Old School Video Games

You know you played them.

Whether it was on a computer or an Atari, you enjoyed seeing that pixelated hero bound across the screen.

What did you play back in the day? Have you played it recently? Is there an updated version with better graphics? Do you still have an old system that you break out every now and then? What game system do you currently use?

Are you loyal to Nintendo or do you prefer Sega?

My brothers loved video games and every time they got a new system, I would get their old one. I have fond memories of Pitfall and Duck Hunt. Who doesn't love a great Mario Kart race on an old Super Nintendo?

We have a Wii and an Xbox at our home. The Wii gets used the most. After my Playstation 2, I sort of lost interest. Mainly in the controllers. I don't like how the new ones feel in my hands.

 

We had an Atari & an IntelliVision when I was a little kid. I loved Frogger, Kaboom!, Eggomania (which was basically Kaboom but with eggs instead of bombs), and Burger Time. My dad got an NES at some point after my parents divorced, and weekends were spent playing Techmo Bowl, Duck Hunt, Blades of Steel, California Games (I still get the melody from the BMX bit stuck in my head occasionally), Excitebike, Adventure Island... and that damn Simpsons game, where I could never get past the hats level. I also remember playing Dick Tracy and not really having any idea what I was doing.

After the NES, we got a Sega...Zombies Ate My Neighbors was by far my favorite on that one, but we also played Sonic, NBA Jam (BOOM shakalaka!), Earthworm Jim, Shaq Fu, Tomb Raider, Cool Boarders, and some jet-ski racing game that I've forgotten the name of.

At some point, we got a PlayStation, and I was all about the MediEval games. I also bought a PlayStation 2 at some point, specifically to play Karaoke Revolution.




Through all the consoles, PC games were a constant. King's Quest and Space Quest were my absolute favorites. I also played a TON of Shareware games, and had a couple friends I traded floppies with. Thanks to Steam and GOG, I still play some of my old Sierra favorites. I bought all of the Leisure Suit Larry games on sale a few years ago, and it gave me an immense feeling of satisfaction, since I was not allowed to play them growing up (although, I gotta say, they were a LOT tamer than I'd imagined they were.)


I can't really do most of the "new" 3-D games, as they give me motion sickness. I've discovered I can do games like Skyrim if I play them on the XBox, while sitting a good distance away from the screen and taking breaks every hour or so. But on the PC, not so much...so yeah, I still play (and love) the old Sierra games, Warcraft III, Majesty, Rise of Nations, Roller Coaster Tycoon...and so on.

 

Atari's Pong was what we had first. This was in the mid-70s.

We didn't own any other consoles but I was always able to play on my friend's Atari 2600 and Intellivision.

This is one of the first handheld games I remember playing:



And this is the first one that owned. I was given it for Christmas:

 

If you are really talking old school, I remember feeding a lot of coins into the 4 player gauntlet machine (Gauntlet (1985 video game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) in my local arcade. My cousin had an atari and we spent a lot of time doing badly at Moon Patrol.

 

I was (and still am) a huge Sega fan... it's tragic how they just keep finding new ways to mutilate the Sonic franchise. I've still got my genesis in my closet, although admittedly I tend to just play on an emulator these days for convenience and graphics upscaling.

 

Oh, hey, we had that! I think it originally belonged to my uncle. We had a baseball one, too. This one, I think:




And while doing an image search for that one, I came across this one, which we also had, and I totally forgot about:

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I was also reminded that my stepmom got the original (black and white!) Game Boy for Christmas one year (I have no idea why, she's not a big video game fan), and I played a LOT of Tetris that year.

 

I LOVE THE HAND HELD ONES! We had the football and baseball ones too!

This was also a favorite:

 

True fact: I learned the rules of football playing Electronic Quarterback.

 

I used to love Ecco the Dolphin: The Tides of Time on Genesis, such a weird and atmospheric game with amazing music and strange ideas that no one else was doing - combining nature, magic, and technology into crazy dolphin-and-crystal-filled alien adventure through time and space.

 

Loved Oregon Trail, pumped way too many quarters into playing Joust, and I don't know if this counts as old school but the N64 was the bomb.
It had some of the best games ever, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Mario World.

I remember walking past the bedroom where we had the N64 set up and hearing my daughter screaming "You stupid bitch."
So I look in to ask what's wrong and she says "I hate women!"
Actually what she hated was escort missions, namely the one in Goldeneye where you have to get the Russian scientist out of the lab.
I actually agreed with her on that one.

 

I totally forgot about Ecco the Dolphin! Thanks for the reminder!!!

 

My parents were very strict about television time. And we were decently broke.

We got a NES in... oh, about two or three years after the SNES came out. We had Duck Hunt, Mario Bros, Tetris, a Seasame Street game, and some Bugs Bunny game that was ridiculously hard and nonsensical. That was it. My neighbor, before we moved, had Talespin and a few others. Talespin was impossible. The neighbor we had after we moved had an SNES and we spent hours and hours playing Super Mario Bros. Another neighbor had a Sega Game Gear and a Sonic game for that.

My childhood babysitters had different consoles. One had NES with the balloon fight game whose name I can never remember. I loved it. Another had an SNES and all we played was Mario Kart and Mario Paint. Someone would occasionally break out Street Fighter, had a blast with that. Another babysitter had a Sega Genesis, so I clocked a bunch of hours on Jurassic Park, Sonic and Tails, Sonic Spinball, Aladdin, and Toe Jam & Earl (the best).

But I was really more of a PC kid. I had so much shareware. And DOOM. I remember playing DOOM when it had the Barney mod. That was hysterical to me as a little kid. When I was older, I loved the Lucas Arts games, mostly Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max. I also played a bunch of Sierra, got super caught on Kings Quest 7. Was way into Maxis and the Sim games before there were "Sims" games. Sim City, Sim City 2000, Sim Ant, Sim Tower, Sim Park, Sim Life. Then there was Encarta. That wasn't really a game, but it felt like it at times. There was also Treasure Mountain, that was decently old. I remember playing Lemonade Stand on a green and black screen, along with some puzzle and typing games. Scorched Earth. Hocus Pocus. So many shareware games. So. Many.

I miss shareware.

 

Sounds like we had very similar childhoods. I had an NES and later a genesis, but after that I went full PC gamer for many years. I started with the old shareware DOS games, then the early sidescrollers and Wolfenstein 3d, then when windows 95 came out I wound up getting into FPS games and tons of shareware games like you. Let me quote a post I made elsewhere about most of the pre-quake era games I played. Post-quake I think most people are familiar with. Although, I did play some esoteric Half-Life mods like Rocket Crowbar, Wizard Wars, Pirates, Vikings, and Knights, and Turbo (snark racing).

 

@Shadowex3 I played so many games on that list of yours. Fucking awesome. <3 I loved the shit out of Hocus Pocus. And the Keen games, especially Keen Dreams.

I am! I'm not going to play it, though. At least not anytime soon. Too busy, unfortunately.