The KenB Memorial Cool, Hip Game Thread

Because he mentioned Trax and TwixT - I think I've found them both - here's a thread for your paens of praise for special games.  You know the kind I mean.

Mine?  Easy: Starflight.  Now, there was a computer game.

Moe

UPDATE: Ach, the music alone...

Comments

[kenB]

Hey wow, my very own memorial thread - thanks! Silly me, I didn't even realize I was dead (or that anyone would want to remember me). Or perhaps the memorial is to the days when I still had a full head of hair.

Re the links you found, yup, those are them. A more fanboyish site for Twixt (but with no screenshots) is here. The Trax site is the official one. The cool thing about that game is that both the inventor and the current world champion are happy to play online against anyone who asks. In fact (how cool is this!), the world champ (Donald Bailey) and his wife stayed at our house one night on their 3-month trip across America. Bet you want my autograph now.

I just picked up a copy of Ace of Aces from eBay -- not quite as fun as my fuzzy early-80s middle-school nostalgia would have it; but at least my son seemed to enjoy playing it with me (which may have something to do with his shooting me out of the skies in our first dogfight -- guess my flying skills are a bit rusty).

And if anyone wants to challenge me to an online or email game of Trax or TwixT, bring it on!

[double-plus-ungood]

Hey, I still have my original copy of Ace of Aces, and my fourteen-year-old boy loves playing it with me, despite being a video game junkie.

Moe, when you said Starflight, for a moment I thought you meant the beloved Starfighter for the TRS80, the first real computer game I played. Ah, the memories.

And now I'm wishing I still had The Creature That Ate Sheboygan. Now that was a special game.

[aireachail]

Ah, well...

For me, it was always Scorched Earth.

A Zenith 386, CGA monitor, a "Death's Head" in the arsenal, rubber walls, and time to waste at lunchtime.

That's livin', laddie.

[Moe Lane]

I had a comment about that last one, but it was frankly somewhat disturbingly Freudian. I will simply note that one of the best parts of SE was watching the other tanks blow up in random (and sometimes very useful ways).

Moe

PS: I should note that this isn't the Memorial KenB Cool, Hip Game thread; it's the KenB Memorial Cool, hip Game thread. Word order matters, for once. :)

[Neolith]

RE: SE. Nothing like grabbing the mega shield, and deploying the Death's Head at 45 degree angle at full power. Followed by the manditory maniac laughter. One of the first party games I ever played.

As I think back to my formative years, there are two games that stand out as benchmarks: Star Control, the original. Not only was melee mode really fun against your friends, but the strategic mode was so cool with the twisting, three-dee starmap. And when I thought that it couldn't get any better, Star Control 2. I still make sure I get an MP3 of the hyperspace music loaded up for road trips. And not only did they provide the awesome single player campaign, but they improved and expanded melee mode into hyper-melee. And by god I could waste all comers with the Spathi Eluder and Supox Blade, until they brought out the Chmrr's battlecruiser. Then I responded with the Utwig and the suffering was legendary.

Digging back a bit further to the C64 days, I really miss Mail Order Monsters, Pirates!, and Elite. I've heard they have remade/are remaking Pirates, but I wonder if it could possibly be as good?

Anything classic-feeling that is grabbing you guys today? I've been addicted to Mutant Storm for the past few weeks. Nice update to Robotron that can turn 15 minutes into several hours, especially if you play it with a dual stick type controller.