Classic Video Games

Nowadays, I don't do any gaming, just don't have the time. We have a Wii, but it's for the kids.

For pretty much the entire decade of the 80's, I was the classic mall arcade rat. Hung out there whenever possible, would ask my parents for quarters for my b-day so I could go play. I was raised Jewish, so I had a Bar-Mitzvah when I was 13. The neighborhood parents got together and bought me this. It was the first talking arcade game, IIRC:

Hey, see my name? You bet I have a classic game collection! But I use a lot of emulators these days. Especially for Game Gear stuff, the systems just keep failing on me. The hardware nostalgia isn't worth it sometimes.

Physical systems I own:

SNES N64 PSX DC Xbox GBC GBA DS Retro PC

Stuff I mainly play on emulators these days:

NES Genesis Game Gear PS2 Retro PC (DOSbox) Atari 2600

Systems I own that need fixing up Atari 300XE Atari 800XL Slim PS2 (didn't even know it was broken until a friend tried it recently) Many Game Gears

Never owned a dedicated game console, but enjoyed numerous games on the PC including DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft I and 2, and Quake Arena among many others. I love that I can run DOSbox under Linux or even Windows and still play the old DOS games, especially in multi-player mode on the network.

Edit: In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess to now owning a wii, but that was for the kids, even though I do play with it occasionally.

I've consider making a table top arcade machine using lcds and dedicated pc inside. I was thinking about having two screens (one on each side) and two controller sections. So you could play games facing your opponent but not see each others' screens. Not quite sure about if the screens would display the same information or if there would be two different emulators networked to each other... I guess it would depend on the game itself.... (old school arcade version of Mario Bros or Doom type setups)

Do android emulators count?

1988RedT2 wrote: Never owned a dedicated game console, but enjoyed numerous games on the PC including DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft I and 2, and Quake Arena among many others. I love that I can run DOSbox under Linux or even Windows and still play the old DOS games, especially in multi-player mode on the network. Edit: In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess to now owning a wii, but that was for the kids, even though I do play with it occasionally.

I still enjoy DOOM and DOOM2 every once and a while. I had an XBOX with a DOOM3 Limited Edition or something that had DOOM1, 2, and Final DOOM, which was awesome to relive. I started replaying Quake (the first one) a while back, and have been searching for my copy of Quake 2. I also remember some that are not talked about as much these days, like Hexen 2 and Blood.

Hard to forget is Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command and Conquer (I think I put a lot of time into Red Alert 2...).

I remember trying to get DOSbox to work a while back and it didn't...I have a new laptop with Windows 7 now and haven't tried installing any older games again, and I think I should.

I busted out Doom 64 a few weeks ago, which I had picked up at a yard sale a few years back. I had never played it before. It was like a mix of Doom and Doom II on the PC. Pretty cool!

I have a few PC-to-console ports in the collection:

-Doom 64 for N64

-Descent for PS1

-Warcraft II for PS1

-Command and Conquer for N64

I really need to get some pics up of my stuff. I have a lot of interesting pieces in the collection.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about Descent. Played that one a lot back in the day. It runs well under DOSbox also. The kids enjoy that one a lot.

Trouble with DOSbox? I'm no guru, but I've found it pretty easy to set up on both Linux and Windows. If you can put a launcher/shortcut on your desktop and edit the command line, it's literally a double-click away. Well, appending a few lines to the dosbox.conf file is useful also. It's very well-documented here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Basic_Setup_and_Installation_of_DosBox

1988RedT2 wrote: Oh, yeah. I forgot about Descent. Played that one a lot back in the day. It runs well under DOSbox also. The kids enjoy that one a lot. Trouble with DOSbox? I'm no guru, but I've found it pretty easy to set up on both Linux and Windows. If you can put a launcher/shortcut on your desktop and edit the command line, it's literally a double-click away. Well, appending a few lines to the dosbox.conf file is useful also. It's very well-documented here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Basic_Setup_and_Installation_of_DosBox

Alright, I probably wasn't doing it right last time I tried....

Thanks for the link.

It may be my age speaking (got a NES the year I was born, which was the year it came out), but I think the N64/ps2 years were the best.
N64 has the BEST fun multiplayer games ever.
PS2 has a lot of groundbreaking titles in the rpg and driving genre, to say the least

The PS2 is a great console! It had so many great games in every genre. Right now is the perfect time to start collecting for it because you can still get games in the stores and they are clearing them out cheap. I went nuts right before I bought my house 2 years ago buying up all the classics at Gamestop and at other places for pennies on the dollar. Many of them are still new in the box just waiting for me to play them.

I got sad when I noticed Gamestop stopped carrying PS2 titles. They were such a bargain, it was almost unreal. Where do you guys normally pick up your old games?

look for an indy game shop... even my lil town in FL had one...

we've got a xbox 360 and a Wii, Wii is in the kids room, no cable TV so they stream netflix with it... I soft modded it for a bunch of emulators, got a bunch of old NES, SNES, atari, and sega games on it that my son loves... I also did a boot loader so I could install the Wii games onto the HDD and the kids never touch the discs...

good stuff

Can't believe I missed this thread. I'm more into classic PC games than consoles, but I have played most of what's in this thread. Right now I'm on somewhat of an abandonware kick. I LOVE the old game "Z" by Bitmap Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_%28video_game%29) I spent hours trying to get it to work with dosbox, then searching for "Z95" ports to XP or 7, and eventually game across a re-make of the game:http://zod.sourceforge.net/

If any of you guys are passing through or live near DC, I highly suggest going to this video game exhibit @ the American Art Musuem (Smithsonian, so its free): http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/

I really enjoyed it, although I would've made some different choices.

1988RedT2 wrote: Never owned a dedicated game console, but enjoyed numerous games on the PC including DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft I and 2, and Quake Arena among many others. I love that I can run DOSbox under Linux or even Windows and still play the old DOS games, especially in multi-player mode on the network.

YES to all of these. I still play Quake 1 Clan arena. I like it better than Q3/Open Arena/Quake Live. That game completely revolutionized FPS and really all video games.

Shadow Warrior was fun ( chinese accent "Now you have splitting headache!"), but the engine that it and Duke 3d is on paled in comparison to Quake.

Other classic PC stuff I love:

Team Fortress (the OLD Quake 1 based version)
Mega TF (Again Q1)
Homeworld
Carmageddon
Sim City 2000
C&C Red Alert (I remember being in a computer store where one of the nerdy guys was playing this on his new hot-E36 M3 custom PC with 8 MEGABYTES OF RAM. I was amazed)

And of course, already mentioned, Descent

One of the most transcendental video gaming experiences in my life was the first time I played networked multiplayer deathmatch Doom. I used to hang out with this group of fellow computer nerds every Friday night, back in my young and single days. One day an infrequent member of the group invited us back to his house for gaming. I figured it would be a little of this and that, but no, he had six or eight full tilt gaming PCs set up on an actual ethernet network. This was the year Doom came out, so 1993 or so. I had played Doom, quite a bit, but never in that setting. We ended up playing until like 3am or so, my best friend was there and we were ambushing the rest of the guys, setting up in "the yard" where all the good weapons spawned and when the others would get entrenched there we would call ourselves "chemlawn" and get rid of the weeds. We had so much fun I gradually built up a little network of my own, running TOKENRING! Oh dear god that was awesome. 16mbps instead of a measly 10mbps. Heheh.

GTA NBA NHL Cricket FIFA

Canoe canoe canoe canoe?

And Gamestop stopped carrying PS2 stuff? Wow... I'm old....

I get my games in a number of places. I used to hit up Gamestop from time to time, but got sick of dealing with them trying to sell me a hundred other things when I wanted to get a couple of cheap games. Then, I started going to Play N Trade, which was a rival chain. Difference is, they were each independently owned, so each location had different stuff. The one near me was awesome. They had stuff going back to the Fairchild Channel F all the way to the present, and the prices were great. When the economy went south, they closed their doors.

These days, I hit up yard sales, thrift stores, a local flea market that has regular game vendors (some good, some horrendous) and sometimes, I even buy from people I know. I bought out a friend's collection about 2 years ago for a bargain price, and he had a lot of rare and hard to find stuff.

My local Play N Trade has some good deals on PS2 games, but that's about it. I find their NES and SNES selection pretty pricey as compared to online retailers and flea markets.

For some reason, I find SNES games to be priced pretty far out of line in most shops around here. Then again, I scored Secret of Mana and Breath of Fire for $2 each at a flea market.

That stinks... At the one that closed near me, I snagged an original Sega Master System with 2 controllers, the light gun, and probably about 12-13 games (most complete in box) for under $50. I used to get deals like that every time I went in there.

Derick Freese wrote: For some reason, I find SNES games to be priced pretty far out of line in most shops around here. Then again, I scored Secret of Mana and Breath of Fire for $2 each at a flea market.

Wow!!!

currently have:

atari 2600 - 4 of them

NES - 2 WORKING

SNES - with working super game boy

nintendo 64

ps2/ps3.

have had but sold:

atari XE - not marketed right, but it was more like a small computer than a game system

genesis

game boy - the original one

dreamcast - nfl 2001 on the sega had better graphics than 2005 on the ps2.

SilverFleet wrote:

Derick Freese wrote: For some reason, I find SNES games to be priced pretty far out of line in most shops around here. Then again, I scored Secret of Mana and Breath of Fire for $2 each at a flea market.

Wow!!!

I sold Chrono Trigger for $75, FF2 and FF3 for $100, and Lufia 2 for $80. I thought I sold stuff on the cheap side.

It's amazing what you can score at flea markets sometimes. Although, I have never gotten a deal as good as previously mentioned...$2 for those games...wow. I picked up a yellow original Game Boy last weekend at the flea market, all it's missing is the screen protector ($5 on ebay).

Any of you guys repair your stuff? In true GRM fashion, nothing beats taking apart an old game system, cleaning it and repairing it, and putting it back together for maximum enjoyment. I bought an NES with the telltale signs of being old (flashing screen) and replaced the 72-pin connector and was good to go.

I picked up FFIII at the same time for the same price. I know there were some other games I picked up at the same time, including a working Super Gameboy and a Game Genie for NES. I saw what they were and bought everything the lady had that was video game related for $12. I can't recall what the other 2 games were, but I can't recall them being of significant value. That may have been where another of my LTTP carts came from. I only have about half a dozen of those.