uses an insane amount of ROM too. Probably the largest official non-multicart game on the system.
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I swear by that game as a choice for intro to jrpg's 101, the only downside I can point out is on the NES version once you get to the last chapter the game decides to make all characters less the main one run on AI as opposed to the player manually making the decision leading to a couple characters going full retard in the last battle trying over and over to cast instant death. Good news though is you can fix this with Game Genie so there's that.
 
I think it's funny how Little Samson (NES) has become super popular these days because of its rarity. For a long time it was a hidden gem it felt like nobody had heard of, but I loved it. It's genuinely one of the best performers on the NES or the Famicom. Every aspect of it is great.
 
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Super Fantasy Zone for the Mega Drive. I've never played the original Fantasy Zone, but this is the first game I ever played in my life and I still remember it fondly. For some reason, it was only released in Europe outside of Japan for some reason.

Rocket Knight Adventures for the Mega Drive. Yeah, it's a mascot platformer but it's a good one. Besides, more emphasis is put on the jetpack gameplay than it is on the animal aspect. It's really fun and challenging.

Comix Zone for the Mega Drive. Another platformer, but this time with an American comic book aesthetic. Basically, you play in an actual comic book that the main character has been thrown into by his own creation. The game is really short (only about 4 stages), but it's a hard game, so most people aren't going to beat it on the first playthrough.

Terranigma for the SNES. It's an action RPG with an interesting story where you're basically tasked with reviving Earth and all life on it. It belongs in the trinity alongside Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, but I've not played those games, so I can't say how it compares gameplay wise apart from the having similar story themes. It is on the easier side as far as difficulty goes, I'll say that at least.

Live A Live for the SNES. It's an obscure but unique JRPG that never left Japan, but it has a small cult following for a couple of years now, no doubt because of its excellent fan translation. It's one of those games where it's kind of hard to talk about it (I usually wouldn't be concerned about spoiling a 24 year old game, but it is an obscure Japan only game a large majority of people are never going to come across and I'd rather people experience it for themselves).
 
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Night Owl said:
Rocket Knight Adventures for the Mega Drive. Yeah, it's a mascot platformer but it's a good one. Besides, more emphasis is put on the jetpack gameplay than it is on the animal aspect. It's really fun and challenging.
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Great game. The Mega Drive/Genesis sequel is different from the SNES game, but both are good as well.

Night Owl said:
Comix Zone for the Mega Drive. Another platformer, but this time with an American comic book aesthetic. Basically, you play in an actual comic book that the main character has been thrown into by his own creation. The game is really short (only about 4 stages), but it's a hard game, so most people aren't going to beat it on the first playthrough.
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Also a great game. I don't know why nobody has done anything similar. It's not like the license would be that important to have.

Night Owl said:
Terranigma for the SNES. It's an action RPG with an interesting story where you're basically tasked with reviving Earth and all life on it. It belongs in the trinity alongside Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, but I've not played those games, so I can't say how it compares gameplay wise apart from the having similar story themes. It is on the easier side as far as difficulty goes, I'll say that at least.
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Soul Blazer is much older and looks it, but it plays similarly and is a great game in its own right. Illusion of Gaia I have never been able to get into for whatever reason. It plays similarly to Terranigma and is on most peoples' "best of" lists.

But I agree Terranigma, is wonderful. It's one of the very best SNES games that American gamers never got to play. Nintendo should have put it on the SNES Classic.

Night Owl said:
Live A Live for the SNES. It's an obscure but unique JRPG that never left Japan, but it has a small cult following for a couple of years now, no doubt because of its excellent fan translation. It's one of those games where it's kind of hard to talk about it (I usually wouldn't be concerned about spoiling a 14 year old game, but it is an obscure Japan only game a large majority of people are never going to come across and I'd rather people experience it for themselves).
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I played through that using an older, rougher fan translation but still loved it. It really is unique, and not just because of the vignette format. I'm not crazy about the battle system (it's fine, just not my kind of thing), but everything else about it is great, especially the crazy varied Shimomura soundtrack. The Western story was so damn cool! Wish there had been a sequel or spiritual successor.
 
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RadicalCentrist said:
Fuck that. This sequel craving bullshit is a big reason why all media, not only vidya, sucks exhaust pipes these days. I'll wait until another creative indie makes another great game again rather than hope for a TRUE and HONEST sequel.
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This. Legendary 16 bit devs the Bitmap Brothers had all their releases be a different genre and on the two occasions they did sequels they were more like refinements of the first game. Xenon - vertical shmup. Speedball - future sports game. Gods - platformer. Chaos Engine - top down shooter. Xenon 2: Megablast and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe were basically improvements to the first games. Brutal Deluxe is also the correct way to do a campaign mode in a sports game.
 
How far back are we talking here? Mechwarrior 3 & 4 are still pretty fun, but you can only replay them so many times and Mechwarrior Online is... well it's something alright.
 
A few lesser-known Genesis games that I recommend:

Beyond Oasis. It is basically a Zelda clone crossed with an early 90's beat-em-up (makes sense since it was developed by the same people as Streets of Rage 2).

TMNT: Hyperstone Heist. This is more or less a port of Turtles in Time but I like it better because the gameplay is a little tighter and it has a dedicated dash button.
 
Can we mention Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe some more?

Firstly, the intro music:


Now I never had this back in the day but having played it in emulation later on, it really was excellent. Basically, the game is an ultra-violent cross between handball and ice hockey in which you take control of your team of nine trying to take possession of the ball and stuff it in the goal. The arena is bounded by walls which the ball can bounce off on all sides, and about halfway in the middle of each side's half is a sphere which, if the ball touches it, bumps it at high speed in the direction it came a bit like a pinball bumper.

There are no fouls. It is perfectly legitimate to slide-tackle, punch, headbutt, or otherwise brawl with other players regardless of whether or not they have the ball and regardless of what they are doing. There are no restarts other than after a goal so no goal kicks, corners, or throw ins - even if a goal is saved the goalie is fair game so it is perfectly legitimate to make a shot on goal, clobber the goalie as he saves it and sling the ball in afterwards. Ten points are scored for a goal and two points for successfully bouncing off and lighting up one of the stars on your side of the pitch. Ten points are also awarded for injuring an opposing player sufficiently to require medical treatment. As a result, the game becomes a panoply of punches, kicks, sounds of people falling over, and clonks as the ball bounces off the walls. You can also get score multipliers by sending the ball through a loopy thing on the halfway line or energise the ball, which causes opposing players attempting to intercept your passes to fall over.

The only thing I'll fault it for is that it suffers horribly from A Winner Is You, but so do most Bitmap Brothers games for that matter.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that this isn't as fictional a sport as thought. Calcio storico is basically speedball in real life.
 
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