.

[sigard]

.

 

[soulburner]

I'm sorry, but your opinion about Doom makes the whole thread series invalid.

 

[Lemming42]

Dark Sun and Betrayal at Krondor are ace. Lands of Lore is solid but always felt a little bit like something made without much passion to me - very professionally made and with high production values, but a blobber made simply because blobbers were a thing that might sell.

Doom is exceptional to this day. There is a step down in quality in Shores and Inferno but in their occasional best moments they match or surpass Knee-Deep in the Dead. Amid all these older games with awkward interfaces and control schemes and occasionally needlessly cryptic shit designed to sell strategy guides, there's something wonderful about a game like Doom that's just got everything perfect from a user friendliness perspective, playable with no bullshit and not having to learn some arcane movement system first. One of the relatively rare games of the era where it feels like the game is working with you, rather than against you. If Doom has one big problem, it's that it's piss-easy even on Ultra-Violence. The devs half-assing Nightmare as a joke is annoying because they really should have worked on a higher difficulty level (or two, or three) but instead they just did this asinine teleporting/respawning shit (which could have been a great mechanic if implemented properly) to troll people - and even then the game's easy enough when you realise the trick is to just keep moving. Lame.

On the jRPG side of things I remember liking Secret of Mana but I've not played it in so long that I have no idea if there's any point playing it today or not.

Hyped for 1994, one of the best years ever, and 1996 is close behind (albeit more for console games).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

On my list of best non-RPGs for each year, 1993 is the third of three years with a three-way tie, in this case between Master of Orion, SimCity 2000, and Lemmings 2: Tribes.


Good Amiga-original games released in 1993:

• Ambermoon
• Cannon Fodder
• The Chaos Engine
• Deep Core
• Frontier: Elite II
• Hired Guns
• Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom
• Lemmings 2: The Tribes
• Lionheart
• Perihelion
• Second Samurai
• The Settlers
• Turrican III

Other platforms: Betrayal at Krondor, Cosmology of Kyoto, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Doom, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Lands of Lore, Master of Orion, Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen, Myst, Quest for Glory IV, SimCity 2000, Syndicate, Ultima Underworld II, Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, Unlimited Adventures: Fantasy Construction Kit, Warlords II, and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom

 

[Blaine]

Myst ... Quest for Glory IV

I received Myst from my maternal grandmother for my birthday (which is in December) in 1993, and then QfGIV for Christmas from my parents, also in 1993.

I'd received QfGI VGA and QfGIII for my birthday and/or Christmas in 1992, the year before. 1991 saw me receive Space Quest IV, Wing Commander II, and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (making 1992 probably the overall best year in computer games I'll ever experience in my lifetime); 1990 was Wing Commander plus Secret Missions, and some Carmen Sandiego game. Wing Commander was the first right proper good computer game I'd ever had, and I was obsessed with it well past 1990.

Essentially, I'd receive 2-4 computer games between my birthday and Christmas, then play them for the rest of the year alongside the occasional shareware and possibly one or two non-gift entries. I was entirely happy with this small handful of games, they occupied and satisfied me fully, and I never felt I was missing out, although I received InterAction magazine (Sierra On-Line's official rag) in the mail, could browse through Radio Shack and so on, and knew there were plenty more games out there. Probably the ones I wanted most (but never received) were the various incarnations of MechWarrior that Radio Shack seemingly always had set up with joysticks for customers to try.

 

[agentorange]

Vanilla doom 1 is absolutely not worth playing today, Maybe ,just maybe for historical curiosity only. Reasons? Awful 320x200x256 colours graphics, no mouse looking, no mouse aiming, no jumping, no crouching, no nothing. On top of that autoaming to make things even worse. And basic primitive gameplay.

please kill yourself immediately

 

[Tacgnol]

You are not Excidium.

 

[Ereshkigal]

While vanilla doom 1 is not worth playing today, modern source ports like gzdoom to some extend are. Gzdoom= better resolution and scaling, jumping, mouse looking and mouse aiming, no autoaim.

In two words: git gud.

All of this is great but basic primitive gampelay of doom 1 still apply here. Description of every level is this: find red key, then yellow key, then blue key, then go to exit. Repeat until last level. Oh and sometimes you will grab blue key before red key. Amazing. No story, no lore, no setting to speak of, no cutscenes, no nothing. This was fine in 1993, it is not today.

I can also easily trivialize every game by describing it as a series of dispassionate repetitive actions.

 

[Kev Inkline]

On my list of best non-RPGs for each year, 1993 is the third of three years with a three-way tie, in this case between Master of Orion, SimCity 2000, and Lemmings 2: Tribes.


Good Amiga-original games released in 1993:

• Ambermoon
• Cannon Fodder
• The Chaos Engine
• Deep Core
• Frontier: Elite II
• Hired Guns
• Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom
• Lemmings 2: The Tribes
• Lionheart
• Perihelion
• Second Samurai
• The Settlers
• Turrican III

Wanted to emphasize the best of them.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Bloodnet: And shit graphics on top of that.

Naw man, it looks cool.

 

[v1rus]

On my list of best non-RPGs for each year, 1993 is the third of three years with a three-way tie, in this case between Master of Orion, SimCity 2000, and Lemmings 2: Tribes.


Good Amiga-original games released in 1993:

• Ambermoon
• Cannon Fodder
• The Chaos Engine
• Deep Core
• Frontier: Elite II
• Hired Guns
• Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom
• Lemmings 2: The Tribes
• Lionheart
• Perihelion
• Second Samurai
• The Settlers
• Turrican III

Other platforms: Betrayal at Krondor, Cosmology of Kyoto, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Doom, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Lands of Lore, Master of Orion, Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen, Myst, Quest for Glory IV, SimCity 2000, Syndicate, Ultima Underworld II, Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, Unlimited Adventures: Fantasy Construction Kit, Warlords II, and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom

Ever considered doing a detailed thread like this yourself? Would love to give it a read.

 

[Ash]

While vanilla doom 1 is not worth playing today, modern source ports like gzdoom to some extend are. Gzdoom= better resolution and scaling, jumping, mouse looking and mouse aiming, no autoaim.

In two words: git gud.

All of this is great but basic primitive gampelay of doom 1 still apply here. Description of every level is this: find red key, then yellow key, then blue key, then go to exit. Repeat until last level. Oh and sometimes you will grab blue key before red key. Amazing. No story, no lore, no setting to speak of, no cutscenes, no nothing. This was fine in 1993, it is not today.

I can also easily trivialize every game by describing it as a series of dispassionate repetitive actions.

Indeed. The real experience:

Skillfully kill waves of enemies, bobbing and weaving, managing your weapons and trying not to waste too much health and ammo.
Hunting for secrets to further increase your chances of survival.
Reacting to tricky enemy setups, where the walls suddenly open and you're surrounded by a variety of nasty enemies.
You just got lost! Use the map to navigate the game's pretty solid level design, level design that shits on almost every FPS or game in general released post-2000. As most 90s 3D games do.
Which switch does what? You're not sure so you experiment, use intuition and keep your eyes peeled. The devs likely made some tricky setup.
Hmm I have 90% health and that medkit restores 25%, yet there is a nasty arena fight around the corner. Shall I leave it there for later, or take it as I may need it for this fight?
A maze filled with poison/toxic waste. Great. Time to hunt for the environmental suit and attempt to beat the maze before the timer runs out, while likely getting jumped by enemies. This game is great!

Doom is held back by some of the limitations of early 3D for sure, but nonetheless the design is STILL rock-solid. Focus on what it does offer, not what it does not. Would I recommend it to serious gamers these days? Absolutely, but with a disclaimer to keep an open mind. However, when we factor in mods that address some of the engine limitations, it becomes an undisputable must-play. It is also heavily responsible for the quality 3D game design of the mid-late 90s golden age of gaming we got thereafter, on consoles and PC, before everything became about realism and graphics, then later about optimal game sales/profits at all cost.

 

[anvi]

I love these years of gaming, it humiliates what we have now. Gaming was so different. Here's what I can remember:


7th Guest - It was the start of the CD Rom era when the size of the game didn't really matter anymore. Everything used to have to fit on 1.4 (megabyte) disks... Ok at first, but later on bigger games ended up coming on 20+ disks. It sucked, and each had a chance of failing. So the CD was a big deal, it was equivalent to about 486 floppy disks. Devs could finally make anything they wanted. This game was full of video and audio and stuff. Great atmosphere even today. It's a puzzle game though and they are pretty harsh.

Alone in the Dark 2 - more of the same unfortunately but still pretty good.

Betrayal At Krondor - I agree with sigard but love that they attempted something like this back then. The combat was janky but it was also the first time I had ever seen party based rpg on a grid like that.

Body Blows - fun fighting game! There weren't many back then either. If I remember right, the best stuff like Streetfighter 2 was only on Famicom, Snes, arcades, etc. At first anyway. PC had to wait a while. So games like this were more precious.

Cannon Fodder - I hardly played it but it was very popular at the time.

Doom - It is kind of beyond criticism, like the industrial revolution or something. Wolf3d was like a real playable FPS, and Doom repeated it with a new style, new setting, and improved engine. Improved everything I think. You still couldn't look up and down but enemies could be up on ledges and things and you just had to aim left/right and it would auto shoot up and down for you. It was a big step from Wolf3d which was all just completely flat. Now there were steps and holes in the ground and ledges for enemies to perch on and stuff. Also exploding barrels! It got used a billion times since so it became a cliche but in Doom it was the first time we had ever got to do that. It was satisfying as hell, lead a bunch of those brown turdish looking creatures to a barrel and then BOOM piles of red blood and bones. It was awesome, and you could play it multiplayer by plugging 2 pc's together with a cable or making a network, it was fun as hell and worked great.
I agree with sigard though. If the question is would you want to play it today then no I wouldn't. But it was still like a revolution in gaming.

Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor - This was super slow from technical problems and it was buggy. Like the first time I had seen a game flop and had development hell. But I think it's harsh because if you loved 1 and 2 then this is more of the same. Not as finely tuned but it is bigger and has some new ideas and stuff. I enjoyed it. But it is a sad ending to that epic series..

Frontier: Elite II - Impressive for what it did. But boring and shallow. Decades later the same company would remake it with new graphics and no other improvements at all. And they get away with it!

The Incredible Machine - Way better than Factorio!

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos - I really wanted to like this but I was bored of it tbh.

Lemmings 2: The Tribes - I don't know if it was easier or I was older, but this was the first time I enjoyed it and could beat most of the levels.

The Lost Vikings - I always loved the idea of this game, like a party based platformer. Trine kind of ripped off the idea decades later and made $$$.

MechWarrior - MechWarrior!

MegaRace - I used to play this a lot. It wasn't very good but it looked nice and I used to listen to CDs while I played it. It was pretty zen.

MK2 - badass
Myst - I always hated it but it was good in some ways, whatever.

Police Quest: Open Season (Police Quest 4) - I only bought a CD Rom for this game, and then I ended up not buying the game in the end. I played it years later but it wasn't very good. It failed commercially too I think. I feel sorry for them because the series started promising but they never had the budget to really evolve in the way it needed to. It was a text based Adventure Game and by 2/3 they updated the engine to be graphical icons and stuff. But people were desperate for some action and it couldn't really do that. In the 3rd one there's a shoot out but it involves you clicking a briefcase to open it, clicking on the gun, and then clicking on the guy on the screen. And then it does a cutscene. They were decent Adventure Games but it needed more. Later they made a spinoff called SWAT which was squad based FPS police action. Really fun. But I found it sad that they never managed to blend the two together. PQ4 was the point at which something needed to change.

Prince of Persia 2 - This was really good. Like the first game but with updated graphics, more colorful and a few tweaks to gameplay.

Seal Team - https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...at-how-badass-games-were-30-years-ago.141011/

ShadowCaster - This game was pretty cool. And there was a whole new style of mouse that you could get that I'm pretty sure only worked for this game It was like a mouse on a stick that you can push up and down.

SimCity 2000 - A building game where you build things. And no building game ever since has improved anything.

Strike Commander - I always wanted this game but I never had enough money and didn't know anyone I could copy it from. It still sounds cool.

Stronghold - A building game where you build things, but with some enemies that shoot arrows at your shit.

Subwar 2050 - Awesome and way better than Subnautica.

Super Bomberman - One of the best multiplayer games, especially if you are better than your friends.

Syndicate - Squad based real time strategy action game and really well made. Kind of like no other game ever.

Ridge Racer - My console tard friends loved this apparently.

Ultima Underworld 2 - Wooow

WarWizard - I never played it but listed for historical significance, he went on to make the greatest game ever made.

Wing Commander: Privateer - I never played it but it was super popular. I'd like to play it but it's probably not worth it nowadays.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

No mention of Space Hulk.
I'm dissappointed.

 

[anvi]

I played it but not much, I think because I sucked at it. The one I was hooked on was Space Crusade.

 

[jimster]

Vanilla Doom has horizontal mouselook no?

 

[ValeVelKal]

A lot of very good contributions. I am not sure how everyone could miss Day of the Tentacle.
Little known gem : Transarctica.

A very good year in gaming, indeed.