Recommend Old Computer Games

[tht009]

I've been using my Raspberry Pi to emulate various home computers from yesteryear (DOS, Amiga, early Mac, etc.) and I'm having a hard time finding a game that really captures my attention and compels me to put a good amount of time into it. That's a personal issue; there's no shortage of excellent games at my disposal. I'm looking to try some new games though and I'm hoping one of them hooks me. What are some things you would recommend? They can be from basically any home computer that can be emulated in the present day, so long as that emulator can run on ARM Linux on a Raspberry Pi 5. That's pretty much all retro computers though.

 

[naka_michi]

Sword of the Samurai, the Samurai Life Simulator

 

[tht009]

Sword of the Samurai, the Samurai Life Simulator

Perfect, this is exactly the kind of game I've never heard of that I was looking for. I'll download it immediately.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I'd totally recommend literally anything from either Brodenburg or Apogee — they were the first true wizards of the computer gaming world.

 

[tht009]

I'd totally recommend literally anything from either Brodenburg or Apogee — they were the first true wizards of the computer gaming world.

I'm already a fan of Apogee but I'm not familiar with Brodenburg, so I'll have to check them out. Thanks.

 

[Clippy]

Brodenburg

It's Broderbund

On a more serious note, we have threads that might be of interest
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/90s-2000s-windows-game-recommendations.21430/
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/general-pc-game-recommendation-thread.3302/

 

[tht009]

It's Broderbund

On a more serious note, we have threads that might be of interest
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/90s-2000s-windows-game-recommendations.21430/
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/general-pc-game-recommendation-thread.3302/

No wonder I'd never heard of them. I'll look at that thread, but any Windows games newer than Windows 98 are a bit of a pain to emulate because each game requires its own custom Wine configuration, but it can be done. Also, anything from the current millennium is likely to lag intolerably on my dinky little processor, which narrows the options a bit. I suppose I could always play those on my big computer, though.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

It's Broderbund

On a more serious note, we have threads that might be of interest
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/90s-2000s-windows-game-recommendations.21430/
https://retrogametalk.com/threads/general-pc-game-recommendation-thread.3302/

I could NEVER spell it xD

 

[tht009]

Sword of the Samurai, the Samurai Life Simulator

When I try to run this in DOSBox-X it says "Filename not found" at the startup screen and kicks me back to the command prompt. Is there some sort of trick or configuration option to get it working that you know of? The internet is proving to be unhelpful in my search.

 

[ThomatoSauce]

Not sure how old you're looking for, but regardless, I'd recommend the Roller Coaster Tycoon games.

 

[CSmith327]

If you're interested in exploring Amiga I suggest looking into installing and running AmigaVision on your setup. It's a curated well organized collection of a very sizeable chunk of the entire Amiga library. It's organized in a way to help you explore games by publisher gameography, release year, genre, etc. You should be able to run it just perfect on Raspberry Pi. On top of having the game launcher with like 4000+ games it also has an AmigaOS Workbench desktop environment with a bunch of the more well known popular programs for the system if you wanna explore what Amiga was like.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:12 AM

Also for the MS-DOS equivalent of something like that you should look into getting eXoDOS. There's an eXoDOS lite version where you can pick out specific games instead of having the entire over a TB archive.

It uses Launchbox and has a nice setup that shows you cover art, screenshots, game play video clips, manuals and documentation for each and every game. You just pick a game and it asks if you want to download it to add it to your library.

Of course you can pick the full version and have everything, but it takes up a significant amount of disk space (like 80 times more than AmigaVision lol)

edit: well it's for Windows, but maybe there's ways to get it to fine on a Raspberry Pi

 

[tht009]

Not sure how old you're looking for, but regardless, I'd recommend the Roller Coaster Tycoon games.

I enjoy Zoo Tycoon, and building deadly roller coasters that end prematurely sounds just as much fun as building the lion cage around people so they're trapped with hungry carnivores.

If you're interested in exploring Amiga I suggest looking into installing and running AmigaVision on your setup. It's a curated well organized collection of a very sizeable chunk of the entire Amiga library. It's organized in a way to help you explore games by publisher gameography, release year, genre, etc. You should be able to run it just perfect on Raspberry Pi. On top of having the game launcher with like 4000+ games it also has an AmigaOS Workbench desktop environment with a bunch of the more well known popular programs for the system if you wanna explore what Amiga was like.

I am interested. I'm planning to buy THEA1200 by Retro Games, Ltd. when it comes out this December. In the meantime, I'll look into AmigaVision, partly because Amiberry suddenly started lagging even though I changed all the settings back to default. Uninstalling and reinstalling it didn't fix it either. It all started when I tried running the NTSC version of Kristal. That game lagged horribly, now every game lags horribly. Very confusing problem. Anyway, that kind of crippled my Amiga setup so I am looking for an alternative.

EDIT: I'll try running it in Wine. It's kind of hit or miss but AmigaVision might be a hit for all I know. Strangely, sometimes the Windows version of something run in Wine actually works better than the native Linux version.

 

[CSmith327]

I enjoy Zoo Tycoon, and building deadly roller coasters that end prematurely sounds just as much fun as building the lion cage around people so they're trapped with hungry carnivores.

I am interested. I'm planning to buy THEA1200 by Retro Games, Ltd. when it comes out this December. In the meantime, I'll look into AmigaVision, partly because Amiberry suddenly started lagging even though I changed all the settings back to default. Uninstalling and reinstalling it didn't fix it either. It all started when I tried running the NTSC version of Kristal. That game lagged horribly, now every game lags horribly. Very confusing problem. Anyway, that kind of crippled my Amiga setup so I am looking for an alternative.

Yikes, bad news about that then. The latest version of AmigaVision switched to using Amiberry as the emulator it uses. The previous version used FS-UAE and worked pretty good. But the version from last month or so uses Amiberry now.

Maybe try to find the version directly before the switch to Amiberry if you can. It has like a few hundred less games or however many they added in the update tho

 

[tht009]

Yikes, bad news about that then. The latest version of AmigaVision switched to using Amiberry as the emulator it uses. The previous version used FS-UAE and worked pretty good. But the version from last month or so uses Amiberry now.

Maybe try to find the version directly before the switch to Amiberry if you can. It has like a few hundred less games or however many they added in the update tho

I don't think the problem is Amiberry itself but rather something that went wrong behind the scenes in my setup without me realizing, like maybe the configuration files got messed up or something. I deleted the ones I could find after the uninstall but I'm not sure if there's something I missed. There has to be some explanation for the sudden lag, because it used to run like butter just two days ago. In any case, using the Windows version of Amiberry through Wine will probably give me a completely different experience than the Linux flatpak. Still a solid recommendation.

 

[goldman2786]

There are lots of point and click games!
*maniac Mansion
*Full throttle
*the dig
*Monkey island games
*Police quest
*king quest
*phantasmagoria


all have dos ports I think.

 

[tht009]

There are lots of point and click games!
*maniac Mansion
*Full throttle
*the dig
*Monkey island games
*Police quest
*king quest
*phantasmagoria


all have dos ports I think.

Love Maniac Mansion. I played all the way through it on my C64 Mini. I've heard of most of those but not actually played them. I liked Trogdor: Peasant's Quest (or whatever it's called) so I'd probably like the Police/King's Quest games. Maybe it's time to give them a chance.

 

[Anoobis]

Quest for Camelot is a good classic point-and-click adventure

 

[lestagio]

Really anything by Sierra or Lucasarts you can't go wrong— some are more frustrating than others though. I'd recommend The Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Conquests of the Longbow, Space Quest 4 and 5, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and Quest for Glory 1 (EGA or VGA version, whichever you prefer). There's a ton more out there that are all great, but it depends on your tolerance for bullshit.

Then of course you've got your Apogee platformers like Commander Keen and Biomenace, and the classic FPS games: Doom 1 and 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Redneck Rampage, Quake, Heretic, Hexen...

Other games I've always loved are Lemmings (there's 50 trillion versions of it), Myst, Riven, Warcraft 2, and a bit of Civilization.

Getting into the Windows 95/98 era (not sure how many of these you'll be able to run, but suggestions anyway...), the RTS games like Caesar 3, Age of Empires 2, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 are all phenomenal. Half Life, Worms 2/Armageddon, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment, Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock 1 and 2.

Christ, that's just a few of my favorites. I must warn you that some of them are a little more janky than others... Thief took me many years of playthroughs to finish, and I've never finished Baldur's Gate or Deus Ex... That said people talk extremely highly of them and I did find them quite enjoyable so they're worth a shot.

 

[Bandini]

deja vu
out of this world
chasm
cytadela

 

[extermist]

Alone in the Dark (1992) - MS-DOS

 

[werewolfx]

the floppy version of Shadowcaster.
the cd version has a bug where playing voice/video crashes the game(may or may not affect you, but floppy will work 100%)

 

[tht009]

Lots of great recommendations. Glad I started this thread. Thanks to all participants.

 

[RetroPixelLizard]

Hmm, If you're looking for old DOS games, not sure what you want exactly but I have a few I can suggest from the top of my head and some of them are even sold on GOG, I can also suggest a few more If you're looking for more obscure titles.

 

[tht009]

Hmm, If you're looking for old DOS games, not sure what you want exactly but I have a few I can suggest from the top of my head and some of them are even sold on GOG, I can also suggest a few more If you're looking for more obscure titles.

I only knew two of those, but I'm definitely on board with hearing some more obscure titles. Even if I don't play them all immediately, your mentioning them will cause them to take up space in my brain, then when I see them on a list of games later I'll be like, "Didn't someone recommend that once? I feel like I've heard good things about that game," which will lead me to try it.

So, by all means, please keep them coming.

 

[CSmith327]

the floppy version of Shadowcaster.
the cd version has a bug where playing voice/video crashes the game(may or may not affect you, but floppy will work 100%)

On real hardware mayyybe. In current versions of DOSBox that issue doesn't happen.

I have ShadowCaster CD playing perfect through eXoDOS. I believe it uses either DOSBox Staging or DOSBox Community Edition to play it (eXoDOS uses like 4 different versions of DOSBox and picks whichever one works best for each game) and it has no issues at all playing any of the videos or CD audio.

I uploaded the game to the repo months ago and the files in the post are of the CD version one from eXoDOS.

The floppy version is missing some extra levels, the cutscenes being videos instead of still screens, and the CD audio and voice acting. I see no benefit to using it when the CD version exists and plays perfect on top of being the definitive edition of it.