Obscure, classic, Indie or just plain 'WTF?' games to try?der=0>

[Drystan]

@spearv - for me, Civilization II is a great game to revisit. It's got the units/tech, movies, strategy and graphics are still fairly good.
I've always been a fan of minesweeper too. I had an amazing record for Expert once, but have avoided playing it for a while now.
I'm not sure what you were talking about with the Diablo Immortal and DSF reference. But I picked up D1 again recently, and made finished it. I found a 'transfer item' mod, and played a Level 1 Barbarian through Hell only (no N/NM) (named Bul-Kathos // Hellfire expo with command.txt) with twinked Obsideon Rings of the Zodiac and a few other items. Made it too easy, and I've now finished with it for the time being.

@pharphis - Future Cop: LAPD looks pretty entertaining. Some funny lines in it too ("If you're wondering about the white triange, you're not as bright as I thought. It's you, baby.")
I don't use Steam, and didn't realise TBoI was there. :(

@Pyro - Liero: Wow! We played that back at school (tried to during IT class occasionally.) Forgot all about that, but was great fun.

@skiffcz - I didn't play Dungeon Keeper or Incubation when they came out, although I did know about them. I gave DK1 a go half a year ago or something (took forever to get it work on modern laptop!) and played through it. Was very fun.
Incubation was pretty cool when I tried it too. I might give that another go.
Don't worry, many of us here will remember those old games. I'm feeling like I've been around for a while too now. XD I never really got into Quake though - only an MP game once or twice.

Full Throttle looks like it could be an anime or something. Graphics don't look bad!

There is a game I've been reminded of by Future Cop. I only knew of the demo, but you were a small mech roaming around a city... Graphically, there were vehicles on roads, which swerved around you or crashed if you jumped onto the road. Any ideas?

[pharphis]

I don't really know what game you could be thinking. Umm, I could be wrong about this because I bought it for my brother through the Humble Indie Bundle, and he just sent me a copy of BoI, but I would assume you can get it outside of steam. If not, then I guess you could just download a copy or I could give you a copy of the vanilla game that I have, since I later bought it on steam for myself so I could get the expansion. it's just a flash game (unfortunately responsible for the many many many bugs at various points during patching the game).
If you don't like the idea of getting the game w/o paying for it, even if there isn't an option outside of steam (there really should be!) then you might like the idea that he the developer said on his formspring that he doesn't care if people dl it w/o paying.

Yeah the 'assistant' I guess you would call her in that game is funny. She pretty much tells you what you need to do in the missions, as well. I assume that quote is taken from the "how to play" in the game?

[spearv]

@spearv - for me, Civilization II is a great game to revisit. It's got the units/tech, movies, strategy and graphics are still fairly good.
I've always been a fan of minesweeper too. I had an amazing record for Expert once, but have avoided playing it for a while now.
I'm not sure what you were talking about with the Diablo Immortal and DSF reference

I did play Civ II at some point but I couldn't get into it at the time, I believe I'm doomed to the original for all time! That said, I heard good things about a recent update to Civ 5 and it got me thinking about trying to move with the times.

Minesweeper, I believe my records are 2-14-54. I really should know, I played far too much for several years. The last time I checked it seemed record times were tumbling, I'd say the version the obsessed crowd are using may be a bit, idk, responsive? Than the Win 95 version, heh.

Diablo,

DSF - Diablo Strategy and Tactics Forum. Used to be hosted on the battle.net site, it wasn't the original official Diablo forum, but it was by far the best, while it lasted. Famous patrons from there, err, Jarulf (in both D2 and D3!), Bolty (of the Lurkerlounge).

Immortal Hero - attempting to clear each difficulty in order, single pass, no deaths, with characters restricted to items/spells that suit their role. I forget if it had to be in single player, but that's certainly how I got my first Immortal Hero (a warrior that got a super lucky item drop at the end of normal difficulty. Though it still took me many hours to complete some levels in Hell/Hell). D1 is just too dated for me to enjoy like any old game, but the Ironman style challenge is something I feel compelled to revisit once in a while.

Odd that I've never tried any hardcore, variant or tournament in D2. One day I plan to do some single pass hardcore stuff, one day!

[Smips]

+1 for The Binding of Issac. I really like that game and I think the music is just killer.

Warcraft 2 and it's expansion was probably my favorite RTS, if you haven't played that before.

Civ II is a good game and there's a game called FreeCiv(I think) that is essentially Civ II as well.

If you're in to traditional RPGs, I've heard that a game called Sweet Home on NES is really great. It was only released in Japan, but translated ROMs are out there.

If you're REALLY in to traditional RPGs, go back to where it all began with Dragon Warrior(or Quest depending on your region) on the NES. I would strongly suggest playing that one on an emulator that has a frame skip button though, tons of grinding!

While I'm on the subject of NES RPGs, play Crystalis. It's not horrendously difficult by any means, but it's a great, great game. It plays a little like LoZ. I think it's an NES game that is overlooked WAY too often. If you play it, pick the NES version rather than the Gameboy Color one...I guess they were able to license the game for the port, but not the music and the music in the GBC version is pretty horrible.

Rollercoaster Tycoon was freaking awesome. I get the urge to play that every couple of months.

[pharphis]

DRAGON WARRIOR!
I didn't get very far in that one. Music is great, monsters are great, etc.
Very very difficult. Like Smips said, lots and lots of grinding, and I don't even know beyond the first 20 levels (iirc)

Actually, my experience with this series started with Dragon Warrior Monsters, followed by it's sequel, both on GBC. Great difficulty, and they both have a few hundred monsters, a well-designed breeding system, and isn't as similar to pokemon as you might think it would be. Your monsters are not very tame, and can disobey you if they don't like you enough. You can even steal monsters from wandering trainers (masters they might be called, since this isn't pokemon!) by giving them meat. (Yup, you tame monsters and 'capture' them by giving them lots of meat).

[Kitteh]

Roller Coaster Tycoon, Hospital Tycoon (patients with ballooned heads = hilarious), Hogs of War, Tanks.

Not exactly fitting your theme, but Puzzler World, Cogs, Splice and Puzzle Dimension are awesome

[jimsfriend]

Hey Drystan since you go back to civ2 off and on, have you tried the one city challenge? I'm not good at the game in general, so was never able to complete/win an OCC, but it's surprisingly fast paced for an otherwise slow as sin game imo, and good fun.

And also, from the image linked earlier of 100 DOS games or whatever it was... oh my god x-com. If you have not played it, play it. And don't read a guide first I will look forward to your new hell. Edit to describe the game a bit, since I should probably do that. You are a secret government agency tasked with protection earth from the hidden alien menace. Most of the meat of the game is carrying out missions where you shoot down alien spacecraft and then go in to kill any survivors, and also the aliens launch terrorist attacks on towns which you have to rescue, and sometimes they will build a base which you have to go in and destroy. Combat is turn based and can be incredibly... frustrating to say the least. Still overall a great game (I prefer the sequel, terror from the deep). When you complete missions you bring back "alien artifacts" which you can then research so you can learn how to use and create alien weapons to upgrade your arsenal to make combat easier. Mostly though on your first couple tries, you'll probably just be losing

[WoRG]

+1 to the awesomeness that is XCOM ...you can get it (and TFtD) on steam, and it runs great on DOSbox...for a challenge, make sure you get the DOS version and install xcomutil to fix the difficulty bug (without the fix, the game reverts to 'beginner' difficulty after the first battle/reload of the game...)

Another GREAT Lucasarts game was TIE fighter...I still keep an *old* PC around to play it occasionally...and if you're at all into that genre, the whole Wing Commander series was pretty damn fun (WC Prophecy was AMAZING if you had an actual 3dfx voodoo graphics card)

WoRG

[pharphis]

Another fantastic RPG, and this one is for sega genesis. It's called Shining Force 2 (the one I played, but mostly watched) and it has fantastic music and lots of great characters and secrets. The combat system is similar to FF Tactics, but I don't know what this system is called. Basically each unit can move to a square in a battle and attacks have a wide array of AoE, so position is half of the importance to battles.

[Drystan]

@spearv - Ahhh, I did try D1 HC-style, but couldn't do it. You really do need the right items - hit recovery is a PITA, and the doom knights will put you in recovery at some point...

@smips - Go back and give WC1 a try. See where it all started. :P Unit control and AI is terrible.

@friend of Jim - I haven't tried the OCC, but I have seen it. I've only played on Prince - I do try to increase the difficulty, but city disorder among other things just beat me. I really don't understand the whole trade/caravan things that the experts know. I've heard it's basically game-breaking and makes it really easy, but if I make too many caravans, I get held back in other areas. I just haven't looked into that side of it too much.


It was Slave Zero (1999) I was thinking of: