Well... the most games I own I started at least once. Exception are those mew games that came with bundles (Humblebundle, Bundlestars, indiegala and so on), so I have about 80-100 games I own I never played. But that are mostly new once. And than I collected a lots of old disks for the C64-Amiga-Arcon and some other, mostly I also didn't played those (I must say I have about 6000 of those at home).

And when you are talking about Unreal, is that the original from 1990 or that FPS from 1998?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_%28Ubisoft_game%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal

That would be the 1998 FPS.

But it's not about video games we haven't played, but specifically great video games, games with a good reputation, the kind of games that were highly esteemed back in the day, that somehow managed to elude us as players.

I've actually never played any of the Sierra adventure games - I know they're highly revered but somehow they never managed to capture my interest. Maybe I was traumatised because someone gave me a copy of Hero Quest in the late '80s and I remember it taking no less than 10 5.25" DD disks... I probably couldn't face the intensive disk swapping required to play the game. Also I think the Sierra games appealed to an older audience, I was probably too young to grasp the humor, and being a non-native english speaker didn't help. If such a divide ever existed, I was firmly in the LucasFilm camp, having played all their adventure games from Zak McKraken to Full Throttle.

Also, the Ultima Series - I was captivated by RPGs such as Eye of The Beholder and the Might & Magic series but for some reason never played a single Ultima game.

Apart from the lack of interest, another reason for missing out on great games is lacking the necessary system to play it properly. I missed out on most of the 1996 and 1997 games because my PC from 1994 to 1998 was a Pentium 90, and from 1996 it was already a bit slow to play the latest games - as a result I missed out on games like Dungeon Keeper and Diablo. Despite wanting to play them at the time, I knew they would run sluggishly on my P90. At the time I was busy playing PSX games and by the time I got a Pentium II in 1998, I forgot about these...

I'm sure there's countless highly popular games that I've never run. Some come to mind that I picked up on GOG recently, since they've been running sales.

Tomb Raider - I remember being skeptical of this game because of the apparent gimmicks of sex appeal + 3D. I'm still skeptical, but given the series' fame all these years later it must have been a decent game. It's iconic of the late 90s 3D revolution, so I want to check it out.

The Wing Commander series - the only one of those I ever played was Academy, which I thought sucked, and I guess the WC fans agree with that. I quickly went back to X-Wing. I need to try the others out. Seems almost any of the other WC games are actually known for being good games, unlike the 'Academy' iteration that gave me such a bad taste.

Tie Fighter - I loved X-Wing, and I like X-Wing Alliance, but I've never seen Tie Fighter at all.

LucasArts and Sierra adventure games - never played any of them.

Up until recently I had never played Unreal (1998) either. I did install and play it about a week ago. I still haven't played Unreal 2.

I've never played Quake 3 or DOOM 3. The most popular benchmarks in the world, apparently.

People can miss out on playing a game for any number of reasons. I've never owned a console and thus have missed out on games that were considered great [for those platforms]. I also didn't enjoy [or more accurately, get into] certain genres so missed out on some classics (Elite for example). However I doubt there's any that have played [properly at least] every great game ever released.

Unreal was a ground breaker on release 😀

Half Life. Only got around to playing through it a few months back.

There's a lot of modern games I've not played.

Arcanum is still practically unplayed, as are the World of Ultima. Diablo 1 and 2.

The Tomb Raider games are genuinely decent, at least the first four or so. Wing Commander? Overrated. I loved WC2 at the time, and have played WC3. If you want a decent space sim in the same universe play Privateer - a much better game.

Quake 3 was a huge disappointment to me as there was no single player campaign. As to Lucasarts, run, not walk, and go and play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Then search out Day of the Tentacle.

I played later space combat game like Starlancer and Freelancer, that was fun. Are those oldies like WC2 and Privateer better if I am not into Star Wars?
I think I will spent the summer with some old jrpg, never played any Final Fantasy before 7 or Chrono Trigger.
Just spent few hours with System Shock portable, works nicely. That will be one game to scratch of the list.

WC2 is a pure space combat game with a (for the time) graphically and sonically impressive plot. Privateer is a space trading game with an excellent plot attached to it.

I've not played Starlancer or Freelancer, but I've heard a lot of good things about the latter. I suspect you'd enjoy Privateer more, but if you follow GOG.com's sales, you can buy them for practically nothing, so it doesn't hurt to try.

Most of the popular pc games since 2001. I was so far behind in technology for so many years that it has been amazing discovering the joys of computing of the past two decades and catching up. Living in the mountains with dial up internet and no money for 10 years tends to destroy your perception of popular culture and entertainment 😀 played through Dark Forces recently and even as old as it is it was an absolute blast!

Believe it or not, I never played the original Ultima games, other than Ultima 7 and its expansions (and the 2 Underworld games). They are on my gaming "bucket list".

ODwilly wrote:

Most of the popular pc games since 2001. I was so far behind in technology for so many years that it has been amazing discovering the joys of computing of the past two decades and catching up. Living in the mountains with dial up internet and no money for 10 years tends to destroy your perception of popular culture and entertainment 😀 played through Dark Forces recently and even as old as it is it was an absolute blast!

I believe the best that PC gaming had to offer was encapsulated within a time frame spawning roughly 10 years; Doom started it and Doom 3 killed it. 2001, that's only 2 years before the aluminum foil wrapping metastasis (per-pixel lighting) and the chocolate coin wrapping post-processing death that followed (bloom).

Consider your retreat favorably timed.

Per Pixel lighting existed for a long time though... XnGine did all it's lighting at the per pixel level... in SOFTWARE RENDERING.

Anyways. Terra Nova: Strike Force Centarui and Mechwarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy are two things I wish I had played...