Was playing a bit of Stunt Car Racer for the Amiga this week, from 1989, and wondered how far back people are going!
Chess. It’s over 1500 years old!
Eh, I prefer Mancala then any off your new fangled ‘board’ games
Played some Go today.
I believe it but is there evidence for this? I know there were reports of chess games on the middle ages, but earlier than that? Chess with modern rules I mean.
Has no one here played Super Mario Bros? 1985… or donkey Kong? 1981. Pac-Man? 1980. Space invaders? 1978. So many classics, all playable today with MAME or even still working systems or perfect emulation!
In 2024? No.
I have the set of Infocom text adventure games. I think the earliest ones came out in about 1981 or 82. I still fire one up now and then for a nostalgia hit. I bought a few when they came out, but couldn’t afford more.
You can play some of them online, in your browser. Of course there are thousands of text adventure games (a.k.a. interactive fiction) available for free. Definitely worth checking out! And look at Inform, a language and IDE for creating these games by using more or less standard English.
To protect against piracy, most of these games required physical objects that were included in the game box. They are known as feelies. There are plenty of places on the web where you can find all the feelings you need.
Hmm… I want to say chess or checker but it is probably tag.
Played a game of “kick the can” with my kids and a few of their friends this a couple of weekends ago. It’s a really nice variation on tag because you can play it with kids too young to count, or kids that count slow.
Nethack (1987)
I’ve got Pong on my phone and one of my kids loves it.
I’ve been dipping my toe into the mating game with minimal success. They really haven’t done much to improve it since I last played.
Fallout 1997
Oldest game I’ve actually played this year would probably be a bit of Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar, 1985.
I found that game borderline impossible. Tried my little ass off but could only get one rune or whatever it was. If you got poisoned without being able to deal with it you were done
Yeah it absolutely does not hold your hand at all. It really helps to have the supplemental stuff that originally came with it like the big cloth map. They’re included digitally with things like gog but not everyone knows that. It definitely doesn’t have some of the quality of life we’ve gotten used to in the years since release. It was also intentionally unique in how it was presenting the story in that just killing things that attack you isn’t always the right answer in combat.
I can totally see how a lot of people would bounce off of it. I am sure some of it for me is nostalgia, though if you get into it there’s a lot there.
If the story of it interests you and you just wanna watch a retrospective about it there’s a great series majuular is doing on youtube. https://youtu.be/hkfBiIyJd7E
Please don’t misunderstand- I still have the magic book that came with it (I lost the Kyle the Younger book), and when my mom passed away a few years ago and I had to clean out her house, I sold the cloth map on ebay (I got like 60€ I think). I was annoyed I couldn’t find that little ankh that came w/ the game…
I used to read the magic spells book over and over. I was probably 9 or 10. Y(up) and Z(down) … god those dungeons were tricky. I was always scared to drink from fountains (blech, poisoned?) Its been a while.
So I know all about it, the mantras… those portals w/ the phases of the moon… anyway, I was young. I think I got one of the virtues, but I felt like to get the Valor one you had to kill like 20 guards and it was never gonna happen. I did show every friend who came over the tarot card scene at the beginning to choose your character class, though.
I tried to see if I could finally make it about 5 years ago and downloaded some kinda emulator, but I think I had trouble “changing discs” and lost progress and gave up.
What emulator are you using? i played it on Apple IIc, and I’d want to use that same exact everything if I was to give it a go.
Oh I didn’t mean it to sound derogatory. I played it back on commodore64 back when it first came out in that same age range… so yeah I get it… it’s obtuse game for sure. Great if you get into it, tons of content, but definitely a lot.
Last time I tried it was on the pc version, which is free fwiw. https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_4
I’ve never tried it on apple II so I couldn’t really say for emulation on that one.
Side note, if you want to play something that was heavily inspired by the classic Ultima games check out Moonring. It was made by one of the original devs of Fable and he outright says Ultima inspired it and the game wears that lineage on it’s sleeve. It’s got a lot of nice modern QoL and it was released for free and is still in active development. It’s just a passion project for him.
thanks for the shout, I’ll look into that
I’ll look at that version of ultima IV, for me, its kind of unfinished business… gotta get on that druid shit
Definitely some earlier Sega titles. Teddy Boy, My Hero, Wonderboy. Easy to grab at to entertain my toddler for half an hour so they get switched on fairly regularly.
DMG Gameboy Kirby Dreamland. My youngest loves it and it’s REALLY hard to lose so he doesn’t need a ton of help.
super smash bros melee (2001) but only bc the online they added in 2020 is so fucking good
Wait whatttt
I’m interested too
Amiga Stunt Car Racer remains the best racing game of all time for me. It even had linkup multiplayer (I think…)
I think streetfighter 2 But also just started a play through of Serious Sam TFE
