Community RPG Codex Best Vintage RPG Poll

[Darth Roxor]

Tags: RPG Codex; RPG Codex Awards

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The ultimate showdown has arrived.

Community member Deuce Traveler has started a poll to reveal the RPG Codex top vintage RPGs of all time.

The rules are simple. Each participant gets 10 points to spend on a maximum of 5 games from the list painstakingly compiled by the Ring of Prestigious Gentlemen. The list starts with Akalabeth: World of Doom (1980) and the cut-off point is December 1996, aka the release date of Diablo 1 and the beginning of the phenomenon known as The Decline.

The poll will run until the end of 2021, so you have ample time to think about your picks. The game with the highest number of points shall be declared the winner.

Special thanks go to Deuce Traveler for coming up with the contest, and the Ring of Prestigious Gentlemen (Decado, mondblut, ERYFKRAD, Fowyr, Zed Duke of Banville, JarlFrank, Dorateen, octavius, zwanzig_zwoelf) for offering counsel on the format and the list of RPGs.

What are you waiting for? Go and vote here! To arms!

 

[A horse of course]

Skyrim is vintage.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Bless you Darth Roxor

 

[Roguey]

Not a looker in the bunch. Lilura was right about pre-API-era RPGs.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Not a looker in the bunch. Lilura was right about pre-API-era RPGs.

you are entitled to your opinioun

even if it's wrong and gay

 

[Grampy_Bone]

which answers will troll roxor the wurst

 

[Outmind]

Wait, so "the decline" started happening before Baldur's Gate, M&M6, Wizardry 8, Arcanum, Morrowind, Fallout 2, Gothic, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Planescape Torment, and Jagged Alliance 2 were released?

You ancientfags need to set your calendars forward by at least four years for this term to be taken seriously.

 

[Diggfinger]

Wait, so "the decline" started happening before Baldur's Gate, M&M6, Wizardry 8, Arcanum, Morrowind, Fallout 2, Gothic, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Planescape Torment, and Jagged Alliance 2 were released?

You ancientfags need to set your calendars forward by at least four years for this term to be taken seriously.

...not to mention Fallout.....1....

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Thank you for this, Comrade Roxor! Love the image, by the way.

 

[Humanophage]

A fairly creative use for a poster to show the threat, but it's too indirect for a propaganda poster. A poster must be straightforward. Here:

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The Great Decline.... a terrible time in gaming history. The silver and gold ages are gone and the future is unknown. Weeb forces muster, ready to fill gaming with VN, bad porn/fan service, and java-like free or mobile gameplay. Soon you'll pine for the days of Disco and Cyber and games so seedy and naughty that only videos are shown on pornhub. (That is until it becomes the NORM and STEAM, GOG and more show the World Decline War Victors as leaders in all gaming genre). The lines are muddied on the start but the decline will never end.

It's a fight to gaming death.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Not a looker in the bunch.

Conan
Albion

 

[Darth Roxor]

A fairly creative use for a poster to show the threat, but it's too indirect for a propaganda poster. A poster must be straightforward.

I wanted to use this one first but the vertical shape didn't look good on the frontpage :D

 

[ERYFKRAD]

That monocle looks wrong though.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Infiltrator SPY as it is on the wrong side???

 

[Konjad]

There are a few decent games on the list, including Darklands, which I love, but... claiming 1996 was the beginning of the decline is retadred to say the least.

The best games in the genre were made past that date and most of entertaining and enjoyable RPGs are also past that date.

I don't know, maybe you just have a weird taste (where RPG = clunky UI), but saying that and pretending to be objective is even more retadred.

In fact look at top RPGs of all time voted on the 'dex. How many of these are from pre-Diablo times?

 

[Maxie]

forcing yourself to like games twice your age isn't very healthy for the gonads

 

[Maxie]

The Great Decline.... a terrible time in gaming history. The silver and gold ages are gone and the future is unknown. Weeb forces muster, ready to fill gaming with VN, bad porn/fan service, and java-like free or mobile gameplay. Soon you'll pine for the days of Disco and Cyber and games so seedy and naughty that only videos are shown on pornhub. (That is until it becomes the NORM and STEAM, GOG and more show the World Decline War Victors as leaders in all gaming genre). The lines are muddied on the start but the decline will never end.

It's a fight to gaming death.

I absolutely refuse to play games without big titty girls voiced by Japanese voice actresses

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[Maxie]

I absolutely refuse to play games without big titty girls voiced by Japanese voice actresses

Here you go, I found a whole repository of those:

neither my fault nor my problem that your western women sound like old truckers smoking three packs a day

 

[Jaedar]

There are a few decent games on the list, including Darklands, which I love, but... claiming 1996 was the beginning of the decline is retadred to say the least.

The best games in the genre were made past that date and most of entertaining and enjoyable RPGs are also past that date.

The decline is not necessarily a statement of low quality having been reached, but rather a statement that the descent into low quality has begun. It is entirely consistent to say that the decline began in 1996, but the best games were made in the year 2000 (or whatever). You just need to keep in mind that games are developed over a period of years, and the expectations of players/developers/publishers also introduces lag into the system.

Imo the period of "everything is shit" began in 2004 (the year troika died, even if they didn't officially close until early 2005). But the decline must have begun before that, for how else could we go from good to bad in a smooth way?

 

[Roguey]

Conan

Nice pixels, but that gameplay looks awful.

Albion

I played the demo and didn't think much of it.

Nov 20, 2019 at 3:10 AM - @Roguey: I did it, I completed the Albion demo. God what a terrible game
Nov 20, 2019 at 3:13 AM - @Roguey: The writing and the blobber dungeons/villages are the nadir. The combat's pretty bad too
Nov 20, 2019 at 3:14 AM - @Roguey: I couldn't afford a compass because the game expects you to grind for money
Nov 20, 2019 at 3:15 AM - @Roguey: "Solve this murder" *turns out the guy hired a guy to kill himself when he could have just wandered off into the wilderness and died to a random encounter*

Nov 23, 2019 at 8:31 PM - @Roguey: Anyway it's garbage because a) terrible, longwinded writing b) fpp is difficult to navigate even with a compass c) shops open and close at certain times and for some reason time blazes by in top-down mode d) not much "role playing" to it e) you're expected to grind if you want to buy anything f) a lot of superflurous area design/items to pick up

Nov 23, 2019 at 8:32 PM - @Roguey: Oh and g) furrybait

Nov 23, 2019 at 8:36 PM - @Roguey: Oh right another thing that annoyed me was going without sleep for too long made my characters exhausted and stuck and it was fortunate I had another NPC to redestribute the load, otherwise I'd have to lose items or be stuck forever because there was no way to rest at the spot I was at

 

[Dorateen]

Old School's cool.

 

[Humanophage]

A fairly creative use for a poster to show the threat, but it's too indirect for a propaganda poster. A poster must be straightforward.

I wanted to use this one first but the vertical shape didn't look good on the frontpage :D

This is a lot more appropriate. My initial reaction to the current one was that Codexers were being depicted as POC.

 

[Mortmal]

There are a few decent games on the list, including Darklands, which I love, but... claiming 1996 was the beginning of the decline is retadred to say the least.

The best games in the genre were made past that date and most of entertaining and enjoyable RPGs are also past that date.

The decline is not necessarily a statement of low quality having been reached, but rather a statement that the descent into low quality has begun. It is entirely consistent to say that the decline began in 1996, but the best games were made in the year 2000 (or whatever). You just need to keep in mind that games are developed over a period of years, and the expectations of players/developers/publishers also introduces lag into the system.

Imo the period of "everything is shit" began in 2004 (the year troika died, even if they didn't officially close until early 2005). But the decline must have begun before that, for how else could we go from good to bad in a smooth way?

We got a thread already on that . Decline is a question of money , it started with the mmos and people abandonning single player rpgs ,companies like ssi producing cheap low effort stuff to not starve, then xbox and mainstreaming. For sure post 2004 everything is shit and it only get better with kickstarters. Still i dont see many big budgets rpgs, the only one is BG3 and taking far too long already.
CRPG is one of the worst hobby, stagnant ,with hardly anything released.

 

[Jaedar]

CRPG is one of the worst hobby, stagnant ,with hardly anything released.

CRPGs are gloriously vibrant compared to the other codex favorite genre: strategy games.