Top 10: Nostalgic PC Games That Need A Come Back.

Currently there seems to be an annoying trend, and I am by no means the first to pick up on it, for games to have an unnecessary deluge of squeals, prequels, add ons, tag ons and expanded universes. I suppose it can be entirely tempting for big wig executives to want more of the same eldritch witchcraft used to torrent in the cash for titles that carve out their own place in history, the easiest way to do this is stamp a big rubber 2 next to the title and hope for the best. The general rule of thumb goes that as time goes on and the more you throw on top of the original, they will inevitably lose their alure. l imagine it like living in wonka’s chocolate factory, you might be happy for the first few months but I can bet that within a year you’ll be craving for a succulent roasted leg of oompa loompa.

Let it not be taken lightly, then, what I am about to outline as a ‘top ten’. It’s with a fond sadness and blissful awareness that, for the most part, the games I am about to mention were never truly thrown into the money grinder and still retain their sweet nostalgic flavour. Yet I can’t help but feel that, were they ever given the chance to come back to us with all the bells and whistles that we are so used to in this space age future of ours, we would welcome them with open wallets.

I am aware that some of these games will already have sequels or re-makes, I just feel that we should be rolling up our sleeves and saying “all right, but this time… let’s do it right”.

So here we are:

10 – Imperium Galactica (1997 – Digital Reality)

Ever felt like you’ve reached your potential only to have someone draw the curtains back and reveal that your potential is about as effective as a sugar biscuit being dipped into a tsunami? Well this game made you really work for your accomplishments. Imperium Galactica (and we’re only really talking about Imperium Galactica I here) took place during the fledgeling years of humanities first steps as a space faring empire, only to find that there were a lot of other space faring empires out there who had a lot longer to prepare and were only too happy to remind you.

90’s game boxes were so much cooler…

The game takes place in short stages with storyline elements that help develop the world around you, Dante Johnson, an up and coming Lieutenant in the ‘Galactic Empire’. The entire game takes place on the bridge of a star-ship, which will change with new and exciting features being unlocked as you progress in the game and gain promotions. Your essential functions are controlling fleets of star-ships, managing space-colonies and engaging in battle with star-ships or on space-colonies.

There are two endearing little qualities to the game that make it memorable. Firstly, the game stops for no-man, that is to say that regardless of how far you’ve progressed in your training  the rest of the galaxy is still going about it’s business. This is how it works, or rather, how it worked for me; as you progress in rank your view of the galaxy map will expand and you’ll meet new and exotic alien species to place squarely under your space-age jack boot. Yet, if you, like the young space-farer that I was spend too long in the first few stages of the game where the galaxy map only contains a hand-full of planets then you’ll find that by the time you reach grand admiral there’s an even larger jackboot waiting for you to place yourself squarely under. The final stages of the game take place with you trying to save the galaxy from this all consuming nightmare race called the Dargslans (which sounds like a drunken insult), but if you spend too long twiddling your thumbs in the training camps you’ll find that all these exotic space creatures you’ve been promised have been replaced with a sea of giant space Nazis. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the game doesn’t tell you that the universe isn’t slowing down for you, so you do feel a genuine desperation to finish things faster during your inevitable second playthrough. The second endearing quality was the storyline, it had a nice little twist regarding your character during the endgame which gave the game a nice edge as you were playing through, but I wont spoil it for you just in case you decide to give it a play through for yourself.

The more green you see, the more you can expect to be welcoming our new insect overlords.

This game deserves its second chance because it has a great deal to give gamers today. There seem to be a lot of games where imminent danger is flexible to your questing requirements, the best example was through Batman; Arkham City, where batman has only a few mere moments to cure himself from a disease that is literally melting his veins, but not until he has valiantly deflated every single last one of the jokers party balloons, no colour in Arkham City, not on my bloody watch.  Imperium Galactica could certainly  do with a bit of fresh paint on it, but only if the mechanics stay essentially the same, otherwise we’re loosing the core elements that make this game so great, and we’ll just end up with another Imperium Galactica II.

9 – RollerCoaster Tycoon  (1999 – Chris Sawyer Productions)

It seems that we are inundated, now, with tycoon based simulation games but none so fulfilling as the very first and original RollerCoaster Tycoon. At this point in time we had already experienced the nearly endless fun of Bullfrogs’s Theme Park, but what ThemePark lacked RollerCoaster Tycoon made up for in buckets. The essential mechanics of the game were simple, you start with plots of land and a few rides and attractions for you to place and attract customers with. As you progress further you unlock more rides and different challenges (plots of land). Some of the challenges were essentially sandbox environments to build your own landscapes, whilst others had a pre-existing park but needed you to make it more money.

The best thing about this game; It felt like a grown-ups version of Theme Park, not only did you have to manage your own park , but you were also encouraged to design your own rides. What ten year old doesn’t want to build his own roller coaster or log flume, I remember spending a great deal of time trying to make the fastest, safest and biggest roller coaster that money could buy, and if that didn’t work, make the fastest, deadliest roller coaster and see how far I could shoot the tiny, unsuspecting passengers across the map. Theme Park World tried to capture the element of designing your own rides, you could even ride your own rides, but it just didn’t inspire the creative juices like RollerCoaster Tycoon.

I always wondered what would happen if my sims gained awareness.

I feel that everything that followed the original (except maybe RollerCoaster Tycoon II, but let’s face it, it was essentially the same game with minor improvements), including similar theme park management games and  ‘job description’ Tycoons became too simplistic and childish. No, RollerCoaster tycoon met its peak during its first instalment and I feel that we could benefit from a reboot of the series.

8 – Command and Conquer (1995 – Westwood Studios)

This game is one that already suffers from having one too many sequels and spin-off’s; so much so that the latest C&C (Command and Conquer 4) left out, arguably, the core mechanic of the game; base building. Let us look back though, way way back, back to a day when real time strategy games were exciting and inventive. Command and Conquer basically outlined your main two objectives in its title, command an army, and conquer someone else’s. The game was pretty easy to understand, pick a side (NOD or GDI) build a base, harvest tiberium (the mysterious green crystals that fell onto and now grow on earth), build a variety of  military units and hurl those military units at the opposing side. After each mission you were gifted with an exciting, but ultimately hammy, video of someone giving you missions and progressing the story a little further.

You know it’s got to be awesome when you see it reflected in someone else’s glasses.

It seems that during the late 90s you couldn’t take two steps without stumbling into a bargain bin full of RTS ‘classic’ titles, so what was it that made command and conquer tower over its competition? The game play itself was fairly simplistic, and easy to replicate as evidenced by the aforementioned bargain bin, but the overall scope and feel of the game was immense! Two great powers struggling to wrest control of the entire planet from one another (ones side clearly ‘good’ and the other clearly ‘evil’) whilst the rest of the world is simultaneously trying to escape from this global conflict and live alongside these pockets of toxic tiberium that seems to have sprouted everywhere, and the best part is that you’re square in the middle of it all trying to sort it out! Not only that, but you get to have conversations with some of the most eccentric personalities of the whole conflict, one of these characters becoming so popular that he appeared in almost every spin-off. Let’s also not forget the music, it’s hard not to secrete pure testosterone when watching your enemies crumble before you and listening to kick-ass music like this.

The major problem with creating sequels for this game (except perhaps for Red Alert) is that every time you do, you’ve got to make the conflict seem much more… conflictier… and when you’ve got cyborgs and zombies by the second instalment of the game you’re jumping the shark pretty early. Command and Conquer felt just about right it had an exciting story and we felt compelled to finish missions just to see what the crazy bald terrorist would do next, even the end-game weapons seemed perfectly justified and none too over the top in the world the game existed. indeed, this game deserves another shot or at least a re-make, and if it does happen, can we leave out B-list sci-fi actors? At the very least talk to the equal opportunities  officer, the mandatory latex uniforms for the female operatives must be grounds for some kind of internal lawsuit .

looks legit.

7 – Grim Fandango (1998 – LucasArts)

This one must be on most gamers lists for games they want to see a revival of. It’s with a furrowed brow and a wavering resolution that I place it here though. I, like many others would love to see another instalment of this timeless and all-together inspiring classic… but… I would worry on the outcome. It would be entirely too easy for this game to be made badly, and thus, corrupt my fond memories of the game. So in this particular case I can only put forward a supporting argument for a re-make, not a sequel nor a spin off… much as it pains me to do so.

The game takes place after you have died and you, Manuel “Manny” Calavera, are a travel agent for the souls of the recently departed. The deal is as such; when you die you are collected by one of these netherworld travel agents and, dependent on what kind of life you have led, will be given your available transportation options to the ‘ninth underworld’, sinners will have to walk, taking a grand total of four short years, whilst the virtuous souls of the recently departed will be given a ticket on the number nine train which takes only four minutes. Along the way there are many dangers and you can even suffer a second and final death. During the first half of the game you uncover some corruption within the travel agency and you spend the rest of the game trying to figure it all out.

The game-play was fun, albeit challenging, and ran on a 3D ‘point and click’ basis (so lots of picking up items to combine with other objects and items to see if ‘plot’ occurred). The puzzles usually had a good pay-off and it genuinely felt like you really had accomplished something!  The characters were loveable, the story was inspired, and the world was vibrant and interesting, it had everything that you could want in an adventure game.

So.. Much… Awesome…

If anything I would love to see this game come-back with a HD remake, simply because the game had a clear cut ending leaving us with just enough questions about ‘what happens next?’. The game never needed to answer that question though, not even the characters were sure what would happen next, and as living mortals playing the game we’re definitely not entitled to an explanation. Let’s leave the story as it is, give it a bit of spit and polish, clear up some of the control issues and re-release it, that’s all I ask.

6 – Freelancer (2000 – Microsoft Game Studios)

By far one of the best space combat simulations I’ve ever played, not so complicated that I couldn’t fly the spaceship and not so simplistic that it flew for you. The game revolved around one man, a freelancer, a man who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty fighting pirates or smuggling alien artefacts into restricted systems. The single player was harmless enough, you start out helping fight off some pirates, but eventually get flung into a conspiracy that’s far above your pay grade. Essentially humanity at this point in time has now left earth and started  to colonize some new part of space, Earth now too polluted or war torn to even consider raising your kids on. All of the different colonies will reflect the individual natures of the countries that colonized them, so for example the ‘New Britain’ colonies will be rain swept planets with Gothic architecture and gargoyles on every street corner, whilst the ‘Liberty’ area of space will be full of hot-dog stands, baseball and everything with cheese on it.

If he’s looking into the middle-distance, then he means business…

It was exceedingly fun, and easy to understand the basics; complete missions, get money, upgrade ship / get new ship, complete harder missions. The game really came into its own during multi-player sessions; imagine rolling through the galaxy with your finest chums as your wingmen, pillaging trade vessels, foiling pirate raids and exploring new and exciting wormholes.  The game had a nice scope to it as well, it actually felt like you were part of a bustling universe; as you go about your merry business you’d often pick up back chatter from other space-faring folk, and more often than not be stopped by the local authorities for a quick cargo scan.

Look at those delicious, chunky, textures.

So yes, there’s not much more I can say, it was fun, it was exciting and it still has a great deal of potential. Reboot this series, add more features, more planets, more storyline, but let’s make sure we don’t overcomplicate things.

5 – Theme Hospital (Bullfrog Productions – 1997)

If you’ve never had the experience of Theme Hospital, I would suggest you make it a priority to experience it soon. This game is a fine example of what made bullfrog productions one of the all-time great developers, it was fun, it was addictive and it was funny. As the administrator for a hospital it was your purpose to do two things; firstly provide an expert level of comfort and care for patients suffering from a range of illnesses and afflictions, and secondly drain them for every penny that they have.

Giant comedy needles will never not be hilarious and terrifying,

The game plays like most management sims, you build your hospital from the ground up and fund it with the money from patients and generous donations from wealthy visitors. Patients would come in with a range of afflictions such as ‘bloaty head’, ‘slack tongue’ and ‘baldness’ and you would have to provide the correct diagnosis and treatment for their problems. As you progress in the game you’ll unlock new apparatus and treatment programmes through research and observation, with often hilarious results. The cure for ‘bloaty head’ for example was simply to pop the head with a giant comedy needle and then re-fill it with helium.

Essentially this game was a light hearted poke at the medical practices in America, who many viewed as doctors only providing care for people with the largest sack of money, but Theme Hospital was designed in such a way that made you forget about the controversy and have an enjoyable and memorable experience. The game had a pretty steady difficulty curve as well, starting with fairly simple hospitals with one or two major illnesses, to full blown epidemics every ten minutes. Nothing like this has ever really been attempted since, save for a few ridiculously low budget tycoon games, and it’s an honest shame.

Well.. need I say more…

With bullfrog now gone and EA clutching to the rights like an insane hobo to his tinfoil hat, it doesn’t look likely that we’ll see a sequel, or even a remake. It’s still something that I’d like to see though, and a man can dream… a man can dream…

4 – Dune (1993 – Cryo Interactive)

We’re going way back now, way before the Dune games became real time strategy fodder, to when Dune was a first person action strategy game. You know that feeling of hopelessness and despair that Imperium Galactica offered? Well tripple it for Dune. You are Paul Atreides the heir to house Atredies who have just been placed on the planet Arrakis (also known as Dune) to harvest the spice (mind altering drug that allows for space travel) for  Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, got all that? Essentially your task is to make sure the spice ‘flows’, you must hire the indigenous people of the planet (called Fremen) to harvest the spice or enlist them as soldiers fight off the evil invading Harkonans (another established household).

It was also on the P.C. apparently…

It might sound complicated, but the game introduces all of these elements at a steady pace as not to overwhelm the player (it also helps if you’ve watched the 1984 film adaptation of the original novel by Frank Herbert). The game starts with you having only a minor role in the day to day running of your household, you’re expected to speak to people, explore your mansion and meet the locals. Eventually, due to a variety of tragic events, you’re left in charge of everything! Not to mention that the Emperor is constantly on the holo com asking for larger and exceedingly unreasonable shipments of spice, also the Harkonans have landed and are starting their own rival spice operation. Your objectives then change from tottering about the house with wide eyed wonder, to searching the desert for equipment, freman and sand worms.

The story, whilst not following the original books, does work very well and it is extremely gripping. Throughout the course of the story you’ll meet lots of interesting people, teach a bunch of cavemen how to use nuclear weapons, become a wizard and learn to ride a giant freaking sandworm.  The only problem I encountered was the difficulty curve, it’s almost impossible to win the game. In the early stages of game-play if you don’t meet the spice demands of the emperor you’ll simply die, whilst later on you can try to fight him off with your highly trained army of desert warriors, but reaching a point where you can fight him is nigh impossible as his demands become unreachable pretty early on. This is what I mean about the feeling of desperation or hopelessness, it’s like having to pay the phone-bill every month, but with the threat of imminent execution if you don’t pay it and also if the mobile network you’re with keeps marking the price up every month. With that in mind though, I have managed to complete this stonker and it was worth every number crunching moment.

If you’re not having a knife fight against Sting with Captain Picard refereeing, then you’re obviously not doing it right.

It certainly doesn’t need a sequel, it’s a game that ties everything up nicely at the end-game so there’s no real room for expansion, all the game really needs is a few modernising elements and a balancing of the difficulty other than that, it definitely needs resurrecting. It’s a game for the ages and I’m surprised at how many people have never even heard of it. If you like the cult film then you’ll certainly like being part of the game.

3 – The Settlers I / II (1993 / 1996 – Blue Byte Software)

Before I get started, I  know there was a settlers II 10th anniversary edition released back in 2006, but just bare with me here. A lot of people will either know nothing about the re-release for the 10th anniversary because it was only really released in England and Germany or will never have played it because it was only released in very small quantities. The remake itself was pretty good. It remained true to the original first two settlers games but it didn’t really get the attention it required because blue-byte didn’t expect it to sell very well, so let’s take a look, and see why I think it needs a third go with a much bigger push upon release.

A little Monty Python wouldn’t you say?

Alright, seriously, what happened Bluebyte? the Settlers has become so far removed from it’s original concept it’s ridiculous. The current settlers is a mountain of micromanagement on very pretty graphics, whilst the first two settlers games were a nice, fun and most importantly, slow game. All that was required to play the settlers was some patience and tactical thinking. The basic aim of the game was to expand your tiny little village into a bustling town by building structures and tools that would allow you to build more structures and tools. For example, the first supply chain you can establish is for stone and wood for bigger structures to be created; first build a woodcutter, who will go out and hack down a forest to be sent to the saw mill, who will then carve the wood into planks, meanwhile you build a stone cutter to supply you with hunks of granite. Later down the line you’ll have farms, blacksmiths, mines and so forth. Eventually you’ll be forced to combat with other players by sending your troops to fight in turn based, animated combat to take over their portions of land. I’ll admit the combat needed a bit of work, but the anticipation of waiting for the outcome of the combat was pretty fun.

The settlers II also offered a story mode where, as Roman explorers, you’re stranded on a desert island and forced to carve out a small society, where you’ll eventually come across other island dwellers who don’t take kindly to strangers such as yourselves. The story wasn’t exceptional, but it certainly added an element of excitement to the game that the first settlers never really offered.

It’s just so… pleasant.

So let’s try it again, let’s give it a bigger budget and bigger release, there’s so few nice, casual games to play any more. This was a game you could sit with a cup of tea, and a bit of toast, listening to Artie Shaw on the wireless… *sigh* a simpler time.

2 – Dungeon Keeper I / II (1997 / 1999 – Bullfrog Productions)

Bullfrog productions have a lot to answer for, they have the nerve to release a torrent of fantastic and inspired games and then go and get bought up by EA, who then either laid most of the developers off, or set them to go work on Harry Potter games, what sin did they commit to have  that done to them! Anyway, this is a pretty obvious game to have placed on a top-ten reboot list, and I’m aware of many spiritual successors to the game such as; Overlord, Dungeons and Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! but none could quite match up to the delicious dark humour of Dungeon Keeper.

Good times…

The game was centred around you, as a master of the dungeon in the dark, dank, underworld. Your objective was simple enough, become the biggest, baddest dungeon keeper to ever wreak havoc on the over world. In order to do this however, you need to subjugate all the other wannabe dungeon keepers and take care of all those pesky heroes that want you dead, simple enough. Essentially the game was a management sim with a dark twist, you’re the bad guy, you build rooms to attract various assortments of creatures into your dungeon and then use them to protect your dungeon heart and destroy everyone else’s. You could also perform magic, lay down traps and torture enemy monsters and heroes to join your side. You also had to be very careful about which the monsters you have living together, for example, the giant spider and giant fly will certainly not get on, nor will the vampire or any human you put next to him.

The reason that this game attains the lofty position of number 2 in this list is because it was done so well, there was never a point in the game where I felt it was lacking or needed attention. The difficulty curve was steady, the game-play was enjoyable with interesting features to help you explore your own dungeon, and the end-game felt worth while. Dungeon keeper 2 also offered ‘My Pet Dungeon’ which let you sandbox your own game and offered a series of challenges for you to complete.

It was an all-together excellent game and no-one seems to have come close to creating one entirely like it. At present the closest we’re going to see it being re-released is ‘Dungeon Keeper Online’ an MMO based on the Dungeon Keeper world which isn’t due to be released in anywhere apart from China and Taiwan… and frankly… they can keep it there.

1 – Dominus (1994 – Visual Concepts Entertainment)

This game sits quite happily as one of the best games I have ever played. Many of you may not played it, or even heard of it, but for a game made in 1994 it was brilliant. The only reason this beats dungeon keeper to the punch is because it was the game that played the evil overlord card first and got it completely right. You play an evil overlord, you’re so freaking evil that the monsters in the surrounding are pretty pissed off and coming to evict you and it’s your job to stop them.

No box artwork, so you’ll just have to settle for a bunch of monsters staring at you in an uncomfortable silence.

There are various elements to the gameplay, you have a variety of rooms to look in, magic room, trap crafting, a prison / torture chamber, monster stock cupboard, monster creation room and so forth. You also have the map overview of your kingdom which is segmented into different zones, the zones which are being invaded are highlighted and you have the option of zooming in and facing them in monster to monster combat, or letting them wander further into your territory  only to fall into your even more diabolical traps. The objective was wipe out all the invading forces with the meagre resources you have at your disposal, as difficulty levels increased the less resources you have available.

Some of the more exciting features of the game included; interrogating captured soldiers and forcing them to join your army, mixing monsters together to make even more powerful monster generals, utilising the different elements of your monsters (such as stone golem vs fire warrior) to combat your enemies and most importantly this… If you wanted to, you could go to the battlefield to take care of the invading forces yourself. Remember, you’re an overlord, you’re not just some guy who’s been elected there via democratic process, you in fact got to your position of leadership by setting the democratic process on fire and nailing its head to a stick to ensure that no other democratic processes attempt to enter your kingdom. So you’ve got to be a badass… and by badass I mean riding in on a chariot pulled by dragons, hurling fireballs at everything around you then hitting it with a sword the size of a small car kind of badass… which is exactly what you are.

Mixing monsters together, this is how kittens were born.

For its time, this game was much more inventive and inspired than anything else surrounding it and I’m genuinely surprised when people say they’ve never heard or played it. What’s even more heartbreaking is that the game hardly works with windows 7 so I can’t even indulge in it myself any more. I would very much like to see someone attempt to remake it, I would be genuinely excited to hear that one was in the pipeline, but I sincerely doubt that it’ll ever resurface in the near future… oh well… I think I’m going to cheer myself up by playing some theme hospital.

Leave your thoughts and comments below. Thanks for reading!

~ by Microwaved Coffee on June 24, 2012.