5 most nostalgic video games?

[Crossroads Inc.]

How about Earthbound?
Does it count if I played it on an emulator long after it came out?

[General Zod]

How about Earthbound?
Does it count if I played it on an emulator long after it came out?

before the middle of high school

I translated that to mean games you actually played before high school, not long after they were released.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Posting again because I intended to include this, but the actual name slipped my mind for the longest time:

The Space Quest series, most memorable to me being Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon.

It was simple enough that even young me with the limited attention span that I had managed to make decent headway and laugh at some of the sci-fi and other parodies the game was chock full of.

[Artemas]

Master of Orion 2
Escape Velocity
Imperialism
Baldur's Gate 2
Goldeneye

[The Jester]

World Class Leaderboard
Archon
Suicide Strike
Wing Commander 2
Prince of Persia

[MKSheppard]

It was simple enough that even young me with the limited attention span that I had managed to make decent headway and laugh at some of the sci-fi and other parodies the game was chock full of.

SCUMMSOFT! ELMO PUG!

ROCK SOCK EM ROBOTS!

[Starglider]

Space Quest 3 was my favourite one of the series. Nice clean design, didn't have the crippling technical shortcomings of the earlier games, nice Hitch Hikers Guide style game world. 4 was over-complicated and kinda grimdark, 5 is my second favourite but a little too cartoony and not as funny.

[The Jester]

Of the Sierra "Quest" games, my fondest memories were with playing Quests for Glory 1 and 2 (I actually never played any of the series beyond two). I liked the addition of combat and character stats coupled with the alternative solutions to many puzzles based on your character class/skills you've developed. Furthermore, your character could be carried over from one game to the next, which gave you a stronger connection to the character as he progressed. There was also a more open gameworld to explore and a lot less linearity (at least in the first one) in how you could go about it which was really a big change.

Of course, with the addition of stats and the need to develop skills for each subsequent game, there became a strong need to grind (especially for things like climb and throw), but when you're only 11 years old, time is something you have in a lot more abundance, so you don't notice it so much.

Overall, I felt it was a big step forward in "Quest" games and really the most notable games from Sierra during that era.

[Korvan]

Man, if it's before the middle of high school, I'm limited to Apple ][ games.

1. Ultima 4
2. Rescue Raiders
3. Captain Goodnight
4. Evolution
5. Aztec

[Marcus Aurelius]

Arcades:

Space Duel (an advanced Asteroids variant with a two player mode)
Red Baron
Star Wars (preferably the cockpit version)

Nostalgia for a bad game:

Dragon's Lair. Shit I hated laserdisc games.

8-bit consoles / home computers:

River Raid (mostly on Atari 800XL)
Minestorm on Vectrex

I didn't personally own a VIC20 or C64, so although I played a lot of games on them by my friends' houses I don't have too much nostalgia for any.

Atari ST:

Sid Meier's Pirates!
Universal Military Simulator
Imperium (an early 4x game)

PC:

Civilization
Master of Orion
UFO: Enemy Unknown

Better stop here. The rest are less than 15 year old so no proper nostalgia yet possible

[Stofsk]

Moo and StarCon2 are two games I really feel nostalgic over. Mainly because they haven't really been remade yet (Moo kinda-sorta was with Galciv2 but in a weird way, while I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken the kind of space-based high-adventure with cheesy humour that StarCon2 had and remade into a new game).

[Marcus Aurelius]

Moo and StarCon2 are two games I really feel nostalgic over. Mainly because they haven't really been remade yet (Moo kinda-sorta was with Galciv2 but in a weird way, while I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken the kind of space-based high-adventure with cheesy humour that StarCon2 had and remade into a new game).

I don't feel nostalgic for Star Control 2, because you can still play Ur-Quan Masters, and it's as good and in some ways even better than the original. Of course theoretically you can still play MoO and Civilization as well in DOSBox, but only if you still have the disks or you have managed to get them somewhere. Also playing them now would not make much sense for them being so badly outdated, but you can still feel nostalgic for the original experience. The first system I played Civ on was a 10 MHz 8086 (yes, really) and it took a long time between turns despite it being whopping 2x faster than the original IBM PC...

[Stofsk]

I couldn't play Moo or Civ or those sort of games because I don't have the discs and the computer I had Moo and Moo2 on is now destroyed/dismantled/recycled/whatevered. It also had Starcon2 on it but I guess I could play Ur-Quan Masters.

I suppose the point though is these are games that were a big deal way back when and I haven't played them in years but I feel nostalgic over them.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Civ-1 still works if I play it on my old OS9 computer for Mac.
That gameI really do have fond memories of, I am rather proud I still have the orignal box with instruction book and the 8 friggen diskets it took the load the couple of megs the first game was

[Marcus Aurelius]

Civ-1 still works if I play it on my old OS9 computer for Mac.
That gameI really do have fond memories of, I am rather proud I still have the orignal box with instruction book and the 8 friggen diskets it took the load the couple of megs the first game was

It came on 800 KB diskettes for Mac? Because I'm fairly certain it did not take eight 1.44 MB diskettes, or at least the PC version was not that big. A game of more than 10 megs would have been massive in 1991.

[Stark]

Civ fit on a single 1.44 unless I've gone totally mad. It's certainly only like 900kb when playable.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Brian Fargo: damn fun awesome buggy as all hell great shit.
darklands: a really good c rpg with a nice/nasty gritty feel, too bad that it was all in there with characters ageing, and taking realistic time periods for you to travel across europe mostly on foot. (you would die of old age before you got half way there)

wampus: proving I am a really old git
ASCII TREK: I still have this network game in hardcopy C++ (damn I'm old)
Rogue/nethack/moria: damn fun when it came out

png: my first consol game

[Stark]

Dude, there is no fucking way you'd die of old age crossing the playable area in Darklands (ps, mostly just Germany) on foot. The game's horribly buggy (don't save outside of inns) but things like Daggerfall were way 'larger' (if you count kilometer on kilometer of absolutely nothing as 'big'.

[RogueIce]

Of the Sierra "Quest" games, my fondest memories were with playing Quests for Glory 1 and 2 (I actually never played any of the series beyond two). I liked the addition of combat and character stats coupled with the alternative solutions to many puzzles based on your character class/skills you've developed. Furthermore, your character could be carried over from one game to the next, which gave you a stronger connection to the character as he progressed. There was also a more open gameworld to explore and a lot less linearity (at least in the first one) in how you could go about it which was really a big change.

Of course, with the addition of stats and the need to develop skills for each subsequent game, there became a strong need to grind (especially for things like climb and throw), but when you're only 11 years old, time is something you have in a lot more abundance, so you don't notice it so much.

Overall, I felt it was a big step forward in "Quest" games and really the most notable games from Sierra during that era.

QFG1 is definately open, though sometimes I think a little too open: there were times where I really wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing next, and there was really nothing to push you forward. I think they went a little too far in linear design for QFG2, but after that I think they struck a good balance of open exploration, while every so often giving you something to nudge you along your primary quest.

An excellent series, though. Definately ranks up there for my nostalgia.

[Jade Falcon]

Dude, there is no fucking way you'd die of old age crossing the playable area in Darklands (ps, mostly just Germany) on foot. The game's horribly buggy (don't save outside of inns) but things like Daggerfall were way 'larger' (if you count kilometer on kilometer of absolutely nothing as 'big'.

Wasn't The Elder Scrolls:Arena, an even bigger area, even though the vast majority of it was absolutely desolate. It also had amusing things like breaking into houses and finding monsters like Minotaurs inside.

Daggerfall, I think that was a game that was before its time and perhaps too ambitious. The initial release was bugged as hell, whereas you could join multiple knightly and priestly orders as well as the Fighters and Mages guild, the thieves guild and the Dark Brotherhood. all at once. The downside being you couldn't really progress in rank.

Another game I recall playing for hours was the Ultima 7 saga. I got it in the 'collection' box which was Ultima 7:Black Gate, Serpent Isle, and the two expansion packs.