I appreciate that many older games are still available on Steam either "maintained" as in the article or "remastered". Someday soon I will buy Total Annihilation...again...on Steam this time.
But I do not understand why games are seen as disposable, temporary media. Sure the latest titles are flashy but there are plenty of fucking awesome older games that are still fun to play. And as physical media disappears it becomes much more important for the gaming industry to stop pulling the ladder up behind themselves. History matters. Old <> bad.
There should be an equivalent to the classic rock stations for video games. I greatly appreciate the efforts of the MAME, archive.org and Mr. Lee to keep the classics alive.
I remember years ago playing SimCity for the 1st time at my cousin's house. Started playing in the evening and stopped when the birds came out and the sun came up...much to my surprise.
I got Cities-Skylines about a year ago and I think I put less than 5 hours into it.
I don't see Thief mentioned yet. It's old but it was called a "first person sneaker" by some reviewer back in the day.
I'm seeing something on Steam that looks like it but with a 2/2014 release date, which seems newer that I remember. Apparently there's a bunch of DLC too, so you might consider buy a bundle.