Favorite Old school Gaming platform?

I love the Original Gameboy. With the Tetris that made it famous. Those bricks were the clunkiest forms of entertainment, but provided hours of joy, and were the perfect portable platform. I was especially fond of the Dr. Mario games and Wario'sWoods.

My favorite system is probally my atari 800xl, yes im a geek i own a gaming system made before 1985

I had an Amiga 500 and bunches of games. That thing rocked. Granted, I never got far with Dragon's Lair, but it was pretty cool on that Amiga. We also had an Amiga 500 when I was a kid. Though Dad had PCs and brought them home occasionally. Ah, the heady days of playing Commander Keen on a 486 in 1992.

- iantm

Same here. I had a 400 model, bought brand new... one of a long line of Ataris I've owned. I started out with a cassette drive before moving up to the amazing storage capacity of a single-sided low-density floppy.

I still play those games, though it's all through emulation now.

Well, I'm too young to have used anything that qualifies, but my dad and his brother absolutely love the game called Shamus for some old Atari. Anybody ever heard of it? My uncle (his bro) still has an old atari that was have to dig out every time we go there... The graphics are horrible, but the gameplay is great.

Personally, I've used my grandfather's old TI - ntohing incredibly special about it, but some cool games for back in the day.

I have a Performa and an LC dedicated to old Mac games - and I'm in the process of setting up an Apple IIe PDS card. Any good games I can get on the Net for that?

Kyle-

I think the original NES had some of the best gameplay. Kirby and alot of the side scrolling games had amazing gameplay. I tend to play those old games over newer ones And Goldeneye for N64 was possibly one of the best multiplayer games.

I remember the TV Commercial for the NES Kirby game. And I thought I was young Shoot, it seems that I was born right in the middle of the computer major take-off era. I remember the beginning of the Home internet, and when the IIfx came out. Not bad for being born in 85

All I have is old-school stuff. I've got a Coleco, Sega Game Gear (my favorite old school "console", since you asked), Game Boy Pocket, SNES and original PlayStation (not old school, but I love playing GT2)

Game Gear: Sonic The Hedgehog and Shinobi II have awesome gameplay and okay graphics for the era.

The thing I love about old-school stuff is that good game play was paramount. Now, they make up for it with polygons per second and raw horsepower, seducing and propogating the ADD generation with shiny graphics and sparkly objects, most of the time without a good plot, intuitive UI or anything better than mediocre game play.

Asteroids and Enduro are perfect examples of game play making up for lack of horsepower.

Commadore Vic 20, the old text games. Vodoo Castle, Priates cove, Centepeed for the Vic 20 and later the NES, Mario bros (actually my Sons) but I spent a lot of time on it and a friends Atari

you guys have to see this:

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=100

I visit that comic daily. It was nice to be reminded of that comic again

Nothing compares to the hours wasted playing Elite on the BBC Model B (God, it even sounds retro) - trying to match roll rates with the wire-frame door of the wire-frame space station at 5 FPS...

The GameGear and the Lynx were pretty desirable in the day. Now I've got a Gamepark GP32/ Nintendo DS hankering. If that DS linux port keeps on keeping on, I might have to get me one of those puppies.

It's a close call between the NEC TurboGrafx, C64, the Atari 2600, 7800 and the ColecoVision for me.

I loved Druid and Enlightenment on the 64, as well as Delta and another shooting game that eludes me at the moment. Then there's the game Bounder. It took forever to load, and when you played it there was a good chance that the game would reset. Argh!!!! It even does this on emulation!

For the 2600, I would have to say that Enduro, Robot Tank, Millipede, and Ms. Pac Man were my favorites.

While the sound on most Atari 7800 games sucked, the gameplay was still there. Food Fight, Ballblazer, Desert Falcon, Joust, Robotron and Xevious are my faves on this system. I still have my 7800, but need to take it apart for cleaning since it does not work properly. Currently I'm playing these through emulation although it's not quite the same when you have to use the keyboard.

On the Coleco Zaxxon, Galaxian and Centipede made my day. I also had the Adam expansion module with Buck Rogers. Too bad I didn't have a color TV at the time I had the Adam...

For the TurboGrafx 16, there was a great pinball game called Devil's Crush that was downright awsome! Even my Dad would play! Also R-Type and some of the role-playing games were very good too.

So far I have owned a 2600, 7800, ColecoVision/Adam, C128D, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Gameboy (no color), SNES, NEC TurboGrafx 16 with CD expansion/Duo and Playstation. The only one I have left is a 7800. With the newer ones I would buy a few games, play them a lot for 3 months or so, then not play them for 6 months and sell the system.

My favourite older console is the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom. I love RPGs, and the SNES definately had some of the best RPGs ever made. The creativity of some of the games is really great, too.

SNES because of Tetris Attack.

I've been far too addicted to certain video games in the past, including Yar's Revenge, on the Atari 2600. I've since met and worked with someone who's father worked for Atari back in those days, and he also loved Yar's Revenge, and knows of a cheat that was programmed into it.

I've seen on ebay, that the Atari 7800 had a version of Food Fight, the arcade version of which sucked enough quarters out my pockets. Has anyone here played that version of Food Fight? How'd it compare to the arcade version?

Mutant_Pie

Original Arcade Classics:

Gotta be Asteroids and Defender. Asteroids had those cool vector graphics, fluid gameplay, and was just fun to play. I remember absolutely loving to play asteroids in a dark arcade because of that green tracing effect of all the objects.

Defender- incredibly hectic gameplay, and just a blast to play. Probably never got more frustrated playing any other game, but I could always resort to killing my own humans (which was a first for games of this time-- the opportunity to become an antihero)...

Worth mentioning: Donkey Kong, Yie Are Kung Fu, and Punch-Out! and Super Punch-Out! were great.

Home Consoles:
2600- Adventure, Yar's Revenge, Vanguard
Nes- Super Mario Bros! RC Pro Am
SNES- Too many to mention...

Anything post SNES really never held my attention, and I've had pretty much all the consoles.

Home Computer:
Apple II series: Choplifer, Rescue Raiders, Wings of Fury, Karateka, any Infocom text adventure, Wizardry series, Ultima Series, Bard's Tale Series, Wasteland, I could rattle off titles for days! ;-)

My friend had an Atari 800, and we used to play Temple of Apshai for hours every day.

I have not played the arcade version, but the 7800 version is great!

I had to laugh when I saw coius said he was born in 85. I have computers older than you. Ha ha..

Let's see..games...

Canyon on the Commodore PET computers,
Frogger on the Timex Sinclair 1000
Taipan and Lemonade on the Apple II,
Zork and Planetfall on the IBM PC (O.k. Sub Hunt later on)
Almost anything from Epyx or Electronic Arts, Mail Order Monsters and Bards Tale in for the Commodore 64
F/A-18 Interceptor and Nuclear War for the Amiga A500
Doom, Tie Fighter, and Wing Commander for the x86 processor computers.

I never owned a game console until recently when a Nintendo Game Cube was left onboard a ship I was working on. For as modern as the cube is, I wasn't really impressed with the games. I have to agree "flash less substance" comment made previously.

As for arcade games, The 80's had so many good games it's hard to pick which ones I like the most. Perhaps, Road Blasters, Space Harrier and Paperboy.

i own gaming systems and computers older than myself

Yeah, I'm torn between the SNES and the N64 (assuming you'd call the N64 "old school"). I was given a Genesis as a Christmas present the year they came out, but had always wanted an SNES. I could sit and play Super Mario 64 all day, though, so it's a tough call.

For newer consoles, I have to say the PS2 simply because of Final Fantasy X.

Yup coin ops... like Frogger!

as for the 1985 thing, i just sold a computer that was 1 yr older than i am. That's right! the Original Macintosh. That thing fetched $180 USD (for anyone's references) Sadly, I was not able to work with it, as I have no Mouse/keyboard or original OS. A friend handed the machine to me, and said "Work out". I got to play with a machine that I had owned of touching in my life. Now I can move on and say I got to fiddle with the original Macintosh.
So, I can die happy now.

I have been hitting the local arcade (Called "Family Fun Center") and have been playing games like "Bubble Bobble" and even "PacMan"
FYI: I little history on PacMac. It was to be called "PuckMan" but changed it as the name could be abused easily

Anyway, It is nice to seem this thread come alive again

Processor: 6809, 1.6 MHz

RAM: 1K

**
may not run MacOS, but MacOS will run it

A bag of d20 and a pad of hex paper

I'm completely lost... What are d20 and hex paper?

RPGs...