Highly recommend checking out the Link to the Past Randomizer if you haven't. It shuffles all the chest contents while ensuring you can complete the game. It's different each time and even gives you a cheat sheet if you get stuck.
3D printed cart holder I got from Etsy. Pretty nifty and very stable. Unfortunately the spacing is such that you can only read the GBA labels stacked. The GB/GBC carts obscure the one behind. The rumble carts hang nicely on top though!
I also do not throw geriatric technology. Would sooner rip my own arm off...
Never ascended once. Somewhere in the late midgame the inventory juggling becomes just too complicated and it feels like the last few turns of Civilization 4.
Tried fiqhack but it flakes on me a lot, can't figure the reason, won't find assets et c. I do dynahack now but it changes too much for my taste, and it doesn't help the inventory problem when you have hundreds of items and try to make sense of it all.
And yet 30 years on something about it still tickles me pickle.
I sometimes play "Beneath Apple Manor" (1978) and similar-era games via Apple emulator. Believe it or not, it's a "roguelike" that actually predated Epyx' Rogue (1980) and NetHack (1987).
But I'm also thankful that Epyx' Rogue happened to become used for the overall genre name. "BeneathAppleManorLike" is just too much of a mouthful!
Is it worth getting into it now? Without rose tinted glasses I mean. Or are there better alternatives? (Shattered Pixel Dungeon for example). I have tried Shattered Pixel but found it too nonsensical, having to learn tons of mechanics that don't seem to make sense other than trial and error and huge RNG (which I am not a fan of).
To be fair trial and error and RNG are just par for the course with classic roguelikes, but learning how to manage all that is part of the appeal. Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are probably the two best-supported old classic roguelikes out there. Honorable mentions for Dwarf Fortress, which basically abandoned its roguelike mode in favor of a fortress simulator, and UnReal world, which is a weird outdoor primitive survival game that's a testament to one man's obsession.
There are also more modern offerings like Tales of Maj'Eyal, Caves of QUD, and Dungeons of Dredmor that are fully faithful roguelikes with either more modern graphics or QOL upgrades.
As you part your curtains, you see that is a bright morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the meadows are blooming, and a large yellow bulldozer is advancing towards your home.
Must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of those.
Super Mario World every year or two. The soundtrack alone cheers me right up.
Would Tetris count if its always whatever new Tetris Ultimate Reloaded DX etc etc edition? I feel like it shouldn't but its basically the same game just polished up.
I started Minecraft because my kid talked me into it. I bought him the last Alpha version, then bought myself the first Beta so I could play with him. At the time it just felt like blocks and wandering around, but it stuck.
Now I play with my grandsons.
Last weekend was my oldest grandson’s eleventh birthday. Along with a Steam gift card and probably some Robux, all he really wanted was to spend the day playing Minecraft with his grandpa. So that is what we did.
Not my oldest game, but definitely the one I play most consistently. At least once a week.
OpenTTD (2004), which traces its roots to Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (1994)
And there's a community of players who have modded the everloving fuck out of the game and the engine itself, one of these patch packs is OpenTTD JGR and we play it like it's a model railway simulator
It's a great game to just hang out and have fun. I play it once or twice a year with college buddies across the country. Fire it up, start a server, get drunk, pyro everything
Bit easier than other Final Fantasy games, I'm finding... at least in the early game, Edgar and Sabin are ass-blasting everything in the game with very little resistance, those boys probably don't even need the rest of the Returners squad. I know that will probably change later but the duo are definitely the MVPs of act 1.
I'm also of mixed opinion about the ability to teach every party remember every spell in the game. It's obviously not the best idea, that I can't stop myself from doing. Does Edgar or Gau need to know how to cast Bio or Slow or Rasp? No, not at all, and they're probably better served leveling up with magicite that gives them useful stats. Will they learn those spells? You betcha.
Darklands - a cRPG released in 1992 by Microprose. It's set in medieval Germany; you are a party of fledgling adventurers looking to build fame and money, and somehow you get pulled into a battle against the forces of the apocalypse. Instead of magic, you invoke saints and use alchemy to craft potions. I loved it when I was younger, and I still, somehow, enjoy it today.
If you hate the following things, then I highly recommend checking it out!
I was skimming your comment then i was intrigued with the great graphics, bug free… i was like, what is this amazing game? Maybe i should try. Then i read it again!
I play lots of games from my childhood. Even though it was before my time, Super Mario Bros on the NES is probably the oldest game I regularly go back to. But I love retro games, so I'll play even older games on occasion.
Me too. I would say Pac-Man or Galaga, but Super Mario Bros. 1 is the oldest one where I'll sit down and dig into it for a while. 40 years later, the character's weight and momentum make it feel better than plenty of modern games.
Just started playing this again for the first time in years. Trying out the texture upgrades from tfix, and they seem pretty good. Still feels very retro!
yeah, I remember the first time I played The Dark Mod and thought: Holy shit, they really nailed the fidelity of the original! Then I was finally able to get Thief: Gold running and realized that TDM actually looks leagues better than the original lol
A couple of years ago I got my wife to finally play Portal and Portal 2 for the first time. Its been long enough she was entirely unaware of any of the memes about the game so she immediately fell in love with the companion cube and cried when she realized she had no choice but to incinerate it, even going so far as trying to find a bug to exploit to bring it with her
Well, I don't segment my backlog for years, so I wouldn't know which is the oldest one, but the one I plan to play next is Fzero for the SNES which was released in 1991.
I dunno if it really counts, because these days I play Diablo 2 Resurrected instead of the real OG, but god I still love Diablo 2. I was playing a Druid Maul build a little bit just last weekend in anticipation of Path of Exile 2 adding animal transformations. It's just one of those classic Blizzard titles I go back to at least once every year, alongside Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. They're like the triumvirate of my childhood nostalgia.
Loved D2. Came back to it after decades of being away. Got really confused by things like runes and the reclassifcation of cast rate for items as a percentage. I missed snickering every time I'd encounter an item with "fastest cast rate"
I recently picked up Diablo 2 again, that and Doom which I play off and on. I really need to find a copy of Wolfenstein now that I'm thinking about old games.
About once a year or so I go replay Morrowind, the chaddest of the Elder Scrolls series.
This past year I replayed Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt tacked onto it, which has been extremely cool and fresh. TR really feels like official content a lot of the time, it's quite good and the love that's been put into it is very apparent.
I'm on a retro game kick lately. I am currently playing Pokemon Leaf Green and Chrono Trigger (for a fiesta event) and will likely move on to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night afterward.
I still play NES games often. These were the games of my childhood. Balloon Fight and the original arcade Mario Bros. are always fun for shorter sessions. And I still enjoy playing through Super Mario Bros. on occasion. I very rarely have ventured into games older than the NES.
Gothic 1 and 2 (from 2001 and 2002 respectively) are still some of the best games I ever played. There is also a very active modding community, and some mods are even much better than the original game.
I tried out Gothic a couple of years ago for the first time and I thought it was amazing! Very old school and I didn't know what I was doing but those kind of games feel so alive. I was overwhelmed with all of the things to do. I didn't make it to far but have been thinking of trying it out again soon. I usually play games for the first time vanilla, but are there any mods you recommend for first time players?
Yes that's the charme of it, just like the player character you are thrown into this strange, brutal world and have to figure out how to survive. The beginning is difficult, but that makes it all the more satisfying later in the game when you actually become powerful.
Regarding mods, you should definitely get one for improved inventory, and there's also a DirectX 11 mod for better graphics.
You can play Garrys Mod? I thought it was mostly just a sandbox for building things or making machinima videos. I have it but have opened it maybe twice...not much time for gaming these days and Black Mesa and Outer Wilds have been consuming all my stolen gaming time.
Theres still a hell of a lot of RP servers up, darkRP and otherwise. Still prophunt, TTT, zombie survival, all the classics with some new niche gamemodes added in. Its had a solid like 17-18,000 concurrent players on steam even just this month I believe.
This thread is turning into a memory dump for me, so here is another one.
I go back farther than Warcraft 3. I still fire up Warcraft 2 on DOSBox now and then, usually when I have had a bit too much to drink and want something familiar.
When Warcraft 2 was new, I was a junior computer programmer for a very large corporation, top 25 in the world. I set up a LAN at home using token ring, which tells you roughly how old this story is.
My wife is not really a gamer, although after thirty seven years of marriage and putting up with this stuff, maybe she qualifies anyway. We would sit at our desks, hold our daughters on our laps, and battle each other in Warcraft 2.
The machines were 80286 boxes I built myself from parts. Thanks, CDW back when it still meant Computer Discount Warehouse.
So yeah, I guess I have been around for most of this history. Some people remember patches and balance updates. I remember toddlers, token ring, and orcs on beige hardware.
Nethack maybe? It's been updated over the years, but it's still largely the game that released in '87.
I'm also playing Might and Magic 6 [98] right now, and remembering why I liked 7 so much more. Planning a playthrough of World of Xeen [93/94] soon too.
I was in early high school and happened to live in the town in Iowa that called itself the Video Game Capital of the World. There are enough documentaries out there that it is not exactly a secret. When I joined the Army at eighteen my nickname was Radar, which probably gives it away anyway.
I had a good friend from junior high computer club. He had a TRS-80 Color Computer. I was a Commodore guy. By high school we had mostly drifted apart. Then one day he called me up, yes phones did exist, and told me he was going to set a world record on Joust and asked if I wanted to come help support him.
Somehow I got permission from my parents. I spent the entire weekend at the arcade with him, mostly watching, bringing food, keeping track of things, and just being there. He set the record. I do not know how long it stood, but I know I was there when his name went up on the big board Monday morning.
Solitaire and Minesweeper. Literally the best games for when I just want to play something that doesn't require a lot of attention (no story lines, long load times, or remembering what I was doing the last time I played). Just enough to focus my attention while waiting around, but able to close out when whatever I was waiting on is ready. Just really calming for the most part.
I don't play games much, but every decade or so, I get out Quake and play a while. Next time I get the urge, maybe I'll play the original Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.
Last three were Star Ocean (the first one), Radiata Stories, and Skies of Arcadia.
Currently playing Alundra because a friend grew up with it and wanted me to play it. Honestly it's not great but RetroAchevements made the bosses extraordinarily painful to master, which is uh ... fun. Yes. Fun, let's go with that.
Oh and ps these commenters all have fantastic tastes.
I am realizing my life is not really marked by birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, or any of the normal milestone stuff people list. It is marked by video games.
Thanks for this thread, because it reminded me of one I cannot leave out.
There was a week I spent in a mental hospital with a major anxiety spiral. Pretty much everything felt unmanageable. The one thing I could handle was Pokémon FireRed on a Game Boy Advance.
That was it. That was my anchor.
It was actually written into my chart that I was allowed to plug my charger in at the nurses station while I slept so the GBA would be ready the next day. No arguments. No debates. Just accepted as necessary.
Not my oldest game, see my other replies for that, but it is probably the only one I have mentioned that might have saved my life.
When they do you can still play 2009scape! Has up to 5x XP modes in case you want a less grindy experience, a single player mode and a brilliant community
Worth noting that OSRS is really just a fork of RuneScape from around the mid RS2 days, (if I remember correctly it's based on a full backup someone found of their codebase, so it started as "hey look we found this old version of the game in a box in one of our offices, wanna play?") and now it contains more new content than original content. Heck way back in the day the idea of a sailing skill was always a silly joke that nobody took seriously, and I'm talking back when Hunter and slayer were being added. Yet here we are.
Before I got a Switch, my last Nintendo Console was a Super Nintendo and missed out on Wii/Gamecube/WiiU, family was a Playstation family lol, so now Im going back and playing all the Zelda's!
I found an abandonware do of Risk 2 from 2000. Run great and is just as much fun as when I was a kid. A friend and I are going to try the network interface to play against each other.
Been playing flatout ultimate carnage, made me want to try older racing games since I barely played any post ps2 growing up (my older cousin had one and some racing games like podracing, idr the rest) I just hated that you couldn't exit the car, for some reason it's just way more immersive to me, so I avoided any game with vehicles where you couldn't exit them. Eventually got in to flight sims which made me wanna try driving games again, since you can't exit the plane and it's still fun. Tho I do wish they added that too.
Dloading many ps2 games and some nfs games, legion go s handheld has me playing more games than I have in ages. I always feel bad playing controller based games on my pc for whatever reason compared to my ps5 even tho it runs better. This has me trying more stuff since it isnt taking over my pc's resources and screen.
Don't really want to check release dates. I still play some things from c64, and Amiga... That's probably the oldest games I play. Like Bubble Bobble, IK, Giana Sisters. EoTB and so forth...
MoO2 periodically for building ships and controlling the whole fleet. Stellaris is fine but so many systems are a chore in that game and at the same time paper thin in depth. Older games had tactics and strategy.
Just played the NES Contra yesterday for the first time in probably over a decade. Still can beat it first try although I did have to use a couple of continuous on stage 4. I'm so used to not dying that I forgot where to find the good weapons. But for stages 5-8 I still had all the muscle memory of where to shoot and when that I developed as a kid.
It is, but it's a little weird when compared to the post because it's still getting updates.
That's why I play World of Warcraft Classic, which is actually the game from 20 years ago (technically 18 since I'll be playing Burning Crusade Classic soon.)
Excellent choice, always loved the 3rd one. They're all fantastic in their own way though.
I grew up with these games and they left such an impact that I usually have this username, with slight variances of course.
I have an N64 and a Sony PVM, so I play a lot of games on that. But there’s two I play much more regularly than all the others: Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. They both hold up incredibly well.
I built my own PC, a tower with a 16 core 32 thread cpu, 128 gb of ram, 16 gb of vram and i make sure to keep it cold enough to handle playing minesweeper on expert.
i'm kidding, i quit gaming in 2020 as a new years resolution.
I have somewhat quit gaming as well. The problem is that I always feel like I am missing out. It taught me so much, surely there are still titles that would blow my mind, make me question reality or introduce me to deep philosophical questions. The truth is that mostly I feel like games are a waste of time. I have never come full closure on it. It seems weird not using the medium since it exercises the brain way more than other mindless activities.
The fear of missing out is something that used to worry me. Having been an avid proponant of the good videogames can do and having spent obscene amounts of time on them and basing almost my entire social life around them, it was not easy for me to quit.
So I didn't technically quit exactly. My full new year's resolution was to "quit watching tv and movies, and quit playing videogames, until improving my life considerably." It's easier to say it the way I did in my previous comment.
This way, it's not so much that I actually quit for all time, it's that I've stopped temporarily to focus on learning and self improvement, hoping I will be able to change my circumstances for the better and live a more stable life before going back to gaming as a sort of reward.
Online gaming wise Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004)
As for single player gaming, donkey Kong Land 1 for gameboy is the oldest game I’m actively playing. I have various NES launch games in my collection, those would be the oldest games in my collection that I have played.
I still play doom, although I try a lot of newer wads. It's crazy that there's basically 30 years of free content people have been creating since it came out (even if most stuff much past 10 or 15 years old can feel kinda dated and not so interesting to play).
I'm so torn up by the sequel. It was pretty mid overall, but the final bossfight was so incredibly infuriating that it ruined my overall impression of the game, so much so that I'd rather the sequel never existed at all.
ShadowMan from 1999. That's one of the (if not the) first narrative action adventure games I ever played and a big part of my childhood. The mixture of blood, gore, creepy music and enemies and great setpieces (you play as the walker between the worlds of the dead and the living and can switch between them) fascinates me to this day. When I was a child, it gave me quite a few nightmares, but I still finished it. It's an absolute masterpiece.
NightDive recently remastered it and it's even better now.
Probably Halo reach or minecraft xbawks 360. Me and my brother are trying to get dad's xbawks original to work, but we need to find the power cord and GIGANTIC stack of games
There was an unofficial patch that helped it continue to be playable. It just had a unique style and story that allowed you to interact and build your character around magic or technology.
I played Super double Dragon for SNES earlier. I also played super Mario Bros 2 for nes this week. Platform games are a great way to pass the time on the go when you have a phone and a Bluetooth controller.
Ive played through Kingdom Hearts every couple of years since it came out! I was in 1st or 2nd grade when it came out and it was one of the first "big" games I ever beat.
I first played it on an Apple IIe, but now it is just a web browser thing I poke at once in a while. It is basically spreadsheets and bad luck. You trade, pirates wreck you, the math never quite works out, and you lose anyway. I think that is why I still like it. No graphics to hide behind.
After that, Seven Cities of Gold, usually on a C64 emulator. That one still holds up more than it has any right to. You sail off thinking you are doing something heroic and slowly realize you are kind of a problem. The exploration feels lonely. The map still feels bigger than it actually is.
But the oldest one I keep coming back to is Gorf on the VIC-20.
I owned the cartridge. Bought it not long after it came out. I paid for the VIC-20 by walking beans and putting up hay all summer for a farmer when I was eleven or twelve. Hot, dusty work. Long days. I remember counting the cash and realizing I could actually afford a computer.
Gorf was loud, ugly, and mean. The voice mocked you constantly. The joystick barely survived. I loved it anyway. Sitting on the floor, TV buzzing, thinking this was the future and I had somehow managed to buy a piece of it.
Also, side note. I am trying pretty hard to become a professional writer. I write essays and stories over at tover153.substack.com. If anything there hits a nerve, feel free to subscribe.
So yeah. Taipan, Seven Cities, Gorf. Not because they are good by modern standards, but because they still feel like something.
::: spoiler zelda 2 spoilers
at the end you need a item from a hidden dungeon to see invisible enemies that are everywhere
:::
Edit: i misunderstood the question. Zelda 2 is the latest old game. I come back to one of the many older gauntlet games. The ps2 one i think especially.
Empires mod (free on Steam) reminds me of old Battlefield but you also have a comander for each team, so it has some base building aspects. Nice balance and no pay to win or comercial exploits.
Sadly the player count is low but every saturday and sunday servers fill upp.
Currently replaying A Link to the Past (1991). It's not even that old.
1991 was only like 20 years ago. Right?
You are correct
I wonder if Lemmy is all Gen X
1991 was 34 years ago according to my birth certificate, so no :(
Highly recommend checking out the Link to the Past Randomizer if you haven't. It shuffles all the chest contents while ensuring you can complete the game. It's different each time and even gives you a cheat sheet if you get stuck.
Check it out here
Thank you for the recommendation. This is great. Here's what I got on a quick first try lol
Yep, that's the experience! 😂
Thats only an 8 year old game man. I think they meant something old like SpaceWar!
This was mine, my most replayed game of all time.
These.
This looks so much like my collection! Very cool
Nice tape collection
Thank you! I've fallen in love with physical media again... Fuck Netflix
Dang, how do you keep all those gameboy carts from toppling over every time you launch your controller at your TV?
Edit to finish my thought after accidentally sending prematurely.
3D printed cart holder I got from Etsy. Pretty nifty and very stable. Unfortunately the spacing is such that you can only read the GBA labels stacked. The GB/GBC carts obscure the one behind. The rumble carts hang nicely on top though!
I also do not throw geriatric technology. Would sooner rip my own arm off...
Tetris, the original GameBoy cart.
Yesssssss; still one of the best implementations of Tetris ever, imo.
Age of Empires 2
Does DE count?
It's crazy that new expansions are still dropping, and the ranked community is thriving.
I think it does. It's pretty much the same game (including the engine) with just a new coat of paint on top.
Isn’t that the wolololo game?
Aye! Wololo
Technically No 1 is the Wololo game. Monks don't Wololo in part 2.
I go back to play some nethack pretty regularly.
I'm not alone!
Never ascended once. Somewhere in the late midgame the inventory juggling becomes just too complicated and it feels like the last few turns of Civilization 4.
Tried fiqhack but it flakes on me a lot, can't figure the reason, won't find assets et c. I do dynahack now but it changes too much for my taste, and it doesn't help the inventory problem when you have hundreds of items and try to make sense of it all.
And yet 30 years on something about it still tickles me pickle.
I sometimes play "Beneath Apple Manor" (1978) and similar-era games via Apple emulator. Believe it or not, it's a "roguelike" that actually predated Epyx' Rogue (1980) and NetHack (1987).
But I'm also thankful that Epyx' Rogue happened to become used for the overall genre name. "BeneathAppleManorLike" is just too much of a mouthful!
Oh my god that game art! <3 <3 <3
I don't know what it was about Apple II games, they just had an other-worldly quality to them.
The sound, too. It was like bird-chirping.
I loved it.
Hell yes!! And you can play it on the nethack site through terminal. So awesome. And watch others play it too
Is it worth getting into it now? Without rose tinted glasses I mean. Or are there better alternatives? (Shattered Pixel Dungeon for example). I have tried Shattered Pixel but found it too nonsensical, having to learn tons of mechanics that don't seem to make sense other than trial and error and huge RNG (which I am not a fan of).
To be fair trial and error and RNG are just par for the course with classic roguelikes, but learning how to manage all that is part of the appeal. Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are probably the two best-supported old classic roguelikes out there. Honorable mentions for Dwarf Fortress, which basically abandoned its roguelike mode in favor of a fortress simulator, and UnReal world, which is a weird outdoor primitive survival game that's a testament to one man's obsession.
There are also more modern offerings like Tales of Maj'Eyal, Caves of QUD, and Dungeons of Dredmor that are fully faithful roguelikes with either more modern graphics or QOL upgrades.
Yes. Its still awesome. And I never got to play it in the heyday.
Its just an engaging game for me.
Nethack.org
Angband for me, high five my fellow older roguelike enjoyer
Every so often I'll have another run at the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure from 1984.
Must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of those.
Adams also wrote the game ‘Bureaucracy’, similarly rather difficult. And later ‘Starship Titanic’, which is a 3d adventure with textual conversations.
Heard of ST, but not Bureaucracy, will need to check that out, thanks! 👍
I slapped myself, and died.
Most satisfying death in a video game I can remember
Super Mario World every year or two. The soundtrack alone cheers me right up.
Would Tetris count if its always whatever new Tetris Ultimate Reloaded DX etc etc edition? I feel like it shouldn't but its basically the same game just polished up.
Super Mario World is peak Nintendo. I still come back to it on occasion just to remember what games were like when things didn't seem so corporate.
Super Mario World and Shadow of the Colossus are my timeless games! I will replay them every few years.
Playing regularly? Minecraft.
There are a few games I revisit as my kid grows up and gets to experience them for the first time, but Minecraft keeps coming back.
That one hits close.
I started Minecraft because my kid talked me into it. I bought him the last Alpha version, then bought myself the first Beta so I could play with him. At the time it just felt like blocks and wandering around, but it stuck.
Now I play with my grandsons.
Last weekend was my oldest grandson’s eleventh birthday. Along with a Steam gift card and probably some Robux, all he really wanted was to spend the day playing Minecraft with his grandpa. So that is what we did.
Not my oldest game, but definitely the one I play most consistently. At least once a week.
Super mario 64, the acrobatics is so fun
I've been following the sm64-psx project.
Yesterday I even got the game to compile, AND show the SM64 splash screen on real PS1 hardware
The natively compiled version?
There's videos from Kaze Emanuar which are quite interesting about it:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
OpenTTD (2004), which traces its roots to Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (1994)
And there's a community of players who have modded the everloving fuck out of the game and the engine itself, one of these patch packs is OpenTTD JGR and we play it like it's a model railway simulator
Technically Team Fortress 2. Though not often.
I'm playing through Final Fantasy 2 right now but the pixel remaster version which came out in 2021 which is why I say technically.
I started TF2 about a year or two back and still play because my son loves it. It's a fun game.
It's a great game to just hang out and have fun. I play it once or twice a year with college buddies across the country. Fire it up, start a server, get drunk, pyro everything
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)
With a sidewinder joystick?
That thing is made for torso-twist in MW2.
Yeeeess!! I was trying to remember the name of that! Thank you!
Loved that joystick, especially with A-10 Cuba!
I had a sony viao pc (200mhz) that came with mech warrior 2 on cd r.o.m.
played the shit out of that
Such a good soundtrack on the CD
I still use devil's lab as bumper music on a community radio show I do
Back then, every Activision game had awesome music. I miss those days.
MW2 was so damn good too! I bought some kind of badass flight stick just for that game.
“We are clan Wolf…”
"It's got a lock on me! It's got a lock on m-" BOOM
Half life and Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is so good. I wish it had more assault maps out of the box.
I know! I had so much fun playing that game!!! Headshot! Unstoppable!
GoldSRC HL? Love those gibs.
I play retro games I missed growing up so I’ll soon be starting final fantasy 6
Best old school one. You're in for a treat
...old school. mf'er I still play III (us version 3)
That's the same one. 6 is US 3.
ah. damn it I was being pretentious
Currently playing FFVI myself. It's a treat.
Bit easier than other Final Fantasy games, I'm finding... at least in the early game, Edgar and Sabin are ass-blasting everything in the game with very little resistance, those boys probably don't even need the rest of the Returners squad. I know that will probably change later but the duo are definitely the MVPs of act 1.
I'm also of mixed opinion about the ability to teach every party remember every spell in the game. It's obviously not the best idea, that I can't stop myself from doing. Does Edgar or Gau need to know how to cast Bio or Slow or Rasp? No, not at all, and they're probably better served leveling up with magicite that gives them useful stats. Will they learn those spells? You betcha.
I’ll be playing this version, no idea how it will compare to the original
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1386/
Diablo 1 (it runs really well with the devilutionx engine reimplementation)
I remember being scared of the music in diablo 2 as a kid
I've been looking for a download of Diablo 1. I must have put thousands of hours in as a kid. Where'd you find yours?
It's on GOG.
I actually own it on cd. I just had to boot up an old laptop that has my only cd drive.
But I just checked, you can find it on archive.org.
https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/
Web version!
Probably half life 2
Deus Ex 1. Still holds up after all these years and there are plenty of mods to keep things interesting.
Warcraft 3 custom maps still drag me back sometimes.
Baldur's Gate.
DigDug on MAME
On the regular I still fire up Zork 1-3, Ultima 4, StarTropics, OG Metroid, and Maniac Mansion.
Super Mario bros 1 & 3. I still have them working on my old Wii, but I’ve been planning on a retro pi setup for ages.
My OG NES stopped working a decade ago.
osu!. Despite being made in 2007, it still holds up as a good rhythm game.
Just booted back up chrono trigger
Darklands - a cRPG released in 1992 by Microprose. It's set in medieval Germany; you are a party of fledgling adventurers looking to build fame and money, and somehow you get pulled into a battle against the forces of the apocalypse. Instead of magic, you invoke saints and use alchemy to craft potions. I loved it when I was younger, and I still, somehow, enjoy it today.
If you hate the following things, then I highly recommend checking it out!
I was skimming your comment then i was intrigued with the great graphics, bug free… i was like, what is this amazing game? Maybe i should try. Then i read it again!
River Raid, Atari game from early 80s. Play it on analogue pocket currently
This was my favorite on commodore 64
breakout. I think it's the oldest 'playable' game. It feel ahead of it's time for the late 70's
I play lots of games from my childhood. Even though it was before my time, Super Mario Bros on the NES is probably the oldest game I regularly go back to. But I love retro games, so I'll play even older games on occasion.
Me too. I would say Pac-Man or Galaga, but Super Mario Bros. 1 is the oldest one where I'll sit down and dig into it for a while. 40 years later, the character's weight and momentum make it feel better than plenty of modern games.
Oh, Galaga is another good one!
Check out ‘Recca’ aka ‘Summer Carnival '92’. Outstanding game for its time, with a bitching techno soundtrack.
Streets of Rage 1&2
Who do you pick?
typically Max, sometimes Skate. in french there's an auditory hallucination that makes his special attack sound funny
you ?
Thief: Gold
The Dark Mod scratches that itch very well most of the time, but the OG had better story telling across multiple missions
Thief VR just came out. I havn't played it yet but I havn't been so excited about a new game in years.
Just started playing this again for the first time in years. Trying out the texture upgrades from tfix, and they seem pretty good. Still feels very retro!
yeah, I remember the first time I played The Dark Mod and thought: Holy shit, they really nailed the fidelity of the original! Then I was finally able to get Thief: Gold running and realized that TDM actually looks leagues better than the original lol
Portal. It's older than you think, but still solid.
A couple of years ago I got my wife to finally play Portal and Portal 2 for the first time. Its been long enough she was entirely unaware of any of the memes about the game so she immediately fell in love with the companion cube and cried when she realized she had no choice but to incinerate it, even going so far as trying to find a bug to exploit to bring it with her
Mario 3, though these days I get tired of it after a World or two and haven't completed it in a while.
Also Xenogears from the PS1 is still one of my favorite games and I replay it every few years.
Well, I don't segment my backlog for years, so I wouldn't know which is the oldest one, but the one I plan to play next is Fzero for the SNES which was released in 1991.
Anarchy Online (2001) is a game I play frequently.
Man I tried to get into it but it would barely install and was so buggy I never could play it.
I reall wanna.
You may have been using the new/beta engine. This engine is known to crash frequently. I use the old engine and never have any problems.
Sometimes I'll pop open Mega Man 1 when my blood pressure is too high to focus on anything. I plan to no-hit it one day (without major glitches)
I still regularly play PS1 and SNES games. They're just better too me.
Knights and merchants
I dunno if it really counts, because these days I play Diablo 2 Resurrected instead of the real OG, but god I still love Diablo 2. I was playing a Druid Maul build a little bit just last weekend in anticipation of Path of Exile 2 adding animal transformations. It's just one of those classic Blizzard titles I go back to at least once every year, alongside Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. They're like the triumvirate of my childhood nostalgia.
Wish the company wasn't so awful.
Loved D2. Came back to it after decades of being away. Got really confused by things like runes and the reclassifcation of cast rate for items as a percentage. I missed snickering every time I'd encounter an item with "fastest cast rate"
RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999) by Chris Sawyer. Best game ever.
Now there's a new rewrite by the open source community called OpenRCT2. Highly suggested.
I recently picked up Diablo 2 again, that and Doom which I play off and on. I really need to find a copy of Wolfenstein now that I'm thinking about old games.
Every so many years I fire up a King's Quest or Space Quest.
A fellow space janitor approves.
Don't take any wooden buckazoids!
The oldest single player game I keep going back to is Super Mario World on the SNES, Copyright 1990.
I will occasionally play games older than that, but the SNES is where my actual nostalgia begins.
I had to check my library to make sure which one is the oldest, but it's fallout 1 :3
Still a great game, especially with mods.
The atmosphere is absolutely unique and haunting...
Any mods you enjoy/recommend for it? :3 I haven't done too much modding tbh
Jak X.
Love this game
Underrated from the jak series. I unfortunately as a kid had an early copy that had a bug that would corrupt your save so bad you couldn't delete it.
On a regular basis, probably classic DooM / DooM 2.
Another World, my fav!! 🥰🥰🥰 the friendship, the bond... plus imma physicist 🤭🤭🤭
Wing Commander on the ol' Dosbox.
The barcade near me has a Sinistar (1982) cabinet and I play it every time I go. I’m not even that good at it, but I love it so much.
Also I love those Lucasarts point and click adventure games. Grew up playing Monkey Island and play it again every once in a while.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow
I had my cat laminated 🤺
Same. Also broken sword.
Sid Meier's Colonization. It seems every few years I always go back to it.
Also, honorable mention for Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
Both from 1994. Yeah, I'm old.
1991's arcade hit and genre creating game, Street Fighter 2
About once a year or so I go replay Morrowind, the chaddest of the Elder Scrolls series.
This past year I replayed Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt tacked onto it, which has been extremely cool and fresh. TR really feels like official content a lot of the time, it's quite good and the love that's been put into it is very apparent.
I may or may not still have a pvpgn vm and a Windows xp vm with a lot of baal rush setups set to run.
I'll play D2 till I die.
Regularly Cube2:Sauerbraten, initially from 2004.
Occasionally, Dragster on Atari,1980. Some of the best reaction gameplay available, from the golden years.
I'm on a retro game kick lately. I am currently playing Pokemon Leaf Green and Chrono Trigger (for a fiesta event) and will likely move on to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night afterward.
Contra still holds up very well, really fun to play with a friend.
Does OpenTTD count?
Factorio 2016
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Worms Armageddon
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Are you suggesting that Skyrim is old? It's still getting updated, to my great annoyment.
World of Warcraft, but to be fair, it’s just about the only game I really play. I dabble in a few others on Steam, but I always end up back in wow.
I bought a Nintendo 3DS this year and I’ve been trying to play that more but my books are so distracting lol
I still play NES games often. These were the games of my childhood. Balloon Fight and the original arcade Mario Bros. are always fun for shorter sessions. And I still enjoy playing through Super Mario Bros. on occasion. I very rarely have ventured into games older than the NES.
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
There is a bar with a N64 setup near me, every time we go I have to lap my wife a few times just to show her I still got it.
But then she beeats my ass raw at Marvel v Capcom. 😂
I regularly play Might and Magic 4 and 5: World of Xeen. It's from 1992.
Mario 64 on original hardware. Never did finish it as a kid so no time better than the present
Gothic 1 and 2 (from 2001 and 2002 respectively) are still some of the best games I ever played. There is also a very active modding community, and some mods are even much better than the original game.
I tried out Gothic a couple of years ago for the first time and I thought it was amazing! Very old school and I didn't know what I was doing but those kind of games feel so alive. I was overwhelmed with all of the things to do. I didn't make it to far but have been thinking of trying it out again soon. I usually play games for the first time vanilla, but are there any mods you recommend for first time players?
Yes that's the charme of it, just like the player character you are thrown into this strange, brutal world and have to figure out how to survive. The beginning is difficult, but that makes it all the more satisfying later in the game when you actually become powerful.
Regarding mods, you should definitely get one for improved inventory, and there's also a DirectX 11 mod for better graphics.
@TheReanuKeeves Doom
Freeciv
I still regularly replay Kirby Super Star, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, and Super Mario Bros 3.
Garrys Mod. You'd actually be impressed how many people still play that game for it approaching its 20 year anniversary.
You can play Garrys Mod? I thought it was mostly just a sandbox for building things or making machinima videos. I have it but have opened it maybe twice...not much time for gaming these days and Black Mesa and Outer Wilds have been consuming all my stolen gaming time.
Theres still a hell of a lot of RP servers up, darkRP and otherwise. Still prophunt, TTT, zombie survival, all the classics with some new niche gamemodes added in. Its had a solid like 17-18,000 concurrent players on steam even just this month I believe.
I'm always down for a replay of Majora's Mask
Every now and then I get a bit nostalgic and put on Dragon Warrior or Sword of Vermillion. I have all the older consoles.
I generally play at least one of the Ultima games every year, mostly the late 80s and early 90s ones.
For a time it was Solitaire, but these days it's 2048.
If you haven't played Threes!, do yourself a favor and try it. 2048 is a soulless clone.
I regularly go back to Warcraft 3 in between playing newer games if somethung piques my interest or gets a cool update.
Spent so much time playing both campaign and custom games over the years since release, and finally got into melee/1v1 about a year+ ago
The fact that the game actually gets support with balance changes and updates again has been lots if fun
This thread is turning into a memory dump for me, so here is another one.
I go back farther than Warcraft 3. I still fire up Warcraft 2 on DOSBox now and then, usually when I have had a bit too much to drink and want something familiar.
When Warcraft 2 was new, I was a junior computer programmer for a very large corporation, top 25 in the world. I set up a LAN at home using token ring, which tells you roughly how old this story is.
My wife is not really a gamer, although after thirty seven years of marriage and putting up with this stuff, maybe she qualifies anyway. We would sit at our desks, hold our daughters on our laps, and battle each other in Warcraft 2.
The machines were 80286 boxes I built myself from parts. Thanks, CDW back when it still meant Computer Discount Warehouse.
So yeah, I guess I have been around for most of this history. Some people remember patches and balance updates. I remember toddlers, token ring, and orcs on beige hardware.
Twisted Metal 2. I still play it on my PS4
SMB, SMB3, Dr. Mario, The Guardian Legend
Crash Bandicoot 2
Several. Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Mario Kart 64, Chrono Trigger, Starcraft. Those are the ones I can think of right now.
Escape Velocity
Nethack maybe? It's been updated over the years, but it's still largely the game that released in '87.
I'm also playing Might and Magic 6 [98] right now, and remembering why I liked 7 so much more. Planning a playthrough of World of Xeen [93/94] soon too.
www.kingdomofloathing.com
Joust.
Joust brings back a very specific memory for me.
I was in early high school and happened to live in the town in Iowa that called itself the Video Game Capital of the World. There are enough documentaries out there that it is not exactly a secret. When I joined the Army at eighteen my nickname was Radar, which probably gives it away anyway.
I had a good friend from junior high computer club. He had a TRS-80 Color Computer. I was a Commodore guy. By high school we had mostly drifted apart. Then one day he called me up, yes phones did exist, and told me he was going to set a world record on Joust and asked if I wanted to come help support him.
Somehow I got permission from my parents. I spent the entire weekend at the arcade with him, mostly watching, bringing food, keeping track of things, and just being there. He set the record. I do not know how long it stood, but I know I was there when his name went up on the big board Monday morning.
I got an unexcused absence from school for it.
Still worth it.
I loved Joust, back in the arcade days.
Joust on my 7800 is soooo fun
Carmaggedon(1997), via a reverse engineered dethrace
Gothic
Zeig mir deine Ware!
Steck die scheiß Waffe weg!
Dein Glück.... Aber ich hätte dir auch gerne die Fresse poliert!
Bleib stehen, du Lump!
Es wird nicht so heiß gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.
OpenTTD
Currently playing Hot Wheels TURBO Racing (1999) on the N64 (Analogue 3d). It's a good little arcade racer and has been fun to hop back into it.
Solitaire and Minesweeper. Literally the best games for when I just want to play something that doesn't require a lot of attention (no story lines, long load times, or remembering what I was doing the last time I played). Just enough to focus my attention while waiting around, but able to close out when whatever I was waiting on is ready. Just really calming for the most part.
I don't play games much, but every decade or so, I get out Quake and play a while. Next time I get the urge, maybe I'll play the original Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.
Last three were Star Ocean (the first one), Radiata Stories, and Skies of Arcadia.
Currently playing Alundra because a friend grew up with it and wanted me to play it. Honestly it's not great but RetroAchevements made the bosses extraordinarily painful to master, which is uh ... fun. Yes. Fun, let's go with that.
Oh and ps these commenters all have fantastic tastes.
Robotron 2084 - there is a place by me that still has the arcade cabinet.
final fantasy 11
Moon Patrol and Centipede hit the spot every now and then.
I am realizing my life is not really marked by birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, or any of the normal milestone stuff people list. It is marked by video games.
Thanks for this thread, because it reminded me of one I cannot leave out.
There was a week I spent in a mental hospital with a major anxiety spiral. Pretty much everything felt unmanageable. The one thing I could handle was Pokémon FireRed on a Game Boy Advance.
That was it. That was my anchor.
It was actually written into my chart that I was allowed to plug my charger in at the nurses station while I slept so the GBA would be ready the next day. No arguments. No debates. Just accepted as necessary.
Not my oldest game, see my other replies for that, but it is probably the only one I have mentioned that might have saved my life.
Arcanum from Troika and Fallout 1&2 for me
Arcanum is good shit. I played that so many times when it came out.
I think maxing out time magic and backstab might have been the wackiest. Got like 90 action points and everyone else got 4. Stab stab stab stab.
Not crazy old but I play Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on N64 pretty regularly
Started playing Spelunky HD again the other day, the sequel is better but the original is still fun to revisit.
Morrowind and Fallout: New Vegas sometimes. I've tried playing the original two Fallout games but I keep bouncing off the first hour or two.
Some Guilty Gear XX AC+R with a friend -- we would love to play some old Tekken games too but we're both on PC so Tekken 7 is the oldest available.
Every once in a while I'll play some Sacrifice, such an amazing game that's dying for a remaster.
Warcraft III
I assume we are talking original release and not a remake? These are the games I never stopped jumping in and out of.
Recently, I’ve been playing Top Gear (SNES 1992).
For many of these, I’m not playing on the original system. I’m playing a port. Fez wasn’t ported to modern consoles, but I play on my phone.
Hell, I played Skyrim on an Amazon Echo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
PMD Rescue Team
I have a SNES/NES combo. Playing through super Mario world and marble madness. Its been fun.
In my possession is a c64 with an actual c64 monitor. Doing know if it even works. Needs a good home
Legend of Zelda ALttP, then SSBM or SotN.
I'll only stop playing OSRS if they shut the servers down.
When they do you can still play 2009scape! Has up to 5x XP modes in case you want a less grindy experience, a single player mode and a brilliant community
Worth noting that OSRS is really just a fork of RuneScape from around the mid RS2 days, (if I remember correctly it's based on a full backup someone found of their codebase, so it started as "hey look we found this old version of the game in a box in one of our offices, wanna play?") and now it contains more new content than original content. Heck way back in the day the idea of a sailing skill was always a silly joke that nobody took seriously, and I'm talking back when Hunter and slayer were being added. Yet here we are.
Super Smash Bros Melee (2001)
Portal (2007)
Red Dead Redemption (2010)
Portal 2 (2011)
Journey (2012)
Tomodachi Life (2013)
Before I got a Switch, my last Nintendo Console was a Super Nintendo and missed out on Wii/Gamecube/WiiU, family was a Playstation family lol, so now Im going back and playing all the Zelda's!
The original Bard's Tale trilogy. I just finished I a few months ago and have been working away on the Destiny Knight.
It's so cool to be able to port your party over from the prior games and keep building!
I found an abandonware do of Risk 2 from 2000. Run great and is just as much fun as when I was a kid. A friend and I are going to try the network interface to play against each other.
I've been playing jet moto with my kid. Just like I did with my dad, back in 1996.
Every once in awhile I find myself booting up Planetfall or Stationfall and trying to reason my through the esoteric lunacy of Infocom in its heyday.
I still play a phone sudoku game from 2009. I would still play StarCraft and Warcraft 2 if I had hardware capable.
Been playing flatout ultimate carnage, made me want to try older racing games since I barely played any post ps2 growing up (my older cousin had one and some racing games like podracing, idr the rest) I just hated that you couldn't exit the car, for some reason it's just way more immersive to me, so I avoided any game with vehicles where you couldn't exit them. Eventually got in to flight sims which made me wanna try driving games again, since you can't exit the plane and it's still fun. Tho I do wish they added that too.
Dloading many ps2 games and some nfs games, legion go s handheld has me playing more games than I have in ages. I always feel bad playing controller based games on my pc for whatever reason compared to my ps5 even tho it runs better. This has me trying more stuff since it isnt taking over my pc's resources and screen.
The oldest games I've been playing probably has to be Banjo-Kazooie, Maximo, Crash Bandicoot, and Jak and Daxster. All amazing games!
The first Sonic the Hedgehog for the Mega Drive. I play all 3 (4?) of the original Sonic games, but that's the oldest though.
I play through my Mega Drive games occasionally. Alex Kidd is probably older... Wonder Boy is great, too!
Don't really want to check release dates. I still play some things from c64, and Amiga... That's probably the oldest games I play. Like Bubble Bobble, IK, Giana Sisters. EoTB and so forth...
Master of Orion (1993)
MoO2 periodically for building ships and controlling the whole fleet. Stellaris is fine but so many systems are a chore in that game and at the same time paper thin in depth. Older games had tactics and strategy.
Love me some MoO2!
Just played the NES Contra yesterday for the first time in probably over a decade. Still can beat it first try although I did have to use a couple of continuous on stage 4. I'm so used to not dying that I forgot where to find the good weapons. But for stages 5-8 I still had all the muscle memory of where to shoot and when that I developed as a kid.
Earthbound
I still play WoW. That's a 21 year old game.
(The housing is so much fun!!)
It is, but it's a little weird when compared to the post because it's still getting updates.
That's why I play World of Warcraft Classic, which is actually the game from 20 years ago (technically 18 since I'll be playing Burning Crusade Classic soon.)
Peggle. As a grown ass person I still play it at least once every couple of weeks. Stupid fun when you don't want to pay too much attention.
I love peggle!
Space Quest 3. Wonderful story, funny, good music, and it always gave me this wistful feeling for some reason.
Excellent choice, always loved the 3rd one. They're all fantastic in their own way though. I grew up with these games and they left such an impact that I usually have this username, with slight variances of course.
On and off back theme hospital or it’s new instance two point hospital
I have an N64 and a Sony PVM, so I play a lot of games on that. But there’s two I play much more regularly than all the others: Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. They both hold up incredibly well.
gorilla.bas
Blaster Master. One day I will complete it.
I settled for completing the Remake on Switch because you can save and not have to start over and beat it in one sitting.
Mega Man
I built my own PC, a tower with a 16 core 32 thread cpu, 128 gb of ram, 16 gb of vram and i make sure to keep it cold enough to handle playing minesweeper on expert.
i'm kidding, i quit gaming in 2020 as a new years resolution.
I have somewhat quit gaming as well. The problem is that I always feel like I am missing out. It taught me so much, surely there are still titles that would blow my mind, make me question reality or introduce me to deep philosophical questions. The truth is that mostly I feel like games are a waste of time. I have never come full closure on it. It seems weird not using the medium since it exercises the brain way more than other mindless activities.
The fear of missing out is something that used to worry me. Having been an avid proponant of the good videogames can do and having spent obscene amounts of time on them and basing almost my entire social life around them, it was not easy for me to quit.
So I didn't technically quit exactly. My full new year's resolution was to "quit watching tv and movies, and quit playing videogames, until improving my life considerably." It's easier to say it the way I did in my previous comment.
This way, it's not so much that I actually quit for all time, it's that I've stopped temporarily to focus on learning and self improvement, hoping I will be able to change my circumstances for the better and live a more stable life before going back to gaming as a sort of reward.
Lord of the Rings Online (2008)
Made so many lasting friends over the years. Great community.
Nethack.
Whenever I can find it- Centipede. Especially if it's in a cabinet with the trackball.
Otherwise I play Donkey Kong Country a fair amount. Or Super Mario World. SNES games are my jam
Unreal World. Released in 1992. Though I didn't first play until 2010ish when I moved to linux.
Master of Magic.
Online gaming wise Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004)
As for single player gaming, donkey Kong Land 1 for gameboy is the oldest game I’m actively playing. I have various NES launch games in my collection, those would be the oldest games in my collection that I have played.
Tetris DX, either on original hardware or my Analogue Pocket
I still play doom, although I try a lot of newer wads. It's crazy that there's basically 30 years of free content people have been creating since it came out (even if most stuff much past 10 or 15 years old can feel kinda dated and not so interesting to play).
Gorf, 2600
Close, but mine was Gorf on the VIC-20, not the 2600. See my other reply for the longer story.
I'll still play a few of the SNES classics from my childhood sometimes. Super Mario world, Yoshis island, that kinda stuff.
Black & White
H.A.V.O.C.
Haven't done it, but i always wanted to put all the GTAs into one world, along with modded areas, and have it all connected.
1994's virtua-cop
Mirrors Edge
I will never let go of the original
I'm so torn up by the sequel. It was pretty mid overall, but the final bossfight was so incredibly infuriating that it ruined my overall impression of the game, so much so that I'd rather the sequel never existed at all.
Battle for Atlantis
I've been replaying Tenkaichi 2 lately
ARSENAL Extended Power. An old strategy game from the early 2000s. Still fire it up once a year to mess around.
I have NEVER uninstalled "Deus Ex."
ShadowMan from 1999. That's one of the (if not the) first narrative action adventure games I ever played and a big part of my childhood. The mixture of blood, gore, creepy music and enemies and great setpieces (you play as the walker between the worlds of the dead and the living and can switch between them) fascinates me to this day. When I was a child, it gave me quite a few nightmares, but I still finished it. It's an absolute masterpiece.
NightDive recently remastered it and it's even better now.
Spy Hunter
Bejeweled 3 zen mode on my Xbox 360 till my Xbox one X
I replayed Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines (2004) recently
The oldest I can go reliably is the late 80’s and early 90’s.
DuckTales NES, Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, Puzzle Bobble.
Once we start getting into the mid 90*s games start to get good.
Chrono Trigger, Doom, Rayman, DK Country
Which is older, Tetris, or Chess? /s
Doom. Gothic.
And Warsim is not old but it could very well be. And it's great.
Sonic 1 for the Sega Genesis.
Rise of Nations: Gold Edition (2003).
The controls are ancient, but the gameplay and music still holds up.
Civ V
I believe the Pac Man cartridge for my NES is probably the oldest video game I still pick up regularly.
Metal Gear (Solid) series, Legacy of Kain series.
Also Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and Sacred (1&2).
I revisit all these on a rotating basis from time to time.
Arx Fatalis has such an unmatched atmosphere and vibe i just love walking around hearing the woosh of the wind through the caves.
The oldest game I've played in the past year is the original Toejam & Earl for Genesis, the gameplay and soundtrack still hold up surprisingly well
I played through Phantasy Star one more time not that long ago. It came out (in English) in 1988.
Probably Halo reach or minecraft xbawks 360. Me and my brother are trying to get dad's xbawks original to work, but we need to find the power cord and GIGANTIC stack of games
I kept going back to Arcanum
There was an unofficial patch that helped it continue to be playable. It just had a unique style and story that allowed you to interact and build your character around magic or technology.
I played Super double Dragon for SNES earlier. I also played super Mario Bros 2 for nes this week. Platform games are a great way to pass the time on the go when you have a phone and a Bluetooth controller.
Commander Keen is my all time favorites.
I still whip out megaman X sometimes. My siblings and I play the original crash team racing every other Christmas too.
Ive played through Kingdom Hearts every couple of years since it came out! I was in 1st or 2nd grade when it came out and it was one of the first "big" games I ever beat.
Through the Ages, the app edition of the board game.
I play that at least twice on a long flight.
Finished Mother 1 from 1989 recently. It's surprisingly good aside from final mountain encounter rate.
Does FreeDoom count? It's as close to the original as I can get anymore.
Oldest game I still play is probably Taipan.
I first played it on an Apple IIe, but now it is just a web browser thing I poke at once in a while. It is basically spreadsheets and bad luck. You trade, pirates wreck you, the math never quite works out, and you lose anyway. I think that is why I still like it. No graphics to hide behind.
After that, Seven Cities of Gold, usually on a C64 emulator. That one still holds up more than it has any right to. You sail off thinking you are doing something heroic and slowly realize you are kind of a problem. The exploration feels lonely. The map still feels bigger than it actually is.
But the oldest one I keep coming back to is Gorf on the VIC-20.
I owned the cartridge. Bought it not long after it came out. I paid for the VIC-20 by walking beans and putting up hay all summer for a farmer when I was eleven or twelve. Hot, dusty work. Long days. I remember counting the cash and realizing I could actually afford a computer.
Gorf was loud, ugly, and mean. The voice mocked you constantly. The joystick barely survived. I loved it anyway. Sitting on the floor, TV buzzing, thinking this was the future and I had somehow managed to buy a piece of it.
Also, side note. I am trying pretty hard to become a professional writer. I write essays and stories over at tover153.substack.com. If anything there hits a nerve, feel free to subscribe.
So yeah. Taipan, Seven Cities, Gorf. Not because they are good by modern standards, but because they still feel like something.
I beat Zelda 2 and its stupid.
::: spoiler zelda 2 spoilers at the end you need a item from a hidden dungeon to see invisible enemies that are everywhere :::
Edit: i misunderstood the question. Zelda 2 is the latest old game. I come back to one of the many older gauntlet games. The ps2 one i think especially.
Empires mod (free on Steam) reminds me of old Battlefield but you also have a comander for each team, so it has some base building aspects. Nice balance and no pay to win or comercial exploits.
Sadly the player count is low but every saturday and sunday servers fill upp.
Pokemon Crystal
Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Portal.
Occasionally I fire up Civilization. The first one. I've also enjoyed Imperialism 2. Star Wars Rebellion, X-com (the original). Jagged Alliance 2.
All of those are from the 90s.
It is a tie between Warcraft III and Front Mission IV. I keep a PS2 just for Front Mission IV.
EVE Online
Chess. It's hundreds of years old ey haha