I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. There are games we remember playing as children — like Mario and Zelda — and then there are the more obscure games that somehow made it into our collections as children, games we can’t quite remember playing, but just sit there at the back of our minds. I want to talk about them.
I have the vaguest memories of a game called The Wild Bunch. Basically a Cowboy simulator that ran on text input. There was a poker mini-game that was super fun, and a gunfight mini-game that I could never, ever work out. I always lost.
The interesting thing about this game is that no-one ever talks about it. I don’t know anyone else who actually played it. Therefore my memories haven’t been allowed to form around discussions, or endless remakes or re-releases. This game exists only in my memory really. And that’s kinda cool.
Does anyone else here have a game like that?
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155 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Games You Can’t Quite Remember”
I have vague memories of a turn based strategy on PC during the 90s. It came with a huge foldout map and for some reason, the middle units were always frozen solid in my game. The only other thing I can remember about it, is that it was a hex grid north vs south game – any ideas?
edit: Found it! It was Dark Legions – guess I got the hex grid part wrong :S
Sounds like Battle Isle.
Nah – should have also put that it was in a dark fantasy setting.
There’s all these NES games that I absolutely love and have specific memories of but couldn’t tell you their names at all.
I remember playing a really rather odd original Playstation isometric shooter thing where you had to shoot tonnes and tonnes of aliens. I can only remember the second level when you were on some science facility sliding down the side of a hill and firing weird but powerful guns.
This sounds kind of like Loaded, but I could be wrong.
or reLoaded?
Sounds like Project Overkill. Really fun game at the time 🙂
Yeah plenty on Commodore 64 – had a boxful of games that came with it and I must have played them all. When I try and think back on particular ones I loved I just remember bits and pieces, bits of music, cover art for the text adventures, frozen loading screens…
edit: Actually I remember becoming obsessed with finding an old text adventure based on just cover art, spent days looking and actually found it! Now I can’t track down a copy 🙁
This is the game if any good samaritan wants to help me get onto it somehow… http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/pay-off
http://www.planetemu.net/rom/commodore-c64-games-t64/pay-off-the-1984-bug-byte-software-cr-c64cg
!! And an Ed Edd and Eddy reference to boot! Danke ^^
Can’t remember any games from the C64, I just remember the cassettes and the frustration of a failed read after god knows how long.
Amiga on the other hand, I’ve tracked down most of the ones I remember playing regularly,
Action Fighter, Arkanoid – Revenge of Doh, Blasteroids, The Chaos Engine, Flood, Galaga (Various versions), Fire & Ice – The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote, Firepower, First Class Boulderdash, James Pond 2 – Robocod, Leander, Magic Pockets, Navy Seals, Nitro, Pang, Parasol Stars – Rainbow Islands 2, Pinball Dreams+Fantasies+Illusions, Plotting, Rollerpede, Sherman M4, Super Cars 1+2, Thundercats, Wings and Zool.
The Wild Bunch was my dad’s favourite game on our old C64! IIRC the trick to the gunfight mini-game was to shoot right as the other guy was reaching for his gun… Too early and it was considered a murder, too late and well, you died.
Whoaaaa I just youtubed it, I remember that! I dont think I ever got very far in it though >_>
There was that game, with the guy…who did the….stuff. With the platforms, and enemies….damn it. It was all….like, colourfull and shit.
Oh yeah! I remember that one, with all the things and bobs.
Impossible Mission
Hahaha, nah, could be anything 😛
CLASSIC yet FRUSTRATING game.
that synthesized fall audio used to freak me out _every_ time
I have fond memories of Karateka. I never understood the princess who refuses to take a man who walks up though.
Is my memory correct when I think that if the bird successfully hit you in the groin, you instantly die?
I played this game, and it was 2d, and about time travel, i think and you needed this special decoder paper thing to login to the game…
Sounds like Maniac Mansion. The sequel, that is.
I was going to suggest Journeyman Project but that wasn’t 2D.
Space Quest 4?
Mario’s Time Machine for SNES?
Or where in time is Carmen Sandiego?
Future Wars?
http://www.emuparadise.me/GameBase%20Amiga/Screenshots/F/Future_Wars_-_Time_Travellers_1.png
Yes! That was it!
The only thing I can think of that would qualify are edutainment titles. I know I used to have a learning game on the Atari ST that was somehow set in a circus, and you’d do various learning things with each game based on something circusy.
And then another, not on the ST though I think this was early x86 days, where it was a math game – I remember that much – but it was set with something in ancient Greek mythology. I think it was called Mathology or something along those lines.
Oh and the loose sequels to The Oregon Trail, “The Yukon Trail” and “The Amazon Trail” – I remember having played them, can’t remember a thing about them apart from them being trail-y. (Early 90s American schools got lots of educational titles to go with all those shiny Apple IIe computers they were leasing)
I think the first one you are referring to is the original Math Circus
Mmmmmmmm… might have been. Screenshots aren’t looking quite right from my memory but there’s too many results for the recent versions to filter through. Also can’t find anything specifically saying it was released for Atari ST.
I do remember this PS1 sidescroller… you played a boy and there were these small dark monsters chasing you from the left side…cannot remember the name of it at all.
Heart of darkness
you sir just made my day. Thank you.
There was a game I played as a kid one Christmas day at my uncles house. When school went back the next year, I told my friends about it. I explained how it was “a cartoon where I put characters and things on the screen and they would instantly start doing stuff without my control.”
They all called me a liar, one of them was particularly mean about it. This was the first time I had the urge to really hurt someone… so wish I broke his little fucking nose (I reckon I’ll do it if I ever meet him again). Anyway, a good decade (and some odd years) later, I stumbled onto that game on the internet…
The Incredible Toon Machine
I was not a liar, you fucking pricks.
I remember this!! Thanks for the nostalgia trip man.
Wait; you remember this as in “the game” or “my story”? Because if its the latter I want your name, now. =P
The game! Don’t break my nose!
I remember a point and click adventure game from the mid 90s that was very dark and Gothic. I vaguely remember the start of the game and I think you’re entering the city for the first time. It might have had “nekro” somewhere in the title.
Sounds like Noctropolis to me, but I could be wrong.
Ok in all seriousness you got me thinking and I just remembered the faintest scraps of this game, and now my mind is blown. Thank you Mark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufouria:_The_Saga
I was about to make a post about Ufouria!
It took me ages to remember the name when I was suddenly reminded of it about a year ago. No one else I knew had any idea what I was talking about, and the fact it was never released in the US on the NES made it even harder. I thought I was going crazy for a while there.
Glad to see someone else played it!
Nope, I remember that game quite clearly.
YES! This game was awesome!
For some reason, whenever I wanted to search for it on the net, “Faxanadu” came to mind so I was way off.
I played, adored and finished this game. And like most here, seems I thought I was one of the only ones.
I was also thinking of Ufouria this whole time. Doesn’t really apply since I remember it pretty well, but what a fantastic game it was!
When I was a kid we had an atari computer (not a console) and got a couple games for it. The main one was back to the future 2, which was pretty cool, but i could never get past the first level (hover boarding through the streets).
We also had some other games like a flight sim/arcade shooter that’s name had something to do with Flak…? I think.
Another was a kung fu type game where you fight one opponent per screen (moving right) all with varying backgrounds, until you got to the last screen. Then you jumped up through a hole in the ceiling to continue fighting while moving left. Each ‘level’ had less screens (think of it like a pyramid) and the enemies got harder. You continued fighting upwards until you got to the top… then you had to go back down again through all new enemies. I remember working that out and feeling a bit cheated that there wasn’t an actual ‘end’ to the game, but i kept playing anyway.
I have no idea what it was called, i’ll update if i find it.
Oh man I remember this. I remember running along the empty screens and doing flips, then jumping through the roof.
I played it on my friend’s C64 from memory.
HAHA awesome! I’m not alone!
I have a weird memory for games (and movies). I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten one. I remember the names of the games and how they played. It’s actually kind of annoying when I want to go back and re-visit adventure games that I played almost 20 years ago.
I have occasionally pretended not to remember details so that I don’t come across as being completely obsessed, though.
I remember a game I borrowed as a small child that consisted of a kid being kidnapped into a nightmare world and being forced to play basketball against various types of monsters to escape, I’m pretty certain I played it on the master system
Basketball Nightmare? I think that’s what it was called.
YES… Basketball Nightmare. I probably hired that game a dozen times, even though I’d beaten it the very first week I had it.
That’s it. Played it obsessively against my older brother.
Obsessively.
I remember a platformer on the NES where you were a knight of some kind and you could do double, maybe triple jumps. I’ve been trying to find it for years. Those were the days when you’d rent a game for the weekend and return it clocked. So I only played it that one weekend but what a wonderful time it was *swoon*
Wasn’t Wizards & Warriors was it? I played that game a lot in the shop display at Grace Bros in Wagga
I do remember this one too! But it wasn’t this. It was more of a Ninja Gaiden style of platforming.
Sounds like Ghosts n’ Goblins; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_'n_Goblins
It wasn’t quite as polished as ghosts n’ goblins. Although I did spend a lot of time on that one in the arcade!
A C64 game called Dragonriders of Pern. Wasn’t until later I found out it was based on literature but it seemed to complicated to me at the time. It had an economy and politics and all sorts of stuff I think. The actions bits were cool.
One that I remember but also always forget is “Saint Dragon”. This is game that was more for the Arcade, rather then a home experience.
There was a local “milk bar” that had this game and I lost hundreds of 20c coins to this game. I was never really any good at it, but the powerups, the fact your ship had a tail that was a shield and the overall futuristic look of the game was just amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dragon
At home, had plenty of games on the C64 that I can remember basic premise, but nothing much else. One game that did stick with me was Wizball, my brother and I would co-op the shit out of that game and would certainly wouldn’t mind having an updated version for today.
I remember an old 286 game (monochrome), You had an upgradable spaceship that you had to buy parts for, and I remember shooting lots of alien ships. Been thinking about it for years and I cannot remember the name for the life of me!
Sidescroller?
First person 3D? [maybe Elite?]
first person 3d on a 286? heh.
It was a top down space invader style setup. (just not space invades obviously, aliens came in from the top of the screen, there was also environment to dodge and explore)
For years I couldn’t remember possibly my earliest PC game that my parents bought me about fixing screwed up nursery rhymes.
One day, just stumbling along doing internetty things, I found it.
Mixed-Up Mother Goose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-Up_Mother_Goose
Ah, those days where the solution was as simple as bringing three fiddlers to the King to get a bowl of broth to Mother Hubbard who would give you a Candlestick to make Nimble Jack happy.
…screw you adventure games for stuffing around with my head for years.
Dear Kotaku: Just because you’re a little slow (don’t worry, we still love you) doesn’t automatically make me “too fast” in posting comments.
I suspect that message you are getting is due to the current bug where it says you’re not logged in when you are.
OMG, I totally remember playing that as a kid. I loved it and finished it so many times over. Good ol’ Humpty Dumpty got cracked so many times and Little Miss Muffet never went without her curds and whey.
Thanks for bringing back such fond memories 🙂
I remember playing this on a reeeeeally old laptop, I think possibly even one of the first laptops…. it had an orange and black screen.
Jack catching his pants on fire on the candlestick was non-stop gold.
Hey mate, Big props for the hand last week with Corruption. I just finished it yesterday. what a cracker, it was damn tough to complete though. Cheers to Mark for this thread as well, I hope it becomes semi regular. Maybe we could do an old games review with links to downloads and install instructions particularly if it’s abandonware.
My retro game for this week is going to be Pandora on the A500 never finished that sucker. Also hoping some day soon we may see a remake of technocop.
There was this really weird gambling game based on Greyhounds on the C64. When you first played the game, the dogs were based on company names like Telecom and Australia Post so I’m guessing it was Australian. Sometimes you were even offered the chance to buy and race a dog, which also meant you could rename it.
If anyone has any ideas on what this one is called, or can remember more, please fill me in.
It’s a long shot but is it called Hounded? There’s 2 games I believe. And another simply called Greyhounds.
Spent many hours, days, weeks playing and collecting dogs, recording their codes in an old exercise book. Race tournaments against friends etc. One of the great C64 games
I have a strange game i cannot remember. I’ll set the scene, going back a few years i had a two cd game pack called 1001 Games for Windows from Eureka Software, it had all freeware and shareware windows and DOS games.
It think it was a point and click adventure game where it starts you off at night in an alley way in front of a either a bar or strip club then i can’t remember what happened next and then you were in front of a tunnel or a large storm drain and thats it. It sucks because i want to play it again.
There were a couple more games from those discs, a game in the same vein as those old Hugo games but it was set in colonial american times and a side scroller where in the main menu screen there is a porn star in leather.
**Edit**
The side scroller is called Vinyl Goddess from Mars.
That reminds me of the old ‘adult’ text adventure game, Leather Goddess Of Phobos lol
Reminds me a liiiiiiiiittle bit of “Deja Vu” but I think that started in a bathroom stall at a bar, not an alleyway.
Just looked at Deja Vu on Moby Games and thats not it. 🙁
It may have started at a tunnel and made your way into town but i don’t know it has been many years since i have last played it.
Hey.. this is an old post so you might not see this, but I think what you are talking about is “Dare to Dream” , I played this again recently and couldn’t remember how to finish it lol.. got right to the end and got stuck. There’s 3 parts to it, I must go back again and try I still haven’t seen parts 2 and 3 haha.
@jdrive Holy shit, that’s it. thank you this game has been bugging me for years. I looked it up on Moby Games and that’s the game. It’s a bit different than i remembered it.
Must see if i can download it, surely it’s freeware by now.
I had plenty of games on my Intellivision and Atari 2600 that I can’t quite remember anymore.
BTW Off topic, that weird bug where it tells me I’m not logged in but I am because I can post is back…
I had a lot of bad fighting games on the N64 (my favourite arcade games were fighter at the time and in the pre Smash Bros days N64 only had two good fighters: Fighters Destiny and Mace) I remember a few like Bio Freaks but the other day someone mentioned War Gods and I remembered I owned that hideous game as well, also there was another game like War Gods that for the life if me I cannot remember other than it playing a lot better than it looked
Also another long forgotten N64 game which I barely remember other than I think I enjoyed it: Forsaken, I think it was a spaceship FPS where you could go upside-down a lot of the time.
Forsaken was a futuristic flying motorbike deathmatch arena game. For me it was not overly enjoyable (though I did manage to complete it).
The other fighting game, was it Clayfighter 63 1/3? It probably wasn’t but I just thought I would bring it up because of how awesome it was 😛
No, Forsaken was a 6DOF first-person game, similar to Descent.
I remembering it being much less confusing than Descent, partly because you’d roll back upright after a little while – made getting your bearings much easier.
Yeah Mr Trick is right, next I think you’re thinking of Extreme G, I had the GameCube version of that one!
Wasn’t Clayfighter (though I remember people hating that as opposed to its SNES forebearer
For some reason, the first game that came to my head was a crappy CGA game called Saboteur. You were a ninja and had to…do stuff. I remember at the end of one level you jumped on a motor bike. Oh and I think my version had the ping-pong virus. Come to think of it, I remember my Gold Rush (which was the official boxed version) got messed up by the ping-pong virus too.
I have so many fantastic memories of playing all those Sierra games as a kid.
I had Saboteur on my C64. It seemed like it had the potential to be kind of cool, but I could never work out how to play it. I remember being able to pick up bricks and throw them at guards, though.
I cant remember
Agent USA on the C64.
Bruce Lee on my grandmothers apple… can’t remember what it was called. But it was crazy hard.
EDIT: As it turns out it was just “Bruce Lee” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Z8M2YqvYw
There’s this 2d side scroller action game on the NES that for the longest time I thought was Zelda 2. I remember it starting with a small cinematic of a guy walking down a road then turns into a village. That village having all the houses on huge sticks/trees that you could jump around on.
I remember the final dungeon requiring flight boots in order to reach and for some reason I remember that if you screw that up you couldn’t beat the game.
It wasn’t Faxanadu?
my dad had a microbee computer so pretty much anygame on that system.
they are all vague memories
I remember playing one where you were a tank – and the aim was to shoot these other tanks. There were 3 different classes. The background was black and the tank and hills and everything were made out of fluro coloured lines? Please…. please someone help me please… there was a minimap … it was on MAC and PC …. it is old … SOMEONE MUST REMEMBER! Isotank? Something like that.
Wasn’t “Tankkk”, was it?
sounds like Stellar 7
Another possibility is battlezone
Scorched Earth?
The fluoro lines reminds me a bit of a c64 version of “the sentinel” by geoff crammond but you were a robot and not a tank if that helps. on the a500 the polygons were fleshed out I believe.
Had one just yesterday. Had the song “Hall of the mountain king” on it and it was a scroller, Commodore 64 and had kraken mentioned in it somewhere. I think you may have had to fight them or something. Bugging me like mad!
“Doriath”
Never said thanks for this! Could not believe you remembered it!
Had an old C64 game. Not fancy graphics. It consisted of starting at the rank of Knight and working your way up to King. You bought Mills and things to gain funds. You had to build a palace. The interface was text. The graphics were little blocks here and there. Very common to encounter the message “You’ve died from pneumonia”.
That’s all I remember…
That’s really going to annoy me as I remember this game…
I remember that ‘gold pack’ of old ADnD RPG games, there was a series you could start your character in one of the games, import it into the second, and then on and into the 3rd.
The first was Pool of Radiance, the third was Curse of the Azure bonds… what was the middle one ?? Hammerfall or something?
The middle one was really different to the other two but really fun. You could break into places and run around finding things but you had a time limit, and when riding between quest points it was a side scroller on a horse and you had to duck birds and arrows and jump tree stumps n stuff. I also recall the main town had lots of fun things to do as well, like duels with weapons in an arena and a ‘can you hit the targets with arrows or slings’ type thing.
(the gold pack also contained a few others, 6 games total I think.. i think ‘heroes of the lance’, ‘war of the lance’.. and another…)
pps, also a big shout out to LODE-RUNNER what a fun game 😉 quick dude, dig a hole so the guy falls into it and you can walk over him and grab the crate!
Secret of the Silver Blades was the 3rd Gold Box, I think (Curse was 2nd?)
That “middle” one with the horse game and breaking in to things sounds a LOT like Hillsfar.
(If it is Hillsfar you’re thinking of, it’s not actually in the Pool of Radiance / Curse of the Azure Bonds series. It actually allowed importing from those 2 games, but was standalone.)
Yep that’s it! +1 internets for you, kind sir
Yeah i remember you could make a character to play through Poolrad, then export the char and import it into Hillsfar, then finish that and export your char and import it into Curse. It meant you started curse with good gear and about level 20, instead of rolling a new char for curse and only being level 5 or something.
True story: Hillsfar is the game that got me interested in playing D&D. (I can hear @popdart5 cursing Strategic Simulations, Inc.)
For me there was a game on the shiny new colour apple Macs that we had in primary school in the early 90s.
It was a lot like Asteroids, only shiny and in colour with a bunch of widgets that you could shoot for bonus powerups. It was kind of goofy and aside from the typical asteroids, it also had cow aliens.
Man. I spent so many hours on that thing.
I remember on one of the PS1 mag demo discs there was this one game, it was this game where you start off in a hospital/prison and have to use stealth to get out. The main character was this Asian looking fella. I think the last bit I think has you climbing into a truck to escape. I was so young I cant remember what demo it was on or the name of the game but I would love some help to find it 😀
Back on the ole 80286, I remember playing a strategy game where you chose different character classes such as barbarians, archers, etc, and had to either defend, or attack different castles. Beautiful CGA graphics.
At the time, I thought it was just called WAR, but searching that brings up nothing.. then I thought it was Barbarian, but that looks like a totally different game.
Looking again, it might have been “The Ancient Art of War”.
Yep Art of War, great precursor to the Total War games 🙂
Starquake was one for me I recently rediscovered.
One of the outstanding ones for me is an old CGA PC game where you controlled a tiny little spaceman guy walking on the moon or mars or something. Graphics were outlines from memory, and werent filled in. Cmon someone help me out..
Clyde’s Adventure. Good old Dos platformer/puzzler game. Hadn’t thought of it in years, had to Google to find the name of it.
Could never get past a certain level though.
My aunt had this awesome game on her computer, just Googled and it’s called D/Generation. That game was awesome but hard.
I remember playing a pc side scrolling game back around 1995. It was dark in tone with lots of blood for the time. I can`t remember what weapon the main character has but i think it was something like an axe. The only similar game I can find is Blackthorne. I`ve searched for it over the years with no luck. All I can remember is about the first 1 minute of gameplay because it was dam hard!!!
Abuse maybe?
Thanks for trying, but it wasn`t a sci-fi game. It was more barbaric with demons maybe. My memory is really vague about it but Blackthorne seems to be the closest in tone/genre I can find.
Golden Axe? Except Golden Axe wasn’t that hard.
great game! but no that`s not it.
Rastan? came out on pc a few years earlier than 95 tho
nice try. Thanks.
A PS1 game, don’t remember much, but essentially a clone of that old arcade game where you fly a plane and shoot other planes/battleships, 1944 I think the arcade game was called. This PS1 game however was spaceships, and all I really remember was that one of the early bosses was a giant spaceship fish. Could either be a green fish or a gold fish, depending on the path you chose. Need to find that game..
EDIT: Found it – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-Darius
There’s a few of old games I really loved as a kid, and keep meaning to replay but can never find the time to play.. top ones being Starflight (purchased it on GOG now, maybe that’ll be motivation to play it), and an old Japanese developed side scrolling platformer/RPG called Zeliard.
I can barely remember them both, but I do know I put hours into them when I was young.
Also, since reading this article.. I’ve had the PC speaker theme song for some old game stuck in my head, but I can’t remember what it is.. might have been Empire: Wargame of the Century, but I’m at work so can’t really listen to the theme to confirm.
Cobra Triangle, first NES game I ever played.
I’ve been trying to find the name of this game for ages – it was a pc game maybe 15-16 years ago. A 3-d shooter, 3rd person perspective (or maybe it was hand-to-hand combat?), you could pick your character. The choices were a good-looking guy, a girl, a huge muscly guy, and I think there was a fourth character. I remember enjoying it a lot, but I just can’t recall the name or any other details. The artwork was cartoonish.
Oh mannnnnnnn, that really hurt my head ! but after a (fair)bit of googling I managed to find the name of it. BEACH HEAD for C64, all I could remember was shooting at aeroplanes coming off of aircraft carriers (there were other areas as well but I cant seem to remember them as much). That was a game I had completely forgotten about but was one of my all time favourites as a kid. Ghosts n Goblins, Airwolf, Bruce lee game (??), Montezumas Revenge. are all others I had forgotten about as well.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane they are all coming rushing back to me now, good times man, good times indeed !
EDIT : oh man I also just remembered the Predator game for C64 !!! that was my shiz back in the day.
Help me!! I have searched the internet with the vaguest descriptions in google to try find this game..
I had it on a PS1 demo disc and me and my sister would play all afternoon after school.
It was like a 3D Arena style grid/map and you had these characters one I remember having a scottish accent and big spikey red hair and you would run around on the map being able to shoot eachother and collect boosts and powerups. I remember you would have to ‘capture’ these weird portal like things and turn them your colour and your opponents would have to claim them back, whoever possessed the most at the end of the round was the winner. Hope someone knows this game!
I remember an atari 2600 game that was kind of like space invaders without the blocks.
But when you hit the enemies little bracket like parts of them would start flying down towards you and you had to try and shoot them as the came down.
Also the PC game Corporation. I only vaguely remember bits and pieces of it but remember I played that thing to death.
Oh the other one that I don’t know the game of or know much about was an apple IIe game. We had chivalry as well as another text adventure based game. Was a grim fantasy type setting. Having to go into the forest and there was a haunted house and other stuffs.
Talking about Corporation reminds me of a Stock Market simulator (may have been called just “Stock Market”) on the Atari ST. The only thing I can remember from it is the crappy synthesised voice after each round which would announce “It’s a [BEAR/BULL] market.”
And I had no idea what that meant.
Super Mario Galaxy 2. I know I played it, but I totally can’t remember any of it. And I can only really remember brief flashes of Galaxy 1.
I remember a game called “Midwinter.” It looks horrible compared to today 3D, but at the time I was amazing. It was an open world game with the ability to travel up mountains (on skis) and then snipe at your enemies.
Then this might excite you: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/01/expect-a-midwinter-remake-by-2015/
I remeber on my c64 I had this file that when I loaded it up, audio of Carl Douglas’s Kung Fu Fighting (although I didn’t know it was this song at the time) would start playing. It would start with the “Ohhh-ho-ohhh-ohhhh………everybody was Kung Fu Fighting…..” and then would crash, every time. I had no idea if it was an actual game that just wouldn’t load, or if someone had just been encoding the audio file, but I remember that I was absolutly blown away that real music (not just computer genreated sounds of the day) could actually come out of a computer! I was so desperate to find out what this “game” was so I could play it because it would be so awesome with audio like that! Of course, now I know it was probably just a very early attempt at a music audio file 🙂
I remember this as well. It was not a game – just audio. That’s all that could fit on the floppy evidently. My friends and I were also blown away and would play it over and over. I passed it around school to everyone who had a C64 and I still have the disc, but unfortunately, no C64.
Two arcade games i loved back in the day but forgot the names were Dangar and Psychic 5. It did my head in for 20 years.
Sword of the samurai. Old pc game that mixed rpg/rts/text adventuring/kendo fighting. I love it and cant find it any where.
I remember a game that was like a 4x space game on pc, was called star something. You could build buildings on your planet and defences and built other ships. Could build colonizing ships and attack other players. I remember you had a bunch of races to choose from, one was a cool robot and one was a preying mantis type alien. Was definitely called star something.
I also remember another space pc game I used to play where you had a ship and you could go around to other galaxies and be a trader/pirate or whatever you wanted. When you shot down other ships you could scavenge parts and upgrade things on your ship, was a pretty old game. I know there was some more recent games that had a similar pretence (I played another of these that I can’t remember the name of) but this one was older. I seem to remember it was on floppy disk and game in a bright orange box I think.
Definitely Star something? Not Master of Orion (or one of the sequels?)
Some of the description matches Star Flight 1 & 2.
I remember a game that was like a 4x space game on pc, was called star reach or something. You could build buildings on your planet and defences and built other ships. Could build colonizing ships and attack other players. I remember you had a bunch of races to choose from, one was a cool robot and one was a preying mantis type alien.
I also remember another space pc game I used to play where you had a ship and you could go around to other galaxies and be a trader/pirate or whatever you wanted. When you shot down other ships you could scavenge parts and upgrade things on your ship, was a pretty old game. I know there was some more recent games that had a similar pretence (I played another of these that I can’t remember the name of) but this one was older. I seem to remember it was on floppy disk and game in a bright orange box I think. Came before freelancer and starlancer. going to annoy me now
Second one could be Trade Wars or Elite, possibly.
I remember playing this game in 96.
It started out as a foot race, with some crazy characters.
One guy had elephantitis, and his powerup was to get a wheel barrow which made him run really fast.
A bonus round where a guy is on a toilet in a shed, and you had to mash buttons to fart, and you could get airborne and apparently go in to orbit.
Weird gross game, can’t for the life of me remember what it was called.
That sounds like Viz, on the C64. It was based on an adult-themed comic book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz:_The_Game
I remember a strategy game that was based underwater with submarines. Had base building/resource gathering and all that good stuff. I remember playing the demo of it as a kid, but couldn’t find the actual game when it was released.
Anyone remember Peggle from a game called Hodj ‘n’ Podj?
There was a game I used to play on early pc that I can’t for the life of me remember much about.
It was a point and click adventure/puzzle game where you first had to decipher some grid coordinates to get a plane to drop you via parachute to an island full of puzzles. There was a bit where you had to distract a boar then use a vine to get down to some jungle village. A huge door that was a shuffling jigsaw. If I had to take a stab at the name it would be something like ‘puzzle brain island’ (no idea where the brain bit came from but it is sticking in my head)
…ok, just googled it. The island of Dr Brain. So cool.
For some reason replies don’t work!
I actually have about 10gb of DOS games. Some of them are crazy obscure. I think I need to donate the files to someone who curates videogame history or something.
I think it was on the amstrad. I belive it was called how to be a complete bastard
Two games from from my childhood I barely remember playing (and which I don’t know the name of) are:
– rescuing babies by giving them pacifiers (top-down view and had yellow flooring)
– controlling a boy who floated in the air and helping him dodge balloons/pop them to let him through
I know the wild bunch. there werer about towns and you had to cature a whole gang .
I got to the second to last wild bunch member to cature when my horse went lame riding to the next city and i died of no water it was a cruel end when i was almost finished.
I have vague recollections of this game on the C64. It was a side view, but not a scroller as such – kind of a cross between flickscreen and a side scroller, in that the view would scroll when you got to the edge of one screen. It had all these icons along the bottom, and I think you had long hair and a sword. And it had some awkward controls, I think… it was kinda set in a castle and/or a forest, or caves… for some reason, I thought it was called Barbarian, but the only Barbarian game I could find, which I also remember, was the one where you sword fight and you could cut off your opponent’s head, and the little green dude would come along and kick the head if you chopped it off.
**EDIT** I found it in a list of C64 games on Wikipedia. Turns out it was called Barbarian after all – by Psygnosis.
wasn’t either of these and I still can’t remember what it was. Next time I’m at my parents I might try and find it. Had a lot of text in it and I remember you salvaged stuff like plants and water when you killed ships and had a strong diplomacy element involved.
Stupid commenting system.
I remember a game, probably DOS VGA, set in space I think. The main object of the game was to allocate resources (can’t recall if it was energy, droids, something) to repairs, as the ship got attacked on its run. You had to keep the shields, engines, weapons etc running so that you could get to your destination. It was almost unwinnable, and had a very simple interface and game play. I’ve spent hours online looking for it. I’ve been through every space game I can find, and searched lists of thousands of DOS games with descriptions. I really had no idea the game was so obscure. Does anyone remember it, or what it was called?
I also remember a game which played polyphonic music through the PC speaker on startup. I specifically recall that the music sounded like a pipe organ, probably Bach Toccata and Fugue. I remember nothing else about the game.
There was this game I played as a kid but can’t remember. It was a point and click with nursery rhymes. It wasn’t the mother goose game it may have been called toonsville or tunesville but nothing is showing up. It was in the early 90s maybe late 80s.
Tyrian
does anyone know the name of a this game:
-you had to recycle things into the right bin
-the cleaner/janitor of the town had a mustache and is probably related to scruffy from futurama
-one activity i remember in particular was where you had to pick which packet of sweets was more environmental “this bag is full of lollies but not individually wrapped, this one is not in one package but each sweet is wrapped individually, and the last this is both packaged and individually wrapped.” and you had to pick the most environmentally friendly. i only ask because i have been stuck on its title for ages.
Please find the which I had told about. I was playing it in 2008. In starting we came up on green mountain and the some sheep’s came up and by killing the we get either health bonus or jetpack bonus. Further leads us to alien insects and the human aliens. Then came up with probably saving something. And then come the red mountain with alien insects coming from some source having health line on them…….