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Favourite 1996 games?

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First post, by Muz

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Whats your favourite 1996 games? Mine is:

- Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri
- Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga
- Jane's Longbow

Reply 1 of 58, by Joseph_Joestar

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Hard to pick, a lot of great games came out that year. If I can choose only three, they would be:

  1. Tomb Raider
  2. Duke Nukem 3D
  3. Red Alert

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 58, by Garrett W

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In no particular order and with a little explanation attached:

- Quake
Easily in my favorite FPS games.

- Diablo
Coming back from school and immediately turning on the PC to delve deeper in the catacombs, memories I will not soon forget.

- Tex Murphy : The Pandora Directive
Eye-opener as to how different adventure games could be, was used to 2D Point&Click games prior to this one. Has not aged terribly well, but still in my top 10 favorite games.

- Syndicate Wars
Has not aged well at all and suffers from limited QA which makes it frustratingly hard today. Still, really fond memories of getting blow away by the tech and art style. Watched Ghost in the Shell soon after 😀.

- Super Mario 64
Mindblowing for the time. Still plays very nicely and is one of my go to games whenever I need a happy/safe space.

- Resident Evil
The birth of survival horror as we know/knew it. Basically AITD with Japanese game design sensibilities. Greatly superseded by the remake but still very tightly designed. No real nostalgia talking here, since I only beat it last year!

- Heroes of Might & Magic 2
My introduction to turn-based tactical combat. Sequel improved on everything, but still adore the pixel art and opera music, plus all the great memories!

- The Neverhood
An amazing undertaking with incredible art style thanks to claymation. The OST is also a masterpiece. Main guy behind it is a massive bigot, but death of the author and all that 😒.

- Toonstruck
Always knew of this obscure gem and played it with my ex a few years ago and we both loved it. I will always cherish the great time spent playing it together with them.

- Terra Nova : Strike Force Centauri
Was unaware of this until about 10 years ago when I first saw it on some youtube vid and the tech and premise blew me away. Finally got a copy some years ago and had a blast going through it!

- Phantasmagoria 2
Much better game than the original! One of the first games I ever downloaded through torrent when I first got my broadband connection. Had to leave the computer on for a month or so as it was just one seeder!

- Wing Commander IV
The most interesting Wing Commander IMO. Sure, battling an alien race is cool and interesting, but what about a civil war? Ultimately somewhat epidermic and yet... Great performances all-round, especially loved Malcolm McDowell.

- Broken Sword
Amazing SVGA animation and pixel art. Love it! That damn goat puzzle though, let me tell you I did not find the ironic allusions to it in Broken Sword 5 the least bit funny! I was stuck there for months!

Probably a few too many games, but I'm fairly certain I didn't miss a single one for my fav games from that year from any platform!

Reply 5 of 58, by darry

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DuKe Nukem 3D . Quake was great and all, but Duke Nukem 3D had atmosphere and a memorable protagonist . It also ran great on my 486 at 160MHz whereas Quake, not so much .

Reply 6 of 58, by chinny22

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Return Fire, (3DO in 95 but but ported to PC in 96) one of my first Win95 games and played many games against my brother

Megarace 2, Only had the Demo but looked beautiful and ran pretty good on my 486/66

Destruction Derby 2, Again only the demo and ran terrible on the 486 but I struggled along

Death Rally , Yay a game that did work on the 486 😀

And of course the Big 3, Diablo, Duke, RA

Reply 8 of 58, by Desomondo

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Ah, 1996. My favorite year in PC gaming. I'm not going to break any new ground here, but:

1. Quake - Best FPS ever. Level design for the entire genre went downhill immediately following the release of this game. Single handedly proves that "realistic" does not equal fun.
2. Duke Nukem 3D - The game that introduced me to level editing tools thanks to BUILD being on the bloody disk. I spent just as much time making my own levels as I did playing the game itself.
3. Tomb Raider - My favorite game of all time for about a decade. Along with Quake, this game made me purchase my first Voodoo Graphics card.
4. Pandora Directive - My favorite game in the series and the genre in general. Great FMV goodness. Tex Murphy is my spirit guide.
5. Terra Nova - More FMV goodness and and brilliant mech / shooter hybrid.
6. Diablo - Pure digital crack. Click, click, click, etc. Unfortunately I never touched it again after Diablo II was released...
7. Red Alert - I prefer the original C&C, but it is still an awesome game. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming remaster.

Win98: PII 400 | 440BX | Voodoo3 | Live + SB16
WinME: P4 HT 641 | 865G | Geforce4 Ti4400 | Audigy2ZS
WinXP: C2 Q9400 | G41 | Geforce GTX 280 | X-Fi
Win7: i7 2600K | P67 | Geforce GTX 980ti | X-Fi
Win10: R7 5800X | X570 | Radeon RX 6800 | X-Fi Titanium

Reply 10 of 58, by Bruninho

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Grand Prix II
FIFA 96
Duke Nukem 3D

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!

Reply 12 of 58, by Bruninho

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kolderman wrote on 2020-05-19, 02:25:

I would actually love a real "quake 2".

I’d ask Geoff Crammond for a Grand Prix 5, but looking at the state of sim racing games, I thought better not. The new games sure are realistic, but badly programmed by the studios (big size files, needs super hiper mega video card to play at highest resolution).

Can’t believe the recently made free GTA V is a whooping 78GB download! How the f*** a game is bigger than four times a bloated Windows install?

Current era programmers are really bad. I mean, back in the day I saw the best fitting a Mario game in a 40kb cartridge. 40kb!!! Now, as a web dev, I see them slapping several frameworks and libraries to do just simple things and end up with a 5Gb node_modules folder.

This is why I looked to retro gaming. Things were simpler, well programmed, “it just works”. Games were smaller and really fun. They didn’t required much hardware to be played. I remember that I had never begged my parents for a newer hardware or GPU to play a game... until I bought Grand Prix 4.

Today I still see my friends saying that they want the latest NVIDIA gpu to play their games. Seriously, I got fed up of looking for a new graphics card every year to play new versions of my games.

Thank you, Grand Prix II. Also while we’re at it, thank you Grand Prix III. I don’t need iRacing, Assetto Corsa or rFactor 2 to be happy.

I forgot to add Euro ‘96 to the game list. A good rival to FIFA.

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!

Reply 14 of 58, by spiroyster

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Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

I’d ask Geoff Crammond for a Grand Prix 5, but looking at the state of sim racing games, I thought better not. The new games sure are realistic, but badly programmed by the studios (big size files, needs super hiper mega video card to play at highest resolution).

Can’t believe the recently made free GTA V is a whooping 78GB download! How the f*** a game is bigger than four times a bloated Windows install?

Erm... thats whats called content (not compiled code). Textures, Models, Audio, Video (perhaps) etc.... the code itself would be a fraction of that... probably less than 1%.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

Current era programmers are really bad.

And you know this how? Have you got access to source code?

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

I mean, back in the day I saw the best fitting a Mario game in a 40kb cartridge. 40kb!!!

And how many sprites do you think are in mario? and what size do you think those sprites are?

No offence but looking at the size of something and deducing it is badly coded is pretty naive and shows no understanding of how software works. In many cases you would find optimised code being magnitudes larger than elegant code which doesn't perform well... smaller code does not mean faster better code... never has. Look at the number of lines of "Hello world" in assembly compared to C.

This applies to graphics to.. Vulkan compared to OpenGL... simple spinny triangle could be say 50ish lines in GL... in Vulkan you are probably looking at at least 200+. Vulkan will perform better though since it doesn't have driver overhead the same way GL does.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

Now, as a web dev, I see them slapping several frameworks and libraries to do just simple things and end up with a 5Gb node_modules folder.

But unlike software development... I doubt you see performance gains by using frameworks this way... if anything it's exactly this mentality in the webdev world which has pushed client side requirements and means we all need fairly powerful computers just to view a webpage with some images and text on it.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

This is why I looked to retro gaming. Things were simpler, well programmed, “it just works”.

There are numerous threads on this forum suggesting old software doesn't "just work". I remeber back in the day, a lot of stuff didn't "just work". Consoles... "just work" as they are sandboxed runtime environments.

Reply 15 of 58, by leileilol

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Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:02:

Things were simpler, well programmed, “it just works”.

Eh, look at Bethesda games. The Terminator's a good start. Some things never change.

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long live PCem

Reply 18 of 58, by filipetolhuizen

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1996 was the golden year of PC gaming. Duke3D was by far my favorite, still is one of mine. Destruction Derby 2 and Jane's ATF were great as well. Quake was good and performed great for a polygon-based game on the available hardware at the time. Loved Monster Truck Madness and Hellbender as well. A-10 Cuba, Daytona USA, Virtua Squad... Just too many to list here

Reply 19 of 58, by Desomondo

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kolderman wrote on 2020-05-19, 02:25:

I would actually love a real "quake 2".

You and me both. My dream game would be a true Quake followup with modern real time lighting and shadowing. Aggressive monsters, mighty boom sticks, and not a single skill point, unlock, collectible, rune trial, or mastery challenge in sight. Just the player and the monsters "dancing" around each other in that sweet spot between their claws and grenades 😀

Win98: PII 400 | 440BX | Voodoo3 | Live + SB16
WinME: P4 HT 641 | 865G | Geforce4 Ti4400 | Audigy2ZS
WinXP: C2 Q9400 | G41 | Geforce GTX 280 | X-Fi
Win7: i7 2600K | P67 | Geforce GTX 980ti | X-Fi
Win10: R7 5800X | X570 | Radeon RX 6800 | X-Fi Titanium