Really, really old retro forgotten games

[Runnin Blue]

Went down that rabbit hole back in August. Settled on the 35XXSP. Could easily see myself collecting multiple devices.... but I plan on getting a Steamdeck for that purpose in the future.

Yeah, I plan to get a Steam Deck eventually, too, if Valve ever decide to release it in Australia. Going by their track record, I’m not holding my breath.

 

[dwwaino]

Yeah, I plan to get a Steam Deck eventually, too, if Valve ever decide to release it in Australia. Going by their track record, I’m not holding my breath.

Steamdeck is coming shortly

https://press-start.com.au/news/pcm...am-deck-is-officially-releasing-in-australia/

I want one but will have to wait until next year as I've got some adult stuff to pay for at the moment.

 

[Runnin Blue]

Steamdeck is coming shortly

https://press-start.com.au/news/pcm...am-deck-is-officially-releasing-in-australia/

I want one but will have to wait until next year as I've got some adult stuff to pay for at the moment.

Damn, hadn’t heard that. I’m always late to the party. Wish they’d announced it a month or two ago before I ordered the Retroid. Oh well, I still love this thing.

 

[dwwaino]

Damn, hadn’t heard that. I’m always late to the party. Wish they’d announced it a month or two ago before I ordered the Retroid. Oh well, I still love this thing.

To be fair they only announced it the other day so you weren't really late for anything at all.

 

[SugarShane]

Since this thread has me in full nostalgia mode, a few favourites that got the most workouts at home as a kid between my sister and me.




Air Sea Battle. Still remember this being my mum's favourite game and one we could always get her to jump in for a round. Play as surface to air missiles, or as planes trying to bomb boats, or as boats trying to shoot planes, or play 2 player as either of them. Lots of fun.




Mouse Trap. Some of the sweetest box art around. I know you're thinking it probably looks like a Pacman clone, and well, yeah, it was. Eat the food as a mouse, avoid the cats, eat and bank dog bones for the ability to change into a dog at will and eat some... er... cats. Did have a slight change in that the levels had certain spots where walls could be activated and deactivated to help in avoiding the cats.




Outlaw. This was Goldeneye in our house before Goldeneye even existed. Simple as heck, shoot the other person 10 times to win. Out of all the games this would easily have started the most fights in our house. Game modes included making the cactus or scrolling wagon in the middle of the screen destructible, or making the bullets ricochet off walls. After every hit the cowboy would sit down for a few seconds. If you timed it perfect, you could make your sibling red hot with rage by shooting the next bullet just before their cowboy stood up so that it would hit them as soon as they stand up but before they have any time to move out of the way, and repeat until victory.




Venture. Very fun game with a a bit more to it. Navigate the ghosts to enter each room which then had other monsters in it to avoid/clear out in order to retrieve treasure.



Some other (potentially lesser known) ones I remember are:
Gorf - Alien invasion based game. First level was a clear knock off of Space Invaders but after that had some cool other levels.
Carnival - Super simple. Don't think it even had a second level, just shooting gallery type stuff.
Wizard of Wor - Another maze based game. This time work together to clear mazes of monsters.
Kung Fu Master - Side scroller. Very simple kick, punch, jump mechanics.

 

[Runnin Blue]

Since this thread has me in full nostalgia mode, a few favourites that got the most workouts at home as a kid between my sister and me.

View attachment 2141458
View attachment 2141459

Air Sea Battle. Still remember this being my mum's favourite game and one we could always get her to jump in for a round. Play as surface to air missiles, or as planes trying to bomb boats, or as boats trying to shoot planes, or play 2 player as either of them. Lots of fun.

View attachment 2141465
View attachment 2141466

Mouse Trap. Some of the sweetest box art around. I know you're thinking it probably looks like a Pacman clone, and well, yeah, it was. Eat the food as a mouse, avoid the cats, eat and bank dog bones for the ability to change into a dog at will and eat some... er... cats. Did have a slight change in that the levels had certain spots where walls could be activated and deactivated to help in avoiding the cats.

View attachment 2141470
View attachment 2141471

Outlaw. This was Goldeneye in our house before Goldeneye even existed. Simple as heck, shoot the other person 10 times to win. Out of all the games this would easily have started the most fights in our house. Game modes included making the cactus or scrolling wagon in the middle of the screen destructible, or making the bullets ricochet off walls. After every hit the cowboy would sit down for a few seconds. If you timed it perfect, you could make your sibling red hot with rage by shooting the next bullet just before their cowboy stood up so that it would hit them as soon as they stand up but before they have any time to move out of the way, and repeat until victory.

View attachment 2141490
View attachment 2141491

Venture. Very fun game with a a bit more to it. Navigate the ghosts to enter each room which then had other monsters in it to avoid/clear out in order to retrieve treasure.



Some other (potentially lesser known) ones I remember are:
Gorf - Alien invasion based game. First level was a clear knock off of Space Invaders but after that had some cool other levels.
Carnival - Super simple. Don't think it even had a second level, just shooting gallery type stuff.
Wizard of Wor - Another maze based game. This time work together to clear mazes of monsters.
Kung Fu Master - Side scroller. Very simple kick, punch, jump mechanics.

Man, great games. I have Air, Sea Battle and Outlaw on a bootleg Atari cartridge we bought from Paddy’s market when I was a kid. It had 16 games on it. And funnily enough, Air, Sea Battle was the only video game my dad would ever touch. He used to play me at it a lot, but never played any other video game, lol.

 

[bourbons]

I'm old enough to remember the commodore 64. However, the games I played using that computer were Race for the States (An american political game) and I am sure there was a maths game, where if you got the answer wrong, you lost a wicket. Other games I played were boulder-dash and the summer/winter/olympic sports series. I graduated to the NES, and played Teenage mutant ninja turtles, plus the AFL game mentioned earlier Out of bounds.. on the full, and the cricket game..

I remember playing Choplifter on my mate's dad's C64

 

[dwwaino]

I remember playing Choplifter on my mate's dad's C64

Choplifter was awesome. I had it on one of my computers too. It eventually got a SNES release and my friend got it but I had a lot of trouble with the gamepad controls. I think because SNES was the first time I used any controller with shoulder buttons and I never got the feel for it.

 

[Xtreme]

Steamdeck is coming shortly

https://press-start.com.au/news/pcm...am-deck-is-officially-releasing-in-australia/

I want one but will have to wait until next year as I've got some adult stuff to pay for at the moment.

Damn real life responsibilities

I plan on getting one, maybe not at launch but certainly by January-March next year I'll finally have one (providing there's stock around then).

 

[dwwaino]

Damn real life responsibilities

I plan on getting one, maybe not at launch but certainly by January-March next year I'll finally have one (providing there's stock around then).

Unplanned bathroom reno absolutely hammering me at the moment and I'm also trying to plan a new PC build.

 

[00Stinger]

Paperboy

Sent from my SM-S928B using Tapatalk

 

[SugarShane]

Moving onto the ones we spent hours and hours with on PC.

Jones In The Fast Lane. Very rarely mentioned among the Sierra greats like King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. This was probably our number 1 as kids. Great game, The Sims before The Sims. Get a job. Find a place to live. Study to get better jobs. Buy food. Pay rent. All before time runs out for the week and you have to do it all again. These days it kind of hits different though.


Secret Agent. I don't recall if this came out before or after Duke Nukem and Crystal Caves but it was always our favourite as kids, we just preferred its style over Duke and CC even though it's definitely the least popular (though a HD remake was released on Steam).


Captain Comic. The intro theme always struck a chord with me for some reason. Loved the game but can't remember if I ever finished it. Think it was too hard.


SuperFly. My sister and I used to play this one a LOT. Simple game and concept, one of those easy to learn hard to master types. Swat flies, they die where you swat them and block your path. Keep swatting but leave yourself room to move to swat the big bug when it arrives. It could get very stressful.


This is of course amongst better known titles like Jeopardy (a CGA version of the TV show), Jill of the Jungle, Windows Best of Entertainment (JezzBall, Rodent's Revenge, Chips Challenge, etc). I'll have to scour my Dosbox folder to see what other rippers we used to have in high rotation.

 

[LennyHayes77]

A few games i remember from our old C64, I was probably only 7 or 8 when we got it, was 2nd hand but it was my first experience with video games.

Gianna Sisters


Ghetto Blaster (I had no idea what to do in this game and just walked around!)


Barbarian (doing the move where you did a spin and then decapitated the other player was mind blowing back then!)

 

[dwwaino]

Jones In The Fast Lane. Very rarely mentioned among the Sierra greats like King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. This was probably our number 1 as kids. Great game, The Sims before The Sims. Get a job. Find a place to live. Study to get better jobs. Buy food. Pay rent. All before time runs out for the week and you have to do it all again. These days it kind of hits different though.

I never worked out how to play this one as a kid lol. I also sucked at Space Quest and spent most of the time walking around and dying from doing stupid stuff, yet somehow was motivated enough to finish the LSL games...

 

[00Stinger]

Moving onto the ones we spent hours and hours with on PC.

Jones In The Fast Lane. Very rarely mentioned among the Sierra greats like King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. This was probably our number 1 as kids. Great game, The Sims before The Sims. Get a job. Find a place to live. Study to get better jobs. Buy food. Pay rent. All before time runs out for the week and you have to do it all again. These days it kind of hits different though.


Secret Agent. I don't recall if this came out before or after Duke Nukem and Crystal Caves but it was always our favourite as kids, we just preferred its style over Duke and CC even though it's definitely the least popular (though a HD remake was released on Steam).


Captain Comic. The intro theme always struck a chord with me for some reason. Loved the game but can't remember if I ever finished it. Think it was too hard.


SuperFly. My sister and I used to play this one a LOT. Simple game and concept, one of those easy to learn hard to master types. Swat flies, they die where you swat them and block your path. Keep swatting but leave yourself room to move to swat the big bug when it arrives. It could get very stressful.


This is of course amongst better known titles like Jeopardy (a CGA version of the TV show), Jill of the Jungle, Windows Best of Entertainment (JezzBall, Rodent's Revenge, Chips Challenge, etc). I'll have to scour my Dosbox folder to see what other rippers we used to have in high rotation.

I loved jones in the fast lane as a kid

100% a game that I had forgotten about

 

[SugarShane]

I never worked out how to play this one as a kid lol. I also sucked at Space Quest and spent most of the time walking around and dying from doing stupid stuff, yet somehow was motivated enough to finish the LSL games...

Jones is the one game we figured out. I tried and tried and tried with Kings Quest V but could never get past a certain spot. Tried it again as an adult and still couldn't figure it out. Looked up a walkthrough and apparently there's a lot of "If you didn't do this right at the start over an hour ago, then you're stuffed. Restart the game."

I'm surprised we figured out as much as we did with Jones considering no internet or guides or anything. For years we knew that there was no point spending more money buying more than 1 week of food at Black's Market because it would spoil, and wondered why the game even had that option.

Well one day during a long game, one of us bought a fridge to try and bump up our comfort level when it finally twigged. With a fridge purchased, you could now buy 4 weeks of food at a time because you had somewhere to keep it. The game was so smart for the time. And the voice acting had some hilarious quips too.

 

[bourbons]

Was never able to beat it, always kept ending up in hospital and losing too much time to stop the Antpocalypse

 

[dwwaino]

Jones is the one game we figured out. I tried and tried and tried with Kings Quest V but could never get past a certain spot. Tried it again as an adult and still couldn't figure it out. Looked up a walkthrough and apparently there's a lot of "If you didn't do this right at the start over an hour ago, then you're stuffed. Restart the game."

I'm surprised we figured out as much as we did with Jones considering no internet or guides or anything. For years we knew that there was no point spending more money buying more than 1 week of food at Black's Market because it would spoil, and wondered why the game even had that option.

Well one day during a long game, one of us bought a fridge to try and bump up our comfort level when it finally twigged. With a fridge purchased, you could now buy 4 weeks of food at a time because you had somewhere to keep it. The game was so smart for the time. And the voice acting had some hilarious quips too.

And how good did it feel when now we can just look up guides. For me it was working out Police Quest, just the little things like inspecting the patrol car before taking it out. Then Monkey Island which my friend owned I think took us 6 months, maybe more. It was the constant trial and error and then the excitement when something worked and created a chain reaction of other things we could do before hitting another brick wall.

 

[T2B_]

Bioforge, 1995





Game I randomly picked up from Cash Converters as a kid, could only run it in MS-DOS, and game was janky as anything to play. From memory the numpad on the keyboard acted as different combat moves.

Still it was quite an experience. Almost like an early cinematic really janky survival sci fi horror game.

 

[Mantastic]

Plaque Attack: My favourites rip-off game on the Atari



Basically just a Space Invaders type game but I loved it, hit the spot until I was able to get the real Space Invaders on Gameboy.

 

[dwwaino]

Plaque Attack: My favourites rip-off game on the Atari

View attachment 2145561

Basically just a Space Invaders type game but I loved it, hit the spot until I was able to get the real Space Invaders on Gameboy.

View attachment 2145562

Lmao I had no idea something like this existed.

 

[T2B_]

Lmao I had no idea something like this existed.

Atari had some interesting ones. Wait until you discover Custer's Revenge...

 

[dwwaino]

Atari had some interesting ones. Wait until you discover Custer's Revenge...

Oh my

 

[mickelboy182]

Bioforge, 1995

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View attachment 2145396

Game I randomly picked up from Cash Converters as a kid, could only run it in MS-DOS, and game was janky as anything to play. From memory the numpad on the keyboard acted as different combat moves.

Still it was quite an experience. Almost like an early cinematic really janky survival sci fi horror game.

Bioforge is janky in all the right ways, the movement and subsequent unintended deaths are hilarious.

 

[Mantastic]

Lmao I had no idea something like this existed.

Seeing that little toothpaste defending those teeth from all the junk food actually made tiny young me want to brush my teeth.