Time-Tested Gaming

1up has an interesting piece looking at games that have withstood the test of time, aging gracefully where others have not. Titles discussed include the Korean powerhouse Starcraft, Nethack, and the Sim series. From the article: "It's hard to label which games are suitable for repeated lovin' and which are forgettable. One gamer's Halo is another gamer's Superman 64. But when it comes to firing up a favorite, some adventures hold the same appeal they did when they were released years ago -- and jumping in for the fortieth round is every bit as pleasurable as the first time."

tetris!

[starbuck8968]

has been released for practically every game medium

Re:What's the big deal about Nethack?

[dick pubes]

Nethack is one of the deepest, most complete games out. If you think it should be possible to do, then more likely than not you can do it in nethack.

If you give it a go for the first time, prepare yourself to be disappointed. Be prepared to spend the first ~hour or so dying many times, mostly from starvation and YASD (Yet another stupid death). But if you get that through hour or so and last beyond around level 10, you will be hooked for life (not necessarily a good thing!). I would recommend reading some of the many guides on the net, but avoid the spoilers at least for the first while, it will spoil the satisfaction of discovering things yourself (like #dipping your sword into a poition of poison will make your sword poisoned as a small example).

Duke 3D and 2D artwork

[Mr. Samuel]

Duke Nukem 3D, despite its aged visuals, continues to appeal to me even ten years after its initial release. It probably has something to do with its sense of humor and lack of self-importance, something thats a rarity in today's epic FPS.

On the other hand, I think there's a hidden appeal to the higher-quality 2D artwork of yesteryear. The glory days of 16-bit artwork like the stuff featured in Chrono Trigger will always look cool in my eyes, where first-gen 3D console titles will stick out as primitive and likely ugly.

It is in the cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

"1up has an interesting piece looking at games that have withstood the test of time, aging gracefully where others have not."

Solitaire!

Re:Misheaded nethack page.

[ZMerLynn]

T(roll)'s are only really a problem if (a) you've wandered out of your depth, or (b) you're in a vault or similar enviornment where the habit of the Troll to regenerate can sometimes be a little annoying. They're just physical damage dealers with regeneration. A lot of the skill in NetHack comes from the ability to divide and conquer .. just aggravate your enemies, lure them away and beat on them. Trolls fall easily then. It's the annoying things like summon monster traps that can sometimes make T's a nasty surprise.

I like the choices, but the writeups are horrible.

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

1) Nethack Page Title: @ versus the evil %.
In Nethack, a % is food. It's not evil. The character they were looking for is & (demon).

2) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
The writeup is all about how you're no longer stuck going through linear levels - how now there are items to find, and you can backtrack and unlock previously-locked areas.

Apparently this author's never heard of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - released in 1988 - with all of these features.

Where's Ultima Online? Where's Quake?

[acid06]

Ultima Online is still played *a lot*. There are hundreds of free shards around the globe and the official paid servers are still also online (I doubt they're still profitable, though).

Then, there's also Quake (yes, the first one). It's still played around the world. Quake mods such as Team Fortress (which paved the way to full modification mods as we see today) and some simpler mods such as Total Destruction are still played and there many active communities for these games.

Although America's reality is a bit different, these facts are completely true in another countries such as here in Brazil, for example, and maybe in many other developing countries. This is the positive side of not being able to have the latest graphics card or whatever: people don't focus that much on graphics. They worry about fun. That's why UO is specially popular: people can make their own world and play with their friends, with a server hosted on their own machine. Almost any PC can run Ultima Online without problems (I used to play it on a K6-350 with 32MB RAM).

The culture is really different. The most commercially succesful game here in Brazil currently is Ragnarök, a crappy online RPG. It has terrible mixed 2d/3d graphics and people are still paying to play it. Because everyone can play it. It's not like Half-Life 2 where maybe 10% of the computers can even run it at a barely playable level.

Re: YASD

[Anonymous Coward]

However, in Nethack you just die until you get the fundamentals of the game down. From that point on, it is smooth sailing.

Until, after another fortnight of playing, the game suddenly arbitrarily decides to kill you after all. It's usually at that point that people with other things in their lives realise that they don't, in fact, have time for a game where a single accidental death means you have to start all over again from scratch.

This applies to almost any games, even sports.

In Nethack soccer, if the goalkeeper lets a shot in, he is executed on the spot.
In Nethack basketball, every time one team scores, the other team loses their score and the match timer is reset.
In Nethack golf, either you score a hole in one on every hole, or you lose the match.

I really can't imagine many people queueing up to play any of those games. Or Nethack.