I never played Zork or Wizardry. I did play Leather Goddesses of Phobos, though. And "Dungeons of Daggorath" on the TRS-80. I did want to play the Sequel to LGOP, "Gas Pump Girls and the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X", but I don't think it ever came out.
This thread makes me feel very young. The earliest games I played and enjoyed were on Super Nintendo in the late 90's.
Me too. I was born in 1990 and the first video game my brother and I ever played was Donkey Kong Country for the SNES, a gift from our mom. Dad taught us to play, and we spent countless hours trying to beat it. Many parts of the game are burned into my memory. I'll never forget those lizards at Stop and Go Station--they stayed asleep as long as the lights were green, but the moment the lights went red, they rose from their slumber and dashed around. Very spooky.
Our favorites were the sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Link to the Past. We'll never forget the music of David Wise and Koji Kondo. I used to go to Bramble Scramble in DKC2 just to listen to the music.
I always think of this as an RPG, so, Dungeon Master.
I won an Amiga PC in a competition so ended up with something that could play games. That was the start.
A couple of things I always loved about the game, Being surprised when you rested Eating the things you killed, so rat drumsticks and worm rounds. Jewelry, always dressed everybody up in the jewelry (nowhere to trade it so why not?) How hard it was Seeing the hit points Choosing party members from the "Hall of Heroes". (And they all had romances, maybe not in game but for me while playing, there was definitely something going on between a couple of them)
One of the only games I have ever been genuinely scared playing. Late at night, everybody else gone to bed, the sounds...such an atmospheric soundtrack.
Atlas:The Gift of Aramai Blades of Exile Darkwood Fate (In fact, I still have a copy of this one...) Freedom Force (Superhero Adventure) Geneforge jewel of Arabia: Dreamers Legendary Lair Nethergate Pillars of Garendall Scarab of Ra Shadow Keep
While I don't SPECIFICALLY remember any of those games on the Mac, I know I came across more than a few of them, because outside of big releases that were actually released for the Mac, there were entire CDs sold at budget prices with nothing but dozens of the type of games you are mentioning here all crammed onto one disc. If you didn't have a Macintosh in the early to mid-90s, it's tough to explain. We didn't have a ton of RPG releases. Blizzard released games for us, we had both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and Lucasarts was serving up everything they had as well, but outside of that, the biggest thing was that Marathon, Bungie's first great series, was a Mac exclusive. If you were looking for RPGs, you were looking at shareware. Which, in most cases, literally meant playing the first 10-20% of the game and then sending in payment BY MAIL to receive the code to unlock the rest of it.
That's true. At least for Spiderweb Software. They allowed you to play a very large chunk of the game before sending in that payment. Most other games let you get in maybe an hour of play before you had to pay. Spiderweb Software was always better than that, which is why I bought a ton of their games. They allowed you to get good and hooked before needing to send in money.
Also with Jewel of Arabia:Dreamers. I really liked that game. Your main character is a prince/princess, and for the first part of the game, you are dreaming. Your dreaming self and your friends have to find their way to the tower you are imprisoned in and wake you up. And that is just the free portion of the game. It's pretty amazing, even if it is abandonware now.
Scarab of Ra was completely free, as I remember it. You're an archaeologist exploring a pyramid in Egypt. Your task is to recover the crown/headpiece, scepter and Scarab of Ra. The problems are: running out of food, getting killed by one of the many animals inside the pyramid (baboons and lionesses), and the Scarab is cursed and you will be chased down and killed by a mummy if you run into it. The secret is, if you throw the Scarab at the mummy, the mummy is destroyed. But it respawns on every level, and each level gets progressively larger, and they are a maze.
I'm watching a Youtube video of Scarab of Ra, and I now know with at least 90% certainty that I played it when I was younger, if only because I know I remember that mist/cloud thing in the hallways. I also recognize the interface, but since EVERY Mac game had the exact same font, it's hard to know for sure. But Scarab of Ra is such a prototypical black and white Mac shareware game that it really brings back memories. I must have tried out many games just like it, never finishing any of them.
These are the type of games that Mac users had access to in lieu of actual RPGs like Dungeon Master (mind you, I know for a fact that Dungeon Master 2 was released for it, not because I ever owned it, but because I saw ads for it in every issue of my dad's subscription to Mac World). And yes, there was a monthly magazine back then called Mac World, as well as Mac User, and they even had 2 or 3 pages of game reviews each month. God what I wouldn't give to get my hands on copies of those magazines.
I know *that* feeling! And remember when they used to come with CD-Rom disks of shareware games and apps? Those were to good days!
Spiderweb Software is still around, of course. www.spidweb.com. I just downloaded the Geneforge 1 and 2 demos again. I'll be playing them later tonight.
I know *that* feeling! And remember when they used to come with CD-Rom disks of shareware games and apps? Those were to good days!
Spiderweb Software is still around, of course. www.spidweb.com. I just downloaded the Geneforge 1 and 2 demos again. I'll be playing them later tonight.
If it was allowed, I'd just give you my copies of Geneforge 1-5 that I own on Steam. They are a bit clunky on modern machines and you have to do some workarounds to get them to not freeze up in the menus. The remakes of Avernum 1-3 are much better. I appreciate what Jeff Vogel has done by making a ton of fairly massive RPGs by himself over the years, I just can't get into them. But aside from Geneforge (5 games) he has also done Avernum (5 games) remakes of Avernum over the past 3 or 4 years (the first 3 games) and Avadon (a trilogy). And the guy has done it all by himself.
6. There were 6 Avernum Games. I know. I played them all. I've been playing Angband for a while now. I found a very nice dagger. +2, +3, *Slay Troll*, and although I haven't fought any trolls yet... I just finished off Gorbaghk the Orc and Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman. Oh, and Farmer Maggot on the surface. And Grip or Fang, one of his two dogs. So far, I've been surviving, and it's fun. Killed a lot of orcs and Snagas.
If you fondly remember the original Bard's Tale series (not the 2004 version starring Cary Elwes), it has been re-mastered by Krome Studios and inXile for modern PCs (Windows-only so far ).
The current release includes content for BT1, and the game will be updated with BT2 and BT3 later this year.
If you fondly remember the original Bard's Tale series (not the 2004 version starring Cary Elwes), it has been re-mastered by Krome Studios and inXile for modern PCs (Windows-only so far ).
The current release includes content for BT1, and the game will be updated with BT2 and BT3 later this year.
Yeah, it is a really nice package for $15, from the selection screen (which rotates the old-school big boxes around when you move your mouse) to the obviously amazing auto-map and mouse control features. It's BY FAR the best way to experience a series of old school blobbers if, like most people, playing them on DOSBox and getting out graph paper is just too much of a slog.
If you fondly remember the original Bard's Tale series (not the 2004 version starring Cary Elwes), it has been re-mastered by Krome Studios and inXile for modern PCs (Windows-only so far ).
The current release includes content for BT1, and the game will be updated with BT2 and BT3 later this year.
Yeah, it is a really nice package for $15, from the selection screen (which rotates the old-school big boxes around when you move your mouse) to the obviously amazing auto-map and mouse control features. It's BY FAR the best way to experience a series of old school blobbers if, like most people, playing them on DOSBox and getting out graph paper is just too much of a slog.
I just hope they release a Mac version (and/or iOS). I can't get the remastered version to run in Wine.
I'd love to play Bard's Tale. I never got to play the original game. I only got my computer in 1991.
I would highly recommend the remastered trilogy on Steam we have been talking about. It is budget-priced at $15, and it has so many features that simply make playing an old-school game like this infinitely easier. Only the first game is currently accessible, but I expect the 2nd one to be out within a few weeks, and the third will likely be out by the end of the year. Even with just the first game, you are probably looking at a hefty time investment.
This video REALLY jogged some memories for me. Off-hand, I can absolutely remember playing Cairo Shootout, Shufflepuck, The Manhole, Cosmic Osmo, Pararena, and Glider. There really isn't anything more distinct than these early B&W Mac games. There was nothing that looked like them on PCs running DOS at the time or on console. You could identify a Mac games simply by looking at the first screen:
Nice walk down memory lane here. If you like Angband then I would also recommend its offshoot Sil if you haven't played it. Compared to Angband's vanilla version it is closer to the lore of the first age of Middle Earth, much shorter, and has decent AI which makes for pretty good gameplay. I've even played it on Android as well.
Puzzle Quest is pretty good, but holy crap that AI starts outright cheating after awhile.
I missed out on most of these older games, as the first computer I was able to use was windows 96. Though I do remember watching my dad play through Descent 2. The claustrophobic setting and the music were so intense for little me. It almost felt like a horror game and I loved every second of it.
The first computer game I ever played was a game called Pyramids. Basically one of those "don't touch the random things moving around a maze that will kill you, while you go around the maze collecting the loot." games, where the map got more complicated, with more snakes moving around that'll kill you if they touched you, and more gems to pick up.
I found it a few years ago, the entire game is 1 file and like...28 kilobytes? I played it in like 1989 on the family's first PC. Ridiculous how far we've come in 30 years. Now we have games that are thousands of files and billions of bytes.
I never played Master of Orion II, but I played MoO1. Played it a couple months ago in fact. Microprose made many of games I consider classics and replay often. Lightspeed/Hyperspeed (1990 or 1991), Master of Orion, Master of Magic, X-Com UFO and TFTD, Pirates! (I played Gold on the Sega Genesis and then the 2003 remake on PC), F117, and Silent Service (II).
Also played Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail (preferred the latter), while I was in a summer technical camp and we were doing computer apps when i was a kid, probably 10-11 or so, given Amazon Trail was 1993.
All sorts of Maxis 'Sim' games as well, such as SimAnt, Earth, Tower, Farm, and City. Later would get the Sims 1 and almost all the expansions, skipped 2 for mainly being big on MMOs at the time, then 3 and almost all its expansions, and currently purposefully skipping 4 because it's a step backwards from 3.
All those games are at least 24 years old now except the Sims series proper.
I played Sim City back in the day, when the Copy protection was cities listed on purple type on red paper, and I had the past cities and future cities replacement art. (I preferred Ancient China and Medieval to the Wild West versions. The Future ones, I liked all of them, especially the moon). I still have Sim City 2000 somewhere. I had SimEarth, and Sim Theme Park, and all of the original Sims games, 2 and 3. Haven't played 4 or 5.
I got to play Master of Magic once at a friend's house. I also tried Master of Orion 3, and hated it. Too over complicated and not particularly fun. How they let down such a great game as 2 into the mess that 3 was was simply ridiculous. I do hear they remade 1 into a new game, but they added a new human race called "Terrans" that are like an evil version of humans. They took out the Gnolams, Elerians, and Trilarians and kept the rest, although some of them were re-worked.
I also played Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. I played a ton of games when I used to do game reviews for a site called AllGame.com. I also see my reviews, along with my real name, a great deal on Wikipedia, when they reference my reviews. But Allgame is gone, so...
I also like Virtual Villagers. It's a "casual" game, where you play a bunch of people washed up on an island named Isola. Instead of one character, you start out with several. You move characters around to have them build huts, clear rubble or farm/catch fish, and also to work the science table, where you can eventually buy upgrades to your people's ability to farm, build structures and so on.
Your first task is to get clean water, then start a fire, and clear rubble from the beach. There is also a tree with berries your characters can pick. As you assign villagers to tasks, they slowly get better at them. To grow your tribe, you need to build huts, and there is a "Marriage hut" that you need to restore first. This allows your villagers some "Woohoo time", and the females come out with babies, which eventually grow up and add to the tribe. However, the women have to carry the babies around for a real-time hour, which means you are depriving the village of their labor during that time.
Children can pick up mushrooms that grow randomly (which add to your food), but they have to do it quickly or the mushroom disappears/dies. You can't make too many kids or your villagers will starve when food runs low. Also, villagers keep working while the game is off.
There is a similar game called "Gemini Lost", where six people are walking in the country when an eclipse occurs and they find a circle in the woods. When they mess with it, it sends them.. elsewhere. Here, they have to build stuff, raise food and work to get stone and wood so that they can build structures. Each person also has a favorite profession, so if they are doing that job, they do it faster. It's another game where they continue working after the game is off. Yeah, it's casual, but fun.
Eventually, you get to rebuild a teleporter and take your people (mostly their descendants, by that point) and take them... elsewhere, hopefully back home.
Comments
https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
Our favorites were the sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Link to the Past. We'll never forget the music of David Wise and Koji Kondo. I used to go to Bramble Scramble in DKC2 just to listen to the music.
I always think of this as an RPG, so,
Dungeon Master.
I won an Amiga PC in a competition so ended up with something that could play games. That was the start.
A couple of things I always loved about the game,
Being surprised when you rested
Eating the things you killed, so rat drumsticks and worm rounds.
Jewelry, always dressed everybody up in the jewelry (nowhere to trade it so why not?)
How hard it was
Seeing the hit points
Choosing party members from the "Hall of Heroes". (And they all had romances, maybe not in game but for me while playing, there was definitely something going on between a couple of them)
One of the only games I have ever been genuinely scared playing. Late at night, everybody else gone to bed, the sounds...such an atmospheric soundtrack.
These aren't even the creepiest parts...
Sleuth owns
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/4714-quest-of-yipe-i-ii-iii-
Atlas:The Gift of Aramai
Blades of Exile
Darkwood
Fate (In fact, I still have a copy of this one...)
Freedom Force (Superhero Adventure)
Geneforge
jewel of Arabia: Dreamers
Legendary Lair
Nethergate
Pillars of Garendall
Scarab of Ra
Shadow Keep
You can find most of the ones I've mentioned here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org
Darkwood
Blades of Exile
Fate
Geneforge
Nethergate
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/4059-scarab-of-ra
Scarab of Ra
Also with Jewel of Arabia:Dreamers. I really liked that game. Your main character is a prince/princess, and for the first part of the game, you are dreaming. Your dreaming self and your friends have to find their way to the tower you are imprisoned in and wake you up. And that is just the free portion of the game. It's pretty amazing, even if it is abandonware now.
Scarab of Ra was completely free, as I remember it. You're an archaeologist exploring a pyramid in Egypt. Your task is to recover the crown/headpiece, scepter and Scarab of Ra. The problems are: running out of food, getting killed by one of the many animals inside the pyramid (baboons and lionesses), and the Scarab is cursed and you will be chased down and killed by a mummy if you run into it. The secret is, if you throw the Scarab at the mummy, the mummy is destroyed. But it respawns on every level, and each level gets progressively larger, and they are a maze.
These are the type of games that Mac users had access to in lieu of actual RPGs like Dungeon Master (mind you, I know for a fact that Dungeon Master 2 was released for it, not because I ever owned it, but because I saw ads for it in every issue of my dad's subscription to Mac World). And yes, there was a monthly magazine back then called Mac World, as well as Mac User, and they even had 2 or 3 pages of game reviews each month. God what I wouldn't give to get my hands on copies of those magazines.
Spiderweb Software is still around, of course. www.spidweb.com. I just downloaded the Geneforge 1 and 2 demos again. I'll be playing them later tonight.
The current release includes content for BT1, and the game will be updated with BT2 and BT3 later this year.
Remembering other games. I played Crystal Castle. The one where you had to pick up gems and avoid monsters, and you were a bear for some reason...
And Crystal Quest! Don'tcha just love that sound when you go through the exit gate? It sounds almost... inappropriate!
And Civilization, of course. I've played 1 through 4.
and Civilization: Call to Power
A Newer game is Puzzle Quest, an RPG played out as a Match-3 Game.
And Syrateg and Atlas: Gift of Aramai. (sorry, no gameplay videos of those ones...)
You also might like Avadon: The Black Fortress, another new(ish) game from Spiderweb Software.
I missed out on most of these older games, as the first computer I was able to use was windows 96. Though I do remember watching my dad play through Descent 2. The claustrophobic setting and the music were so intense for little me. It almost felt like a horror game and I loved every second of it.
I found it a few years ago, the entire game is 1 file and like...28 kilobytes? I played it in like 1989 on the family's first PC. Ridiculous how far we've come in 30 years. Now we have games that are thousands of files and billions of bytes.
I never played Master of Orion II, but I played MoO1. Played it a couple months ago in fact. Microprose made many of games I consider classics and replay often. Lightspeed/Hyperspeed (1990 or 1991), Master of Orion, Master of Magic, X-Com UFO and TFTD, Pirates! (I played Gold on the Sega Genesis and then the 2003 remake on PC), F117, and Silent Service (II).
Also played Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail (preferred the latter), while I was in a summer technical camp and we were doing computer apps when i was a kid, probably 10-11 or so, given Amazon Trail was 1993.
All sorts of Maxis 'Sim' games as well, such as SimAnt, Earth, Tower, Farm, and City. Later would get the Sims 1 and almost all the expansions, skipped 2 for mainly being big on MMOs at the time, then 3 and almost all its expansions, and currently purposefully skipping 4 because it's a step backwards from 3.
All those games are at least 24 years old now except the Sims series proper.
I got to play Master of Magic once at a friend's house. I also tried Master of Orion 3, and hated it. Too over complicated and not particularly fun. How they let down such a great game as 2 into the mess that 3 was was simply ridiculous. I do hear they remade 1 into a new game, but they added a new human race called "Terrans" that are like an evil version of humans. They took out the Gnolams, Elerians, and Trilarians and kept the rest, although some of them were re-worked.
I also played Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. I played a ton of games when I used to do game reviews for a site called AllGame.com. I also see my reviews, along with my real name, a great deal on Wikipedia, when they reference my reviews. But Allgame is gone, so...
I also like Virtual Villagers. It's a "casual" game, where you play a bunch of people washed up on an island named Isola. Instead of one character, you start out with several. You move characters around to have them build huts, clear rubble or farm/catch fish, and also to work the science table, where you can eventually buy upgrades to your people's ability to farm, build structures and so on.
Your first task is to get clean water, then start a fire, and clear rubble from the beach. There is also a tree with berries your characters can pick. As you assign villagers to tasks, they slowly get better at them. To grow your tribe, you need to build huts, and there is a "Marriage hut" that you need to restore first. This allows your villagers some "Woohoo time", and the females come out with babies, which eventually grow up and add to the tribe. However, the women have to carry the babies around for a real-time hour, which means you are depriving the village of their labor during that time.
Children can pick up mushrooms that grow randomly (which add to your food), but they have to do it quickly or the mushroom disappears/dies. You can't make too many kids or your villagers will starve when food runs low. Also, villagers keep working while the game is off.
There is a similar game called "Gemini Lost", where six people are walking in the country when an eclipse occurs and they find a circle in the woods. When they mess with it, it sends them.. elsewhere. Here, they have to build stuff, raise food and work to get stone and wood so that they can build structures. Each person also has a favorite profession, so if they are doing that job, they do it faster. It's another game where they continue working after the game is off. Yeah, it's casual, but fun.
Eventually, you get to rebuild a teleporter and take your people (mostly their descendants, by that point) and take them... elsewhere, hopefully back home.