O.T. - Computer Games

[Scott]

Dean,

Just buy up everything you land on, especially the Orange and Purple properties between Jail and Free Parking. They are affordable and easier to build quickly and the returns are solid. With this strategy you will win nearly every time. If allowing trading of property during the game tie up all the other colors by getting "only" one of each color. Don't bother buying the utilities. Railroads are good.

Speed is essential in this game. Getting around the board quick early on and going to jail when the opposition has the advantage.

The problem with the higher value properties is that it takes to long to build on them and you get beat out by the person with the orange and purple properties.

Well, that's my financial advice for today. Good luck.............

[Eirik]

Clue rocks!  I have Clue Master Detective - made in the late 1980s.  There are four or five additional characters (local sheriff, southern belle, pretentious French a***ole), several new weapons (poison, horseshoe), and new rooms (carriage house, gazebo, fountain).  It doesn't really change the point of the game, but it stretches it out and complicates things.  The cards are getting worn so I have started shuffling them VERY carefully since I don't think they make the Master Detective version any more.

[daveblackeye15]

My favorites are;

-Conker's Bad Fur Day. This game is hilarious, sick, violent, and TONS of reference to movies. It has everything I need.

-Warcraft II: This is a classic all right I also like the jive of the original game to. The third game...well...

-Final Fantasy IV, VII,X; All there are great RPG game. I think IV is my favorite because it comes from the Golden Days of RPGs (back when Super Nintendo was big) and it's more Sword and Sorrcery than the other two I mentioned.

[raj]

Recently I was introduced to this game.  Very cool, as is Awful Green Things from Outer Space.  And Illuminati.

[Eirik]

"Awful Green Things from Outer Space"

A Tom Wham classic!  Ever play Elefant Hunt?

[raj]

May have, years ago.  It sounds familiar, but I don't remember anything about it.

[Neville]

I play modern PC games as well (the last I really liked was "Call of Duty"), but I mostly play old stuff (PSX, N64, arcade or even old computers) through emulators. I am a big fan of emulation. Among my favourite emulated games there are the "Street Fighter EX" serie (arcade), "Tetris" and "Super Mario Land" (GameBoy) or the "Star Wars Games" for the Super Famicon.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Neville.....ahhhhhh.....The Famicon......


Memories....


Also known as the Nintendo here. :o)

[Grumpy Guy]

I used to have a game that was a total rip off of Clue.  I can't remember what it was called, but in it you were an investigator instead of a suspect, there were more rooms than in Clue, more Weapons, more Suspects, and you also had to determine MOTIVE.

It was seriously cool.

[Eirik]

In Elefant Hunt you pick hunters randomly to form a hunting party and then make your way into the interior of darkest Africa.  You randomly meet animals and have to allocate your hunters to catch them.  There were pitfalls and stuff too - like quicksand and ancient curses and stuff.

[JohnL]

>* ALPHA CENTAURI and ALIEN CROSSFIRE - Unfortunately, these games are
>not compatible with my current Windows XP system, so I can't play them
>anymore!

Three words: Dual Boot System

>Which games are your favorites?

It depends what system you're talking about, I have different favorites for the Atari consoles, Intellivision, C64, Amiga, Windows etc.

I tend to prefer action oriented games, although I do like some strategy games. Also, I usually like games with a SciFi or horror theme the most.

I kind of missed the big FPS craze when Wolfenstein and Doom came out (I was still using the Amiga and FPS games either sucked, or required a much faster system than I had), so I've been enjoying some of the older games, like Dark Forces (Star Wars), and Thief which I'm currently playing. I've also got Rogue Squadron and Curse of Monkey Island installed, but haven't played them in a while.

I've been buying a lot of software at closeout stores and cheap eBay auctions in anticipation of having a larger, faster system to run it on (current one is 233Mhz with a 6.4gb HD), which I hope to have soon. I've got FPS games such as Half Life, Tomb Raider, Serious Sam, Heavy Metal II, FAKK, Heretic II, Carnivores II, Star Trek Elite Force, Jedi Knight. Strategy games such as Homeworld, Star Trek Armada, Fargate. God games such as Majesty and Populous The Beginning. Mech games such as Heavy Gear II, Mechwarrior II & III. Arcade games such as Lode Runner II, Gubble, SciFi Pinball. Racing games such as Grand Prix 3, 4x4 Evo II, Rallye Master. Space battle games such as Descent Freespace, Star Lancer, X-Wing Collector's Series. Adventure games such as Escape from Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Beavis & Butthead in Virtual Stupidity.

As you can see, I have fairly varied tastes in games. About the only games I don't care for are most sports games (baseball, football etc) and most traditional RPG's (assigning experience points, eating, resting, casting spells etc).

I also very much want to be able to play the Archimedes version of Elite, which is supposed to be the absolute best version of Elite ever made. Unfortunately, there only seem to be a couple emulators for the Archimedes, which require copyrighted ROMs to use and I have no idea how to operate one even if I get it working.

>I used to have a game that was a total rip off of Clue. I can't remember what it
>was called, but in it you were an investigator instead of a suspect, there were
>more rooms than in Clue, more Weapons, more Suspects, and you also had to
>determine MOTIVE.

You don't say how old this game was, but if it was on one of the older systems (Atari, C64 etc), it might be Murder on the Zinderneuf . I've only ever played it once and since I didn't have the instructions, I didn't know what I was doing, so I don't know if this game matches your description or not. I know it's set on a zepplin and you have to solve a murder before the ship reaches its destination.

[Grumpy Guy]

JohnL wrote:

> You don't say how old this game was, but if it was on one of
> the older systems (Atari, C64 etc), it might be
>
> Murder on the Zinderneuf . I've only ever played it once
> and since I didn't have the instructions, I didn't know what I
> was doing, so I don't know if this game matches your
> description or not. I know it's set on a zepplin and you have
> to solve a murder before the ship reaches its destination.

No, sorry - I was talking about a board game.  Thanks for the help, though - hte game you pointed out looks interesting, to say the least.

Speaking of old school games, does anyone remember an old game called Bruce Lee?  You wandered around a palace, fighting ninjas and such.  It was for the PC, I think, but I'm pretty sure there was a C64 version, too.

I have very fond memories of that game.

I also remember fondly three Atari 2600 games.  Two of them - Dragon Slayer and Maze of the Mindmaster - were part of a weird tape+cartrige setup.  They were both excellent games - one was a primitive RPG where you had hit points and spells and everything.  The other was a first Person maze game where you went through these mazes and did tests to save the Earth.  Both very cool.

The other 2600 game that really sticks out in my memory is Arc In Space, which was the sequel to the game Atlantis.  In the game, you went and rescued specimines of several species from thier home worlds before they were destroyed.  I don't know why I liked it so much.  It was pretty much crap...

Then ther was Montezuma's Revenge, the only game (as far as I know) that is named for a euphamism for dysintery.  Fun game - I playedd the hell outta that one back in the day.  It was, as I remember it, part Pitfall, part Donkey Kong.

Anybody else remember these?

[JohnL]

>Speaking of old school games, does anyone remember an old game called
>Bruce Lee? You wandered around a palace, fighting ninjas and such. It was for
>the PC, I think, but I'm pretty sure there was a C64 version, too.

Yup, used to play it with friends on my C64. We got pretty good at beating it. It's available for download Here.

>I also remember fondly three Atari 2600 games. Two of them - Dragon Slayer
>and Maze of the Mindmaster - were part of a weird tape+cartrige setup. They
>were both excellent games - one was a primitive RPG where you had hit points
>and spells and everything. The other was a first Person maze game where you
>went through these mazes and did tests to save the Earth. Both very cool.

Ah yes, the Starpath Supercharger. I had both these games as well as about 5-6 others. Later, I got a CD from someone on the net with several hard to find games, including a much better version of Frogger.

Dragonstomper
Escape From the Mindmaster

>The other 2600 game that really sticks out in my memory is Arc In Space, which
>was the sequel to the game Atlantis. In the game, you went and rescued
>specimines of several species from thier home worlds before they were
>destroyed. I don't know why I liked it so much. It was pretty much crap...

I liked this game as well, although at the higher levels it was really a pain to do the meteor sequence.

Cosmic Ark

>Then ther was Montezuma's Revenge, the only game (as far as I know) that is
>named for a euphamism for dysintery. Fun game - I playedd the hell outta that
>one back in the day. It was, as I remember it, part Pitfall, part Donkey Kong.

I not only mapped this game (it only had something like 25 screens), I memorized it to the point where I could just run through it from memory. Couldn't do that with the C64 version though, it had like 100+ screens.

Montezuma's Revenge 2600
Montezuma's Revenge C64

By the way, you can play all these games on current systems under emulators. All of the above provide download links, except the two Starpath games which aren't on that site for copyright reasons. You can download the Starpath games Here. It makes you jump through a couple hoops in order to download the files, but it DOES work. The site has animated porn ads though, in case that sort of thing offends you.

[Neville]

To JohnL: If you are into old games and your computer still has DOS, you should try "Syndicate", UFO - Enemy Unknown", "XCOM - Terror from the deep" and "Strike Commander". The three first are global strategy games that are also action-packed, specially "Syndicate". Even if you are no freak of strategy games, they are so original and absorbing you will wonder how you could have done without them. "Strike Commander" is a flight simulator, but has cinematic cutscenes and a tight plot. The flight controls are simple but effective, and the inmense variety of scenarios and missions (from tank busting to bomb raids or destroying entire fleets) make it a real winner.

All these games are really old, and maybe your best choice to get them is looking for Abandonware websites on the net.

[Grumpy Guy]

Many thanks, JohnL!

I think I'm just about to take a walk down memory lane...