Elementary school ystael spent a lot of time on Pinball Construction Set on the C64. I think I always turned the physics up to max speed minimum friction, so scoring on my tables was more about flailing and blind luck.
My favorite C64 game, though, was one I didn’t get to play often because I had to borrow it from a friend. (Didn’t know about cracking yet.) That was Ultimate Wizard. The platform physics were kind of terrible compared to Mario, but I loved the way each level was a tiny puzzle-maze, with different treasures moving different blocks when you grabbed them, and one magic spell - just one on each level, out of ten or so - to help you deal with the enemies. And my favorite thing in every game: a level editor! No, my levels weren’t good, they were awful. But I loved laying out the little bricks and skulls and fires anyway.
Back then i only had a few games but among all my friends we had a pretty good collection. As an adult playing on a retro console I’ve started to go through a lot of the games i never tried or didn’t own and only played a few times.
While I’d say the total NES library is a majority of garbage games (publishers just figuring out how to make games, not how to make good games) I think the big thing i noticed is that the good 8bit games look and feel drastically different than the garbage ones. When you learn the history of the games then it makes sense.
The quality of the sprites, the extensive design of menus, transitions and other interactions, the storyline and dialogue. Even with only 8bits and crappy resolution the output for many of the good games actually looked and played well back then and even now. But I’d say about 90% of the NES catalog was garbage back then and still is now.
It’s extremely difficult for me to enjoy most 8-bit games, as there’s very little there to intrigue my tastes. However, there are a few standouts that I still play to this day on an emulator handheld, like H.E.R.O. or Mr. Do!
The good ones generally have a really solid little gameplay loop that’s quick to get into, with tight controls that let you get into a flow-state easily, and a difficulty curve that isn’t infuriating (something far too common from that era). The story heavy games from that era usually had mediocre or terrible writing paired with repetitive grinding gameplay, so the classics like Final Fantasy are sadly off limits for me.
H.E.R.O. is one of my favorites since it has somewhat uncommon gameplay where you control a man with a helicopter pack in a mine, avoiding various hazards to rescue a trapped miner at the end of each level. It rewards memorization, which is a knock against it, but even though I’ve played it heavily, I keep coming back to it as I never can quite remember the layouts of the later levels, and once control of the backpack is mastered, it just feels good to zip around all of these creatures and caverns of instant death without nicking yourself. I’m not sure how someone who has never played it before would feel about it, since it can take a while to get the hang of the controls, but I think it holds up pretty well from that era.
It also received a pretty massive number of ports to various consoles and home computers. The original Atari 2600 version is good, but personally I found the MSX port to be the most polished, and it adds some nice additional graphics as well.
I have the remake (The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition) in my Steam backlog. I’ve been meaning to play it for a while, but it seems like a game that will require my full focus to not forget the story / puzzles. Once some of the games I’m currently playing are finished, I might give it a go. Also seems like a fun game to play during the winter times, so maybe I’ll get around to it in a few months.
Monkey island is a series I got into relatively recently and I absolutely adore it.
I mentioned in another thread recently how humongous games was a huge part of my childhood. Pajama Sam especially was and remains some of my all time favorite games.
As I got older and learned more about Ron Gilbert (the creator of humongous and all of those things) I learned about Monkey Island and knew I had to play. I have yet to play the non Gilbert games (I know curse of monkey island is beloved by many) but the 3 Gilbert ones are all masterclasses of point and click in my opinion. I think they hold up very well, and the recent return to monkey island was a delight to play. I know some didn’t love the art style of the new one but I really enjoyed it.
I had the Secret of Monkey Island on a CDROM as a kid and the soundtrack of the original is burned deep into my brain.
Fun fact: you could put the game CD into a normal CD player, skip track 1 (The data track) and just vibe listening to the entire soundtrack while rollerblading.
MI is great, I played 1+2 when they were new (in the 90s), they were brilliant back then. These days, they’re probably still good point&click adventure games. There were some special editions or remasters which probably make them play well on modern machines. They belong to a long list of awesome LucasArts point&click adventures during the 90s and early 2000s. Most of these games are great. You should definitely try them out, especially if there are remasters available. But you can also play the originals using ScummVM most likely. Ron Gilbert is like the mastermind behind the series. He still creates adventure games to this day. And they’re all pretty good, but the genre is kind of niche these days. It wasn’t niche back then. It was just as big as action or soulslike games are today. The Monkey Island titles were probably the most successful or popular ones of the bunch. But there are some others which are equally good. Adventure games are rare these days but basically they are like puzzle games where you have to solve certain situations by combining items, finding items in the first place, trying different approaches, and so on. You kind of know once you’ve overcome a challenge when you were able to progress further in the game. There’s little to no handholding, but also little to no handholding needed. There’s one timing-based riddle in the original Monkey Island which I never liked that much, but it’s still a funny one. It’s not hard but it doesn’t really fit the genre well because nothing else is timing-based. It does fit the game’s art, setting and humor well though. The soundtrack is nice indeed. This is probably the most well-known track: invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=FoT5qK6hpbw
Man, I miss the golden age of point-and-click adventure games. My brothers and I played through so many together. PC Speaker version of the MI1 soundtrack for maximum nostalgia: invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=_cfPw3IL1sk
I’ve only ever played 3 and I really liked it when I did. Sad that one doesn’t get talked about much cause the art style is my favorite of the whole series I think.
It definitely had its fair share of batshit insane puzzles, but overall it’s a great game.
I have nothing to say about this game other than thank you for reminding me about CONGO’s CAPER! I’ve been looking for the name of this game for years and this post inspired me to find it!
For these discussions I think it would be good to link relevant communities.
I don’t think there’s a community just for Monkey Island, but there is !adventuregames
I played the first Monkey Island as a kid with my family and still love these games. Great humor, puzzles, and music. #1 is probably still my favorite, all of them are great except maybe #4 I still need to play (now that it works in ScummVM it’s a lot better with modern computers). #2 is probably the hardest game in the series. Tales of Monkey Island is maybe the easiest but still good. Return to Monkey Island was also very good.
I played the first, maybe not all the way through, on my Atari ST. Later on, I got quite annoyed that the Amiga got the sequel but Lucasfilm Games days it wasn’t coming to the Atari.
I remember getting the PC CD-ROM edition of the original game and the music was lovely.
The next time I played was game three, Curse of Monkey Island. I loved the art style and completed that one.
I plan on playing the latest installment at some point. I downloaded it onto my Xbox.
There’s also a great program for playing old Lucasfilm faces on PC. You can load soundbanks into it because it can emulated different midi interfaces that I dreamed of owning back in the day. The tunes sound amazing.
It’s an emulator for playing the entire back catalogue of Lucasarts games. It’s very well documented and ready to use. As I said, if you had some kind of general midi set up or Roland MT32 back in the day, you’d be laughing. The music is awesome.
I only discovered it myself in the last month or so.
For example, I loved X-Wing CD edition back in the day for the real Star Wars soundtrack but I need to try it with MT32 midi emulation. I bet the iMuse system sounds fantastic.
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