Classic Games....

[MKSheppard]

Because the other "list best game of all time" thread went into complete fucking absurdity a while ago, I'm gonna go around and start this one.

CRITERIA
You are not limited to just one game. List as many as you can, with the following caveat:

It must have adequate playability even today.

Theoretically, Railroad Tycoon by Microprose is a great game; but today, it just plays like total ass, due to primitive graphics, wonky control scheme, etc.

----------------------------------------------------

My submissions:

Doom 1 and 2 for PC
Admit it; you still like to play E1M1 on a emulator and have memorized IDKFA and IDDQD into muscle memory. Even today it doesn't look that bad. It's certainly aged a lot better than Wolfenstein 3D and the numerous FPS shooters released around that time, like BLAKE STONE.

Mutant League Hockey for Genesis
Mutant League Football wasn't that great, but MLH far exceeded it's precedessor, being a lot more playable as a beer and pretzel game due to the mechanics of hockey (near continuous action), and the graphics are good enough for the time. The control scheme's easy to pick up, and there's nothing like winning the Mutant League championship because you've killed all the other teams in the league, forcing them to forfeit every game to you.

Pirates! Gold for Genesis
The best version of all the original Pirates! games. Basically took the awesome graphics of the Amiga version and implemented them in a much easier to play format.

X-COM UFO Defense/X-COM Terror From The Deep for PC
Let's not kid ourselves, TFTD is basically a mod of UFO; with the difficulty dialed up quite a bit. Still, the graphics and control scheme for both games work fifteen years later.

Civilization 2 for PC
This is in my opinion, the best version of Civilization -- it was far more playable than it's precedessor; and had game mechanics which still haven't been equalled by any of it's later successors -- I've only gone up to Civ 3; that was enough for me to swear off any future Civs -- spearmen sinking battleships my ass, along with the retarded border/culture system as well as the "need resources" which was implemented poorly.

Master of Orion 1/2
Whether you like 1 or 2 better is a matter of personal taste. I tend to gravitate towards MOO2, because the game was improved a lot regarding controls and graphics over MOO1. Let us not speak of MOO3.

[Havok]

TECMO BOWL

[Rochey]

I'll throw in the Freespace games. Still fun to play, even today.

[Stark]

Starflight/Starcontrol2 - adventure games that were both freeform and had a strong narrative? IMPOSSIBLE! A game SET IN SPACE? Not this millenium!

Aliens vs Predator - chockers with features ignored by FPS games in general for years

Battlezone - took a licence to a silly game, made an awesome shooter/RTS in low gravity with physics, effective remote management and totally crazy flying around madness. ALSO SOVIETS.

Dungeon Keeper 2 - Sims 2 + D&D + slaps + Theme Dungeon. Great game, and fuck Nvidia for breaking compatibility.

Vietcong - again, features totally ignored by the FPS genre at large. Where's my context-sensitive crouch? My actual prone-movement prone? My chattering charlie gook bastards tea-bagging my corpse? My terrifying tunnel experiences?

[Alyeska]

Master of Orion. I haven't player this game since 2001, but I know that if I had it running on this machine I could get lost in it for hours again. This game is just insanely fun. Perfectly built for its time and it still works great today.

Star Control 2. One of the timless classics from the 486 era. An incredible adventure/exploration space combat game that lets you explore the galaxy and do whatever the hell you feel like. True sandbox style, of its time. You can go anywhere and just do what you want. Combat was incredibly fun.

Wing Commander Privateer. The first open style game that I can think of. You can play the game any way you want flying as a Merchant, Pirate, Bounty Hunter, or just shoot the hell out of anyone.

X-Com UFO Defense. Yet another classic game from the 486 era. Stupidly fun to play as you fight your way through hordes of enemies on increasingly difficult levels. Strategic and tactical level planning.

Every single one of those games has aged very well.

[Gandalf]

Goldeneye: At the time, this was like Jesus' second coming. It had a massively replayable multiplayer, which made the whole thing worth playing into the wee hours of the morning.

Perfect Dark: Nobody thought it possible, but somehow they improved on Goldeneye's multiplayer. It added bots and more interesting weapons.

[The Grim Squeaker]

• Super Mario 64: Still awesome to this day, fun and colourful. (And I still hate that goddamn rabbit).
• Baldur's Gate 2 (And the throne of Bhaal). Yes, AD&D has gone the way of the lemming, but the game is still deep, big, epic and lets you have a real party full of NPCs.
• Tetris: Nuff said.
• Starcraft: The 12 unit selection sucks, Battlenet is controlled by Korean chaebols, Blizzard reuses the betrayal plotline...You know what? The game is still fun, the plot is interesting, and Tassadar ramming the Overmind will never get old.
• The Monkey Island games. (Well, the third one at least. 2 is good as well, but it's interface is just so damn old...)
• Red Alert 2 has aged quite well, it's the only C&C game I find myself replaying these days. (As opposed to even the modern C&C3 which doesn't make me want to re-install it).
• Half life 2. You say this game is 4 years old sir? Bugger off, and take your Crysis nonsense with you!
• Tyrian 2000, and "Raptor: Call of the Shadows". 2D will never die! The Sidescrollers live on. In me. (And you. Go get those games!).
• Fallout 2. I'd nominate Fallout 1 as well, but it lacks a "get all" button . Still deep, good and openended.
• Broken sword 1&2 look beautiful, play well, and have a great interface. (And are fun).
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My favourite of the games (Yeah, Sonic 3 is fun, as is adventure and S&N. But it's hard to get S&N/S3 to work ).
• Mario. Any Mario (platformer). Yeah, double entry, so what?

I'm forgetting (Or simply not including) way too many games, but that's due to my senility .

[Uraniun235]

I still enjoy playing Red Storm Rising. Yes, it's a simplistic sub-sim, but it has just enough detail and variety to keep gameplay interesting without bogging down into oppressive realism.

[General Zod]

Megaman 2 - One of the best platformers out there that isn't a Mario game, really. I even hear they remade it for the PS3 and 360 but called it Megaman 9.

Phantasy Star IV - Easily one of the better JRPGs out there that isn't a Squeenix title from back in the day. Great soundtrack going for it, too.

[Ryan Thunder]

Descent 3. Six degrees of freedom in a gunship with the durability of a fucking battle tank. Easy to mod, too.

[Nephtys]

Wing Commander 1, 2 and 3. Each revolutionary in their own way. WC1 for being THE spectacle that made everyone want Soundblaster.

WC2 was a cinematic masterpeice of graphics and sound for the 286/386.

WC3 was Mark Hamill blowing up puppets with glorious full motion video, with Malcom McDowell and John Rhys-Davies being awesome.

Raptor call of the Shadows - An excellent Shareware title in the 386 era, one of the best 'top-down' shooters for the PC of it's time. It wins high marks for having a lot of purchasable weapons that do different things, and not being a 'Oh shit! My plane goes down in one hit! WEAVE THROUGH BULLETS' type Japanese Arcane Quarter-Muncher.

Scorched Earth - THE Definitive 'tank' game. Picking your angle/power/weapon was never so fun! And even now, with Worms being the only game of the genre left, this classic has appeal.

Strife - The ultimate Evolution of the doom Engine, it was a pretty fun game with an interesting plot and powerups for a Doom game.

System Shock - Pure atmosphere. Sure, the controls were garbage, but SHODAN was unique, you had a lot of weapons, tools, drugs, whatnot to make it a very unique game for it's era. Crawling through vents, then jet-booting with rocketskates to bash a security camera, before going into that insanely annoying wireframe 'first-person-haxor' mode was cool for the time.

[Schuyler Colfax]

[*]Mario. Any Mario (platformer). Yeah, double entry, so what?

Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Sunshine say you're full of shit.

I'm going to throw in Tetris Attack.

It was the first video game I had ever gotten. Shit, I still have it. It came out for the Gameboy Pocket. Its a simple puzzle game. The pieces come up all together and you just have to match 3 or more of the same pieces together to get them to disappear. Simple, but fun, and it does get challenging. And you didn't have to listen to the same goddamn music every level. This game had a shit load of modes, multiplayer, and an actual story mode. And for some reason it had Yoshi. An updated version of this game came out for the DS, and it's called Planet Puzzle League, it adds on to what the the original game had and then some. Well you don't get a story, but I'm not missing that, but no Yoshi in this one.

[Coalition]

Startopia - cheesy assistant, cheesy aliens (each is a walking stereotype, so you know how to hire/please them easily), and lots of fun in sandbox mode. Sometimes I set up a solo space station, and just build it up.

[Isolder74]

A few that haven't been mentioned yet

Sam and Max Hit the road
Day of the Tentacle

[RogueIce]

• Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My favourite of the games (Yeah, Sonic 3 is fun, as is adventure and S&N. But it's hard to get S&N/S3 to work ).

Do you mean S&K as in Sonic & Knuckles? If so, I don't know what kind of version you got but my STH3&K (the 'combined' version) always works great. Still does whenever I plug in my Genesis. And it is an awesome game. Even if I hate Carnival Night Zone with that stupid bouncing/rotating platform puzzle thing you need to do to advance.

And since you brought up N64 games, Mario Kart 64 is all kinds of win. I love the original Super Mario Kart but MK64 is just awesome. I haven't played any subsequent Mario Karts though...

Sam and Max Hit the road

Seconded. I wish I had bought the game back in the day. Alas...

For my own picks, I'd say the Quest for Glory, Police Quest, and Space Quest series from Sierra were great. Some of the older ones can take a workaround or two to deal with, but I have managed to play them. They're fun, amusing as all get out, and they can have decent stories when they want to (QFG moreso). FYI, never really played King's Quest though I hear good things of it.

Finally, I'll mention the always classic TIE Fighter. And X-Wing which preceeded it.

[Ted C]

Pigskin for the Sega Genesis. That game was a blast.

[MKSheppard]

Damn. Thanks you guys for reminding me of games I had missed in my initial listing:

Fallout 1 and 2 for PC
Both games are fun, even if some elemnents of the game are absurd, like finding that G-11s and G-11 ammo is plentiful 80 years after a nuclear holocaust.

Wing Commander 1/2/3 for PC
I'll second this. I started playing Wing Commander 1 again through DOSBOX, and it's still playable and fun; the ship combat graphics are decent and detailed for the time; and stand up well, in the same vein that Doom sprites stand up today. Wing Commander 4 is sort of the odd duck; Origin made it much harder to dogfight in compared to WC3; I always ended up using missiles or relying on my wingmen to kill people; and you were essentially locked into Chris Robert's idea of how things should go down. That wasn't a problem with WC1/2/3, since you were in a war to the death against the Kilrathi, and that kind of automatically limits your story options. But with the plotline of WC4, it just got really constrained and felt contrived.

System Shock
Seconding it again. I recently (as in six months or less ago) played through a slightly modified System Shock (0.8d of SYSTEMSHOCK-Portable); and it was still fun as hell.

TIE Fighter
I actually prefer this over X-Wing because Lucasarts actually learned from X-Wing and dialed down the total insane difficulty level of X-Wing, meaning you could actually now pass flight training, and the missions now went down to "tough, we can beat it in a few tries" level, as opposed to "Puny Jedi scum" level of X-Wing.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'll throw out Age of Empires (I onced played it for almost 14 hours in a day).

Also, while I'm not sure its influential or well-known enough to count as a classic, I'll throw out the Exile series (shit graphics but they do the job of conveying the story/facillitating gameplay, can get a little repetative, but the setting, story, and the easy to figure out gameplay make it reasonably playable).

[Nephtys]

I suppose I'll toss out classics from the 'Later Era' of games, when CDs became standard, yet things still were good. Before our modern era of 'Graphics first, screw gameplay', where the world's most important gamers to companies were obsessive Koreans. These games all looked lovely in their day, had quality gameplay, and were just fun.

Crusader: No Remorse and No Regreat (I vaguely remember them being pretty satisfying)
Terra Nova: Task Force Centauri (It's like the only Power Armor game done right!)
Crimson Skies (I bloody love Crimson Skies. When was the last time you hopped onto the wing of your plane, jumped onto an enemy bomber and hijacked it, tossing the crew out the hatch?)
Homeworld 1/2 (As mentioned before)
Freespace 1/2 (The best space sims since the classic Wing Commanders)
Mechwarrior 2/3 (I actually liked 3).
Jagged Alliance 2 (Turn based glory. Plus, hilariously cheesy characters).

[weemadando]

Aliens vs Predator - chockers with features ignored by FPS games in general for years

It's fucking 10 years later and no one else has done deforming/conforming explosions - WHY THE FUCK NOT?

And that engine looked SUPER HAWT at the time.

Vietcong - again, features totally ignored by the FPS genre at large. Where's my context-sensitive crouch? My actual prone-movement prone? My chattering charlie gook bastards tea-bagging my corpse? My terrifying tunnel experiences?

The crouch in Vietcong remains one of it's most under-rated features - it was fucking awesome how when you crouched behind something, you actually crouched BEHIND IT and if you raised your gun, you popped up above it. It was a working FPS cover system way before anyone else had even made 3rd person cover work...

Oh, and having an airstrike/artillery support system that wasn't "point the big honking circle of death which we are drawing on the ground for you in UI at the enemy was nice too". I must admit that the first time I used it (in the mortar training) I shelled my own position, so used to the idiot-proofing of other games was I.

[CaptHawkeye]

Shep and Stark pretty much hit the ones I was going to say. Vietcong was actually a pretty cool game. During the short Vietnam video game rush of 03-05 it was pretty easily the best of them. Yet it got sidelined and ignored by other shitastic Nam' games. Which never made any sense to me because Vietcong actually had really good atmosphere, especially in those tunnel missions.

Man, Battlezone was a fucking cool game. The game was just bursting with content and all of it even made sense. Anyone else remember the game had both an American AND Soviet campaign, and they weren't just opposite pages of the same story? Yeah, the Soviet campaign ends with your space tanks having a May Day parade over the broken hulks of American and Alien hover tanks.

[Stark]

Terra Nova: Task Force Centauri (It's like the only Power Armor game done right!)

It's sad that LGS did a hardsuit simulator-type game a decade ago and nobody's done it again since. Remember, super-advanced armour = some HUD doodads and regenerating health, not integrated weapons, battlespace management, radars, planning, etc. PFFFT!

Shit a dick, how could I forget Thief? I dig so hard on that game it's unhealthy. It's LESS playable now than SS1-2 due to the 'rooms are simple polys with bad textures' level design, but it's still got the only lockpick system that doesn't annoy and generates tension, cool story, NON-SILENT PROTAGANIST, and steampunk without being super-dooper lame. When I was in highschool we didn't need the fucking game to PAUSE so I could play a totally unrelated minigame!

[Sriad]

Syndicate, Syndicate Plus, and Syndicate Wars, in which you control a squad of four murderous cyborg assassins for megacorps hellbent on world domination. You don't know what power is until you've Persuade-a-tron'ed a hundred civilians to pick up laser rifles and slaughter a rival Corp's mercenaries to nab their top secret plans!

Edit: I should also mention the sweet Blade-Runner aesthetic. Also the limitless joy to be derived in the strategic deployment of invisible razorwire. So many weapons, such hard missions...

Edit2: not sure what the board policy is on Abandonware, but the Syndicate series is, and not hard to find.

[Stark]

Since 'abandonware' is a made-up excuse for piracy only believed by idiots and liars, probably not much. And neither hold up well, sadly; Syndicate is a prisoner of it's low res (like a lot of older games, like UFO and MoO) and Syndicate Wars broke a lot of the core ideas. Fun games in the day, though.

[The Grim Squeaker]

• Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My favourite of the games (Yeah, Sonic 3 is fun, as is adventure and S&N. But it's hard to get S&N/S3 to work ).

Do you mean S&K as in Sonic & Knuckles?

DOH! Yeah...

If so, I don't know what kind of version

"Sonic mega collection pack" on the PC. I've never had a genesis, I played the game on a console only at a friend's house in the UK when I was 8.

you got but my STH3&K (the 'combined' version) always works great. Still does whenever I plug in my Genesis. And it is an awesome game.

Especially with saves..

Even if I hate Carnival Night Zone with that stupid bouncing/rotating platform puzzle thing you need to do to advance.

That, and the motherfucking pyramids. (I gave up when I realized there was a second carnival zone on my S&K replay after S3. I feel like giving it another try though...)

And since you brought up N64 games, Mario Kart 64 is all kinds of win. I love the original Super Mario Kart but MK64 is just awesome. I haven't played any subsequent Mario Karts though...

Starfox 64 forever! And I still haven't managed to get a copy of that game for my N64 anywhere... .

Sam and Max Hit the road

Seconded. I wish I had bought the game back in the day. Alas...

Go play Season 1 and 2 of Sam and Max .

[*]Mario. Any Mario (platformer). Yeah, double entry, so what?

Super Mario Sunshine say you're full of shit.

Edited for accuracy