Snover wrote:

You guys, how hard is it to understand? Don't link to abandonware sites!

/whine
but the people who made it aren't selling it anymore....
I'm poor and can't afford it...
I don't have a paypayl account...
My dog eats my CD's when I buy them...
I don't have a CD-ROM so if I buy them then I can't put them in my computer....
It's just a bunch of bits INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!!!....
I'm a POS and I don't like to pay for anything....[/whine]

My TOP 3 games are probably:

1. Tie Fighter (get the 1995 Collector's edition)
2. Transport Tycoon Deluxe (spent countless hours building the train network, no competition, see how fast you can get to 4B $$)
3. Command & Conquer

Also, Theme Hospital hasn't been mentioned yet. I don't think it got pretty good reviews, but I've enjoyed it a lot.

Almost forgot: Cyberia. It's a must, one of the first (might just be the first?) game I owned on CD. It simply awesome.

Star Trek 25th Anniversary & Judgement Rights are also ok if you like adventure games.

Battle Isle

Snover wrote:

You guys, how hard is it to understand? Don't link to abandonware sites!

Weird. I've posted links to HOTU reviews few times in the past and nobody complained (including the link to Quest for Glory 4 1/2 on my first post on this thread).

I wonder why my previous links were never complained on. Maybe because they were always made in the context of discussing the quality of the said game as opposed to "hey, you can download the game here!". Maybe because HOTU is more a review site than an outright abandonware download site (in fact, some of the games have buy link instead of download link, while some others are just freeware). Dunno. Why were they never deleted?

Nonetheless, the latest HOTU link has been deleted, so it's clear now that HOTU is in your no-no list as well, isn't it?

ih8registrations wrote:

What, no outrage for suggesting a bunch of murdering war games to a thirteen year old?:)

Mind you that military-themed games contain less blood and gore than typical Doom clones.

I wonder why my previous links were never complained on.

Uhm you surely would have beaten up seriously if somebody had read one
of those threads, apparently the subject lines were of no interest. But guess
there'll be some automatic scanning from now on of your posts, if you don't mind.

wd wrote:

I wonder why my previous links were never complained on.

Uhm you surely would have beaten up seriously if somebody had read one
of those threads, apparently the subject lines were of no interest.

Hm. I have changed the QfG 4 1/2 link from HOTU review to its freeware site.

Too bad. HOTU is apparently the best review site for old games. Yeah, there's mobygames too, but its reviews tend to be underwhelming.

wd wrote:

But guess there'll be some automatic scanning from now on of your posts, if you don't mind.

Meh, no problem at all.

HOTU is a difficult case indeed. On one hand, it's an Abandonware site, and thus "off limits". On the other hand, i agree with KAN that there's a lot of interesting information on HOTU. But i wouldn't call the text info "reviews" - they are more like descriptions (very in-depth), not the typical reviews with a rating at the end. For anyone interested in very old DOS games, HOTU can be a great source of information. That site can't be easily classified as "good" or "evil". Anyway, it's silly to link to the site in VOGONS posts, as a) the VOGONS stance on Abandonware is more than clear, and b) anyone with half a brain can find the info easily via Google.

Btw, wd: automatic scanning of posts? Thought control? An automatic big brother that watches us? Either that's a joke, or a bit of an overreaction IMO.

ADDiCT wrote:

HOTU is a difficult case indeed. On one hand, it's an Abandonware site, and thus "off limits". On the other hand, i agree with KAN that there's a lot of interesting information on HOTU. But i wouldn't call the text info "reviews" - they are more like descriptions (very in-depth), not the typical reviews with a rating at the end. For anyone interested in very old DOS games, HOTU can be a great source of information. That site can't be easily classified as "good" or "evil". Anyway, it's silly to link to the site in VOGONS posts, as a) the VOGONS stance on Abandonware is more than clear, and b) anyone with half a brain can find the info easily via Google.

Well the reason I posted a link to HOTU on the first place is because Air Force Commander is quite an obscure game and I couldn't find any other site that describes it better. Nobody complained at that time, so I thought HOTU is okay until Snover deleted my link.

Nonetheless, we agree on the same thing: good information source of old games (especially reviews) is quite scarce.

While we're at it, I disagree with HOTU's lukewarm review on AFC; I found the game is quite nice, although short. Yes, more complex scenarios are quite overwhelming (try playing the US side in Desert Storm and you know what I mean), but short scenarios (like UAE vs Kuwait) are easy to get into and provide exciting distraction after long hours of work.

ADDiCT wrote:

Btw, wd: automatic scanning of posts? Thought control? An automatic big brother that watches us? Either that's a joke, or a bit of an overreaction IMO.

I think they only scan the posted links, which is quite okay by me. I think it's pretty hard to automatically discern the context of the conversation (unless you don't mind false postives) --doesn't it need fuzzy logic of some sort to do so? Because library alone is hardly sufficient to determine the context of the post.

An automatic big brother that watches us?

Yeah!

wd wrote:

An automatic big brother that watches us?

Yeah!

Does it run in DOSBOX? 😉

Wow, this is so big! Try to list games from the early 90s instead guys, because I already own most of the mid-late 90s games you've listed. Thanks for listing these games for me though, I'll start looking at them and see if I'd like them or not.

No Mean Streets? For shame...

They're in my head! THEYRE IN MY HEAD!

hmmm other great sites are Abandonia (google it), and then you are happening in old lovely games. Or for that matter XTC Abanandonware, and S&F Prod. - Homepage

http://www.student.tue.nl/p/f.a.m.smeijers/sfp/

(Mr Snover, this site is NOT an abandonware site. But a helpfull site to the old games).

The early '90s was the golden age of PC gaming no question. I'm not sure which ones you're familiar with or which type of game you like so I'll just rattle off the best pre-1995 games...

Great:
Ultima Underworld(the original FPS RPG)
Ultima 7(the most amazing 2D open world RPG ever)
Ultima Underworld II (better in many ways then the original- highly underrated)
Ultima 7 part 2 the Serpent Isle(play them in this order to follow the story- U7, UW2, U7II,)
X-com ufo defense(amazing turn based strategy. unmatched tension)
Dune II(created the modern RTS genre)
Betrayal at Krondor(early 3d rpg)
Lands of Lore(beautiful 2d FP rpg)
Day of the Tentacle(greatest classic Lucasarts adventure -get the talkie version)
Privateer(Classic Origin space roamer)
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers(Sierra's overall best adventure game -get the talkie)
Tie Fighter
Star Control 2(get the free Ur Quan Masters talkie version here http://sc2.sourceforge.net/)

Good to almost great:
Strike Commander
Wings of Glory(underrated WWI interactive movie very fun)
Quest for Glory VGA(cool version of a great graphical adventure)
Bioforge(Origin 3D sci-fi survival adventure)
Darklands(innovative open ended RPG)
Alone in the Dark(the original and first 3d horror survival game)
Syndicate(cool real-time 2d cyberpunk strategy action)
Kyrandia: the Hand of Fate(awesome Westwood graphical adventure - get the talkie)
Under a Killing Moon(weird real time 3d adventure and FMV)
Quest for Glory IV
Relentless: Twinsen's adventure

You can find all of these games on the net these days, just be sure to get the talkie/full CD versions wherever possible because the rips never do them justice. Also grab the manuals over at replacementdocs or wherever because they can be pretty complex.

wasnt the entire technology era in its golden age in the last decade? Not just pc games, but the internet too. It was brand new, mostly unknown to almost everyone, and no rules were written yet. Im talking about both games and the net. There were no high stakes and stockholders to please back then. Damn, where did that all go?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

The dotcom burst has no relation to the game industry in the last decade versus the gaming industry now.

v0g0ns wrote:

...the entire technology era...
Not just pc games, but the internet too.
I'm talking about both games and the net.

I thought you meant everything. As far as games, at some point, for most people, or at least most people who really got their voice heard, it became more about graphics and sound than gameplay and level design, or so I hear, as I said at the time I was learning to read.

And also i became more about (or completely about) corporate bottom line and shareholder value, right? Like, before games like shadow warrior had low brow offbeat tones, and rise of the triad displayed stuff like DP s***t, or something like that. I know, games like gta are controversial today, but seems like they do it on purpose, whereas those older games were just doing it for kicks. 😜

v0g0ns wrote:

And also i became more about (or completely about) corporate bottom line and shareholder value, right? Like, before games like shadow warrior had low brow offbeat tones, and rise of the triad displayed stuff like DP s***t, or something like that. I know, games like gta are controversial today, but seems like they do it on purpose, whereas those older games were just doing it for kicks. 😜

Video games just got a lot more complex to develop and require a lot more money to be thrown around in order to make something that stands up to most titles today. As a result, you have less creative control because the person paying for the project may not see eye-to-eye with the game's lead designer.

Back in the day, Roberta Williams funded and designed games, nowadays, some corporate suit is the one funding things... "Gotta put in more hookers that the kids can kill for drugs, otherwise we won't sell ten million copies."