Retro Games Worth Playing

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I see GBA and PS1 games in here. Well fuck
rAFP13z.mp4

















But if we're bring up GBA games, Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure is a great side scrolling beat em up and Dragon Ball doesn't give enough love compared to Z
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=_XK9CvX6Ves

There are ardent purists out there who will think that anything past NES is not retro, but lets face facts the XBOX first gen is now officially 18 years old. So how long is long enough for something to be considered vintage or retro?
Besides I think if it's a good enough game people are willing to budge on their comfort levels. ;)
 
There are ardent purists out there who will think that anything past NES is not retro, but lets face facts the XBOX first gen is now officially 18 years old. So how long is long enough for something to be considered vintage or retro?
Besides I think if it's a good enough game people are willing to budge on their comfort levels. ;)
That and I think people still are a little age blind to some of these systems like I was for a moment there. Watch the hairs grey on some of these guys when you tell them the PS1 is 25 years old. That'll change some opinions.
 
That and I think people still are a little age blind to some of these systems like I was for a moment there. Watch the hairs grey on some of these guys when you tell them the PS1 is 25 years old. That'll change some opinions.

Yep. It's part of the reason I'm not so fast to jump onto the latest systems when they come out anymore. I don't game a lot and it's honestly better to wait a year or two and play the titles that survived the hype and are generally liked by the fans and critics alike. Yeah it results in a smaller collection, but it's a smaller collection that gets played rather than just collected.
 
Old games are generally my favorite games so you've got quite the link dump incoming:

Gothic - Eurojank medieval-fantasy RPG with an incredible story. (needs mods to be playable without issues)
Gothic II - The superior followup to what was already one of the greatest games ever made, now with a little less jank. (also needs mods to be playable without issues) most mods for the Gothic games can be found here
Risen - Gothic, but now you're a pirate.
Thief 2: The Metal Age - Sneaky boy takes all the stuff.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl - A normal day in the life of a Slav.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat - Gopnik Simulator 2
Betrayal in Antara (might be abandonware at this point; no Steam or GOG link to be found)
Fallout 2 - If you don't know what this is you probably haven't played a game since the Commodore 64.
Omikron: The Nomad Soul - David Bowie did the soundtrack. Think about the game that David Bowie would do the soundtrack to and you're probably pretty close.
Pathologic - A mysterious disease is killing everyone in a small town full of inbred sociopaths and you're trying to cure it, but actually nah.
POSTAL 2 - Brendon Tarrant simulator with less memes.
Star Wars KOTOR II: The Sith Lords (mods that restore all the cut content are necessary, but once properly set up is far superior to the original game)
Strife - If someone were to make a Doom mod and turn it into a proto-fpsrpg, but it was actually really good.
System Shock 2 - It's the future, there's a murderous A.I., you have psychic powers and a shotgun.
Blade of Darkness - The original soulsborne before Demon Souls was even a thought. (abandonware)
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy - Oddball FPS with crazy guns. You won't really understand what's going on, but who cares, you gain brouzouf.
Deadly Premonition - If Silent Hill was a game by David Lynch in an alternate universe where he's Japanese. (don't know if this one can really be considered "old" per se, but it's definitely a cult-classic)
Puzzle Agent - Weird adventure game full of fun and varied puzzles, good style and murderous garden gnomes.
Uru - The mostly unknown follow up to Myst and Riven. They went full 3D third-person with this one though and is in my opinion way more interesting than its source material.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - Shitty title, excellent rpg. Has a pretty unique setting as far as videogames go with its "Victorian-Steampunk" aesthetic, but pulls it off without seeming like it was made by a bunch of weebs who are way too interested in corsets and cogs.
Arx Fatalis - Arkane Studios underground precursor to the Dishonored series, but with more actual roleplaying elements and a cool magic system.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Relive your gothic fruitcake glory-days with this edgy vampire rpg. It's way better than I make it sound here, but definitely still has a little tinge of cringe to it. (absolutely needs mods to be playable as it was released half-finished at the tail-end of the life of one of the greatest studios of all time Troika; get the unofficial patch and clan quest mod and you'll have a couple hundred hours of fun with this one)

There are an absolute ton of other games I could list here, but this is already pretty long and I'm getting a headache, so I'll have to follow this up with a part 2 sometime later.
 
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Anyone ever played Zeliard?

Nice fun side scrolling DOS classic where you play as a Link-like hero killing giant crabs in caves. You save up for Potions and better weapons.

Sounds basic, but it was distributed by the all-mighty Sierra.
 
Anyone ever played Zeliard?

Nice fun side scrolling DOS classic where you play as a Link-like hero killing giant crabs in caves. You save up for Potions and better weapons.

Sounds basic, but it was distributed by the all-mighty Sierra.

I have heard of this, though I never had the opportunity to play
it.
 
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Made a shrine with my good and meaty stuff.

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My original Snes which sadly doesn't work but lucky I have another one. And my current two Street Fighter 2 carts. I'm planning to collect all versions released including the Arcade 1up Version.

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The meat of my SNES and my CIB Buster Busts Loose. Which is a great Konkani game and I got it for a steal at $15 because box was sun faded, but for a noob collector, I didn't care. Great price! Plus a Stadium 64 game which I am using as a stand.
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My Game Boy meat, my favorite Pokémon generation and my complete Gen 1 Main game set, including the First Japanese Stadium.

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My small but ever growing NES box collection.

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I promise, I vow, I will get a SNES Classic to go with this. Before it's too late and too expensive.
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I am lucky to have this. The only time I ever saw the code book was after my cousin, who lived on another island, left his out in the rain.

Plus there's my only Official Earthbound product, Mother 1+2 for GBA.
 
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There are ardent purists out there who will think that anything past NES is not retro, but lets face facts the XBOX first gen is now officially 18 years old. So how long is long enough for something to be considered vintage or retro?
Besides I think if it's a good enough game people are willing to budge on their comfort levels. ;)
I used to think 10 years was the cutoff for retro, but that makes Borderlands a retro game by now

Today, I figure the retro cutoff is the PS1 & N64 generation, the last one where you couldn't reasonably remake any modern game today and have it be comfortably playable. You could do a convincing port of nearly any game today and have it work reasonably well enough on an original Xbox, it would just look shitty and need like 20 DVDs. Good art direction matters a lot more than graphics anyway, just compare Super Mario Sunshine to Anthem, and remember how Sunshine is 17 years older.
 
Old games are generally my favorite games so you've got quite the link dump incoming:

Gothic - Eurojank medieval-fantasy RPG with an incredible story. (needs mods to be playable without issues)
Gothic II - The superior followup to what was already one of the greatest games ever made, now with a little less jank. (also needs mods to be playable without issues) most mods for the Gothic games can be found here
Risen - Gothic, but now you're a pirate.
Thief 2: The Metal Age - Sneaky boy takes all the stuff.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl - A normal day in the life of a Slav.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat - Gopnik Simulator 2
Betrayal in Antara (might be abandonware at this point; no Steam or GOG link to be found)
Fallout 2 - If you don't know what this is you probably haven't played a game since the Commodore 64.
Omikron: The Nomad Soul - David Bowie did the soundtrack. Think about the game that David Bowie would do the soundtrack to and you're probably pretty close.
Pathologic - A mysterious disease is killing everyone in a small town full of inbred sociopaths and you're trying to cure it, but actually nah.
POSTAL 2 - Brendon Tarrant simulator with less memes.
Star Wars KOTOR II: The Sith Lords (mods that restore all the cut content are necessary, but once properly set up is far superior to the original game)
Strife - If someone were to make a Doom mod and turn it into a proto-fpsrpg, but it was actually really good.
System Shock 2 - It's the future, there's a murderous A.I., you have psychic powers and a shotgun.
Blade of Darkness - The original soulsborne before Demon Souls was even a thought. (abandonware)
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy - Oddball FPS with crazy guns. You won't really understand what's going on, but who cares, you gain brouzouf.
Deadly Premonition - If Silent Hill was a game by David Lynch in an alternate universe where he's Japanese. (don't know if this one can really be considered "old" per se, but it's definitely a cult-classic)
Puzzle Agent - Weird adventure game full of fun and varied puzzles, good style and murderous garden gnomes.
Uru - The mostly unknown follow up to Myst and Riven. They went full 3D third-person with this one though and is in my opinion way more interesting than its source material.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - Shitty title, excellent rpg. Has a pretty unique setting as far as videogames go with its "Victorian-Steampunk" aesthetic, but pulls it off without seeming like it was made by a bunch of weebs who are way too interested in corsets and cogs.
Arx Fatalis - Arkane Studios underground precursor to the Dishonored series, but with more actual roleplaying elements and a cool magic system.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Relive your gothic fruitcake glory-days with this edgy vampire rpg. It's way better than I make it sound here, but definitely still has a little tinge of cringe to it. (absolutely needs mods to be playable as it was released half-finished at the tail-end of the life of one of the greatest studios of all time Troika; get the unofficial patch and clan quest mod and you'll have a couple hundred hours of fun with this one)

There are an absolute ton of other games I could list here, but this is already pretty long and I'm getting a headache, so I'll have to follow this up with a part 2 sometime later.
Played some of the games on here. Shit like Gothic, Fallout 2, System Shock 2, and Arx Fatalis are all pretty much retro games. At least if having 15 years past is enough to make them retro and I second the ones I played as retro games worth playing. And in regards to Arx Fatalis, it shows how far Arkane came from making an immersive experience to games where you're just using special powers to teleport and go "nothing personal" on some guards.

Gothic 2 is less jank but its NOTR add-on is enough to likely make some modern day journalist and gamers screech for an easy mod without realizing that strafing and distance between you and enemies are thing to exploit as a pattern.

I'd like to add M&M 7, M&M 8, Morrowind and Wizardry 8 to that list. Morrowind are Wizardry 8 are old enough to be retro considering they are in the same time frame of release as Gothic.

Morrowind - Bethesda makes a unique setting for a race of elves to set them apart from other dark elf races by making the Dunmer being more of a mix between nomadic tribesmen and settled city folk who all belong to different factions and great houses. The story of the game pretty much plays up in being vague as to whether or not you are the chosen one or was simply good enough.

Wizardry 8 - Party crashlands on a planet and their goal is to pretty much become gods in a race against the big bad. Last great game by Sir-tek and unlike Might & Magic 9 and Ultima 9, Wizardry 8 didn't end on a shit note.

Might and Magic 7 - Your party of adventurers win a scavenger hunt that leads them to becoming lords of contested territory. What goes from a simple clean up of the fort and proving your party to be fit rulers becomes a bigger struggle between two factions that seek out some people that crashlanded on their planet.

Mught & Magic 8 - You're a caravan guard whose mission to warn some merchant's guild of shit going on in an island becomes a quest to save the world from total destruction.
 
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Blade of Darkness - The original soulsborne before Demon Souls was even a thought. (abandonware)

I've been saying that for years but people are just "wtf is Severence: Blade of Darkness?"

The game looked AMAZING for its time, it ran on fixed function hardware and DirectX 7 so no pixel/vertex shaders, just look at this shit.
Lighting and realtime stencil shadows.
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All kinds of colors (and barrels that can be smashed)
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A bit soul:sy
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Compare it to this really shitty and heavily compressed screenshot of Dark Souls 2 and it looks pretty good for a 2001 game.
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The water was incredible. And here's where it starts to take a turn...
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Brightly lit outdoor areas and a lighting setup made for dank and tight dungeons don't go well together, DS2 suffered from that as well.
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...so let's put fog in there and remove the shadows, to really wash it out.
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There was also a cel-shaded mode that could be activated by pressing F11 at the start screen or something like that, a programmer did it as a side project. This is not that widely known I believe, so if you have the game, try it out.

The game isn't particularly good though, it's very rough around the edges. When you get fucked up in Dark Souls you rethink your strategy and figure out what mistakes you made, in Blade of Darkness there's a lot of "oh for fucks sake" because it's pretty stiff and janky. Enemies are essentially trolls griefing you. It had a troubled development as well, it was very ambitious and writing a game in Python in 1998 is certainly an idea someone had. They were also the first proper game studio in Spain I think, that's pretty neat. (it also uses portals, for spatial culling)

People from that studio(Rebel Act) then formed Mercury Steam(Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, Metroid 2 remake) and released this game that no one remembers, though it was alright IIRC.
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A game with American McGee's name on it for no real reason, I don't remember him having much of anything to do with it but he still had some name recognition and goodwill from Alice.
 
PIck ups from my Customs Shop this week

  • Batman NES (CIB :heart-full:)
  • Excitebike NES for GBA (CIB)
  • Super Mario Bros NES for GBA (CIB)
  • Yoshi's Island SMA3
  • Mother 3 repro (I've decided to dive into illegal repro's for certain titles, this ones a must after three hours of cocktail making!)
  • NES AV cables so I can hook it up better to a modern TV.
  • N64 Controller Pak which I've always needed but never had.
  • Donkey Kong Land 2
 
Bumpity bump!

Haven't updated on my collecting in awhile. Having to use money for more important things this summer. But in May I went to a con and got these titles.

- Bible Adventures
- Milons Secret Castle
- Bubble Bobble
- The Little Mermaid
- Xexys
- Kung Fu
- Slalom
- Kid Icarus

I do have to CIBs coming in though.

- Rad Racer
- Yoshis Cookie.

When summer season is over I might make my long awaited collecting thread.
 
I searched the thread and didn't see these so I have to recommend two Arcade beat-em-ups. You'll have to emulate unless you live by a really cool arcade.

The Punisher Capcom, 1993

How do you not love a game that rolls like this:

Second:
Cadillacs_and_Dinosaurs_-_1993_-_Capcom.jpg


 
The Punisher will be included in the Marvel themed Cabinet released by the company Arcade1Up. I am no real Marvel fan, but I love Beat Em Ups and the Punisher looks really cool so when I can start getting in on those (and fit them onto an airplane, clear customs, etc...) I might pick one up.
 
The Might and Magic RPGs (with the exception of IX) are fun. The Mandate of Heaven, For Blood and Honor and Day of the Destroyer being the stand outs.

Sacrifice is a quirky and fun RTS/RPG hybrid.
 
Is Shining Force considered one?

Retro yes. Good.

No.... this is a fledgling company who started last November selling home arcades and have been doing incredibly well. These cabinets won't be hard to build.

The TMNT cab is gonna be monumental

Interesting, I knew it was becoming a thing to build theie own, but I didn't lnow a company was doing it now custom.
 
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