Hi guys,
Today I’d like to ask you all a few questions. 🙂
What retro games are you currently playing and on what platforms are you playing them on?
Do you play them on a real computer/console or via emulation?
I’m looking forward to hearing from you, so please leave a comment below for everyone to see. Maybe someone will get inspiration to try a new game or return to an old favourite? Thanks in advance guys. 🙂
As for myself, I’m currently hooked on old-school RPG’s after the release of the awesome Legend of Grimrock. Due to this game, I’ve installed several classics on my Amiga and I’ve just started playing Eye of the Beholder again. It’s a nice looking game and very atmospheric.
I’m also getting into the Flight of the Amazon Queen and my mission is to complete this game whatever the costs. 😉 If you like point and click adventure games, there’s a big chance that you’ll enjoy this one. It’s very good, at least in my opinion. 🙂
Old School Game Blog 
I have been getting back into a lot of the old LucasArts stuff. Thanks to Steam I downloaded The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Loom, etc in a nice LucasArts package deal.
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Hi L.H Forsberg,
Thanks for your comment. 🙂
Ahh.. that sounds nice. I haven’t played The Dig, but I love the Indiana Jones games. I’ve got the original Amiga version of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. Have you completed Loom before? I’ve always thought that Loom looked like a difficult game to play.
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If you get a chance to play Dig I highly recommend it. The game play, graphics, voice acting, and score all helped to make it one of my favorite games.
I haven’t gotten around to Loom just yet, but will certainly let you know.
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Hi mate,
Thanks for your advice concerning The Dig. I’m definitely going to follow your advice on this one. Checked out some graphics from the game and it looks very good. Will be fun with a new game to play! Right now I’m playing the Flight of the Amazon Queen, which I aim to finish in the near future. It’s great fun – good humour in that game.
That sounds good. Looking forward to hear about Loom.
Have a good Lucasarts-gaming day! 😉
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Got “Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire” paused on the N64 right now. I didn’t realise it was also on the PC until I was several levels in. Would have played that version if I knew. I always prefer to play the PC version of something if possible but I’m not a fan of emulating other systems. Just doesn’t feel the same.
I’ll probably give “Flight of the Amazon Queen” a go sometime. The point & click games that I like, I really like.
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Hi Vyothric,
Cool that you’re considering the Flight of the Amazon Queen. If you like to play it on the PC, you can run it through ScummVM with full speech. 😀 You can download it freely from the ScummVM site if I remember correctly.
Never played that Star Wars game. Is it good?
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I’ve got ScummVM installed, naturally, so I’ll be doing just that.
I tend to like Star Wars games so I liked Shadows of the Empire. The controls are a bit naff and obviously I’d be better off playing it on the PC, but I still enjoyed it.
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Nice. Enjoy FOTAQ! Beware of the in-game lederhosen.. 😉
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Head Over Heels on the ZX Spectrum.
The humble machine turns 30 tomorrow (April 23rd) so I’ve been working through a lot of games that I always enjoyed playing as a kid. Forget the old Spectrum v Commodore rivalry for one day lets call a truce and all download ZX Spin and some games from The World Of Spectrum and enjoy the retro fest. For some other game suggestions – Exolon, Cybernoid, Manic Miner, Action Force 2 and Three Weeks In Paradise.
The Speccy was the machine I grew with and it will always be my number 1 gaming system. Even after all these years playing games – even under emulation – is great. Although there is something to be said for loading the games from tape!
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Hello there Phendrena,
Many thanks for your comment.
Hehe.. you’ve got a deal! The truce is on.. 😉 Let us all wish the ZX Spectrum a happy 30th birthday today! 🙂
Thanks for the game suggestions. I’m familiar with Head over Heels and Manic Miner. I like Head over Heels.
How long does it in average take to load a game from tape on the ZX Spectrum?
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Head Over Heels would load in around 5 mins as the game data isn’t that large. An epic load like Carrier Command using a full 128k took around 12 mins!! It was epic. Even more so if you got the dreaded R: Tape loading error!!
Most emulators will allow you to properly load games in so you can relive the glory days…
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Hi Phendrena,
Thanks for the reply. I was amazed to read that Carrier Command took around 12 minutes to load! That is a LONG time. 😀 The error-message you mentioned, does that one pop up after it has finished loading? If it does, I’m sure it must be very annoying. I remember that happened on the C64 and it was always disappointing.
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Yeah, it’s a really long time!! Yes, the dreaded error tended to appear after the game had got to the end of it’s loading – most annoying!!!
The joys and fun of messing around with the azimuth alignment on the tape head!! 🙂
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Oh no, that must be a horrible experience. 😦 Still, it makes one appreciate the speed of a 5.25″ floppy disk drive. 😀
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It wasn’t a fun message to get but it was one of the pitfalls of messing around with the azimuth tape head alignment!!
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As a World of WarCraft player I’m sorta going back and playing some of the older games Blizzard made like WarCraft Orcs and Humans, WarCraft II, the original StarCraft and Diablo, etc.
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Hi Nate,
Thanks for commenting and for visiting my blog. 🙂
The games you listed are excellent. I’ve played a lot of Warcraft RTS in the past and enjoyed it a lot. Never been into the Online RPG’s though.
Do you play the original StarCraft Online?
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I have been playing Final Fantasy V on PS1 which is part of the Final Fantasy Anthology release, Shining Force I, and Shining Force II on my Xbox 360 which was released through the Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection package. No emulation for the moment since the designated comp I have for that is down.
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Hi mate,
Nice to hear that you’re playing the Shining Force games. Does the SEGA collection you bought contain many games?
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There is a ton of retro Genesis games on it. Sonic, Shining Force, Phantasy Star II – IV, Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc.
Here is a link to the full list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic%27s_Ultimate_Genesis_Collection
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Now that sounds like a package worth buying. It oozes quality – perfect for the SEGA enthusiast. 🙂 Loved Golden Axe btw.. epic game. Thanks for the link.
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A $5 SNES game called Super Strike Eagle. So far it’s been pretty crap, but ah well. And I’ve been playing this on my actual SNES BTW.
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Hi BRIK,
Many thanks for your comment. 🙂
That’s great! I presume your collection of SNES games have grown with one hundred percent after that purchase? 😉
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Haha! No, I did buy some F1 game not too long ago, but that was terrible as well. I should probably stop buy $5 games.
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Hehe.. that might be a good idea, although it is always fun to buy something when it is cheap – it often feels like a real bargain. Have done the same many times myself. These days I tend to focus more on quality.
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In the past week done quite a bit of retro’ing.
– Tempest 2000 on Jaguar (because just picked up the game)
– Rtype, Bloodmoney and Project X on the Amiga. Still playing around with WHDLOAD. Started out by checking out Project X, them went into a bit of a Shumps zone. RTypre plays a lot better than I remember it, although the colours on the 2nd level look strange. Maybe its the cable I am using to connect to a LCD.
– Ms Pacman on Mame, my son beat my high-score so had to get it back 🙂 (we are both not that great on it)
This week will be all speccy
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Hi mate,
Your literally playing all of my favourite schmups! 🙂 Good to see another fan of R-Type and Project X having with fun with the old classics.
Good luck with beating your sons score in Ms. Pacman. It’s fun with some competition. 🙂
Also, congratulations on the 30th birthday of the ZX Spectrum! Are you celebrating the occassion with some gaming?
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Finally beat my sons score, so he is gutted. week of zxspectrum laying 🙂
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laying = playing. bloody laptop keyboard 🙂
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Laptop keyboards sucks. Old-school IBM ones rule! 😉
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Haha! That’s awesome! 😀 I’m sure he’s practicing all he can to beat you again..
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Been mostly playing Buggy Boy for the Amiga 500 over the weekend as I’ve been taking part in the Lemon Amiga and EAB gaming competition! Currently I’m using an emulator though as my A500 still isn’t working, although I do prefer to play in the real hardware when I can!
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Hi James Hare,
Thanks for commenting. 🙂
Nice to see that you’re participating the game competition at Lemon and EAB. Have you managed to get a good score in Buggy Boy? Do you play for EAB or Lemon? I wish you luck in the competitions – give’em hell! 😉
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I’m with the Lemoners 😉 Managed to get an average score so far which has put me just short of the scoring zone, still plenty of time to improve though 🙂
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Hi James,
Is the competition still open for entries or is it currently reserved for those that have registered so far?
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Just played through the original version of Kings Quest 1, now on to Kings Quest 2. A buddy and I decided to start playing all the classic adventure games and document the process on a blog we threw together last week.
http://www.adventuregameclub.com
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Hi Johnny Perkins,
Many thanks for commenting and for visiting my blog. Much appreciated! 🙂
I’m definitely going to check out your blog. Sounds like an interesting project. Are you going to focus on Sierra games or will you play others as well? Completing the Kings Quest games is no walk in the park. 🙂 Thumbs up for completing the first one!
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I have an old laptop based on a intel 486 chip which is perfect for playing old DOS games. I’ve been using that rescently and enjoying Police Quest I, Wing Commander, Loom and quite of a lot of Microproses’s F-19. I also have my Master System setup on my geek desk so it’s been outrun, Wonderboy, Shinobi, Alex Kidd (MW) and Transbot.
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Hey Stiggy!
Sounds interesting. What sort of OS does the laptop run? Is it Windows or only DOS?
Many good games you list there.. makes my mouth water! 😉
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Hi mate,
At the moment it’s running DOS 6.2 although I’ve had Windows 3.1 and Win95 running on it o.k.
Hehe, this thing weighs a ton though and is well over an inch thick…but then again, compared to PC’s of old i guess even this brick could be classed as portable 🙂
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That’s cool! It’s been a long time since I last used DOS. I remember many people using it on their 486’s in the past. Wonder if people still makes stuff for DOS?
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Recently wrote a post about my most memorable point-and-click adventure game MIDI tunes – which turned out to be the ones I enjoyed most anyway.
Here it is: http://www.jiksun.com/2012/08/jiksuns-top-9-killer-old-school-adventure-game-soundtracks/
Been replaying the special edition Monkey Islands on my iPad recently – not quite as awesome as the first time round on PC (X years ago). Same goes with the new episodic Sam & Max vs. Sam & Max Hit The Road.
Thanks for helping to keep old school games alive!
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Hi there Jiksun,
Thanks for visiting my blog and for commenting. 🙂
Your article concerning old-school adventure game music looks awesome. Going to read it now. 🙂 Would you mind if I reblogged it perhaps?
I agree.. even though the special editions of Monkey Island are good, playing them in the 90’s for the first time was a one of a kind experience.
Old-school gaming rulez! 😀
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Hey there OSGB – thanks! And sure – feel free to reblog my post. I actually just moved my blog over to wordpress.com (self-hosting was a bit of a pain) so the URL of the post has changed to:
http://jiksun.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/top-9-killer-old-school-adventure-game-tunes/
Please credit that link when you reblog – thanks! And keep up the good writing!
Cheers,
Jiksun
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Thanks for that. 🙂 I think the re-blog looked nice. Hopefully it will bring over some new readers to your blog.
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It did indeed – appreciate it! Now trying to install Windows on my Mac partition so I can install some games… all this talk of old school gaming makes me want to try and finish SQ4 🙂
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That sounds great! 🙂 Hope the installation went well. Can’t go wrong with SQ4!
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