Old Obscure PC Games

[Lise]

Originally posted by Revenant
I don't remember the name of it, I think it was a Win32 application though.

It could be played in like 30 mins. But was quite the game. It was in 3D, and was a space sim.

You basically were flying around this area of space, just before this invasion, I think. So it was just a few dog fights, and then a "destroy the capital" ship ending.

You could "warp" from sector to sector, when ever the scripted attacks began. Basically you pressed a key, then selected the area on a map, then flew through this green, winding tunnel thing for a few secs.
You could also "dock" at these stations, which were looked like a big donut. You had to fly up the centre to "dock", then get repairs and replenish ammo.

Me and my brother use to play it always way back. I used the game pad to pilot and shoot. And he was beside me with the key board as the "opperations officer". Switching weapons, warping in an outta systems, bringing up the map, setting docking sequences.

Good times, good times

Sounds a bit like Star Ranger, but that wasn't Win32.

Anyway. Wing Commander and the X-Wing series are pretty neck-in-neck, I think. WC2 and 3 weren't that hot, but WC4's story was just awesome. The only weak point the XW games had were their plots - since you could choose your campaigns, they kinda had to be light on the storyline (but they were huge on the shit going boom, so who cares?) And yes, Tie Fighter was the best of the XW games (though WX:Alliance is a close second.)

As for games no one remembers: Fragile fucking Allegiance, yo.It was hard, and it had a few problems, but that was the first game that really succeeded at keeping me up until dawn. Awesome graphics for the day, great ambient music, cool aliens, an interface so good and so efficient it was scary, and mechanisms that made either micro OR macro management easy caused that game to "just plain kick it in the junk." The ONLY problems it had were that it didn't stop for fleet combat (IMHO time should have paused while you watched your fleet duke it out over an asteroid or in space) and the fact that you could eventually run out of asteroids to mine without getting a "You are a winner!" kind of screen. Either it could never end or you could win somehow... in other words, a game that is just BEGGING for a remake. And it's actually legal to get off of Underdogs (link), since Gremlin has more or less surrendered rights to it to public domain.

And yes, I remember Sopwith. T3h pwn indeed. Commander Keen was good in the day too... most of the old Apogee/Epic Megagames titles were. (Yes, THAT Epic Megagames.) Anyone remember ZZT? Sweeny's very first game, and I think it still holds up today. (Actually, ZZT was incredibly important, as it was the first PC game that came with a built-in level editor that allowed to you essentially create whole new games in the ZZT engine and then distribute them over what passed for the Internet back then... but that's practically a thread in and of itself. )