Hi there!

Besides playing games on Steam and GOG, I also play old abandonware games, usually downloading those which were designed for DOS and older versions of Windows as well as some Flash games. Lately, I have been considering trying a platform for a change, preferable with an emulator that I can easily install and use during quick breaks.

Please leave some suggestions in the comments.

For this purpose, I would like games to be either relaxing, bizarre, and/or mentally challenging, but no precision platformers. I like to play addictive puzzles games, metroidvanias, roguelikes, and strategy games. Games involving military aircraft and games involving trading can also be good.

1 month ago

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Which outdated console or platform do ou like the best?

View Results
Playstation Home Consoles or PSP
Nintendo (exluding SNES/Famicon)
SNES/Famicon
Anything by SEGA
DOS
Windows (not current or DOS)
MacIntosh (not current)
ZX Spectrum
Amiga
PC-88/89
Flash/Shockwave
XBox
Atari-2600/5200
PC (Because Ze Arre De MASTERR RASE!)
Magnavox
Smartphone (Including Android or iOS)
Pre-Obama Era Cellphone
A calculator from Texas Instruments
A smartphone
Other (Please write in the comments)

You'd be surprised how many decent titles are available on GBA and NDS, particularly when you're thinking about platformers, metroidvanias, and some military games (less here, I'm mostly thinking Advance Wars). For starters, there are a lot of Castlevanias and Metroids on those platforms. I've played Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia, Portrait of Ruin, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow. They mostly rock. Haven't really played the Metroids but we're just scratching the surface here

1 month ago
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GBA is a really good suggestion! Some of the games you mentioned seem promising enough. I may have owned a GBA or some similar console, where I played my first Super Marios game, but it somehow went missing upon my return from an overseas trip, with only some of the cartridges remaining. ;(

Not sure about emulating NDS since it was designed with a touch scree, but I can consider.

1 month ago
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NDS emulation is pretty good, just WASD for dpad and surrounding keys for other buttons and your mouse for the touchpad.

only issue with NDS emulation... at least for pokemon is you have to be aware when things start to wrong to restart it(likely caused by turboing the emulation speed... idk)

also play golden sun(and lost age) if you haven't, Dark Dawn can be skipped.

1 month ago
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Unsurprising recommendation for Golden Sun, given your avatar :)

As for NDS emulation, agreed - it's really solid. I played the Castlevanias on an emulator. I think a few games like Wario Ware might be difficult, but other than that every game I remember trying ran pretty well

1 month ago
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Currently replaying the God of War games on my steam deck - really enjoying it! Having save states (ability to save anytime/anywhere) for these older games is a gamechanger..

1 month ago
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EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am open to turn-based games, maybe similar to JRPGs or CRPGs.
Feel free to recommend me games that can be a gateway series for a platform.

1 month ago
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Super Nintendo is possibly the best console for JRPGs.

Final Fantasy 4
Final Fantasy 6
Chrono Trigger
Secret of Mana
Secret of Evermore
Illusion of Gaia
Lufia 1&2
Earthbound
Super Mario RPG

Japanese only, but there are fan translations:
Star Ocean (or later official translation on other platforms)
Tales of Phantasia (start of the 'Tales of' series!)

1 month ago
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I can't second this enough.
This console is peak JRPG.

1 month ago
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How about some SRPGs?
Disgaea
Agarest
Songs of Conquest

1 month ago
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Fire Emblem series for Nintendo platform is really good. For a modern take, you can try The Battle for Wesnoth.

1 month ago
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Playstation 1 has a great selection of JRPG's.

Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8 (story goes off the rails after disc 1, but otherwise a good game)
Final Fantasy 9
Parasite Eve
Grandia
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete
Suikoden
Suikoden II
Breath of Fire IV
Xenogears
Legend of Dragoon
Chrono Cross

That said, if you're going to use an emulator my suggestion would be to use a CRT filter so any pre-rendered backgrounds are blended properly (else they can look very pixely/blurry/compressed). There's also a feature in PS1 emulators called GPXP that if enabled reduces polygon and texture warping which can make the pixel art used for many games textures look significantly better. You can also add filtering to textures to blur them, but I highly recommend not doing this as it creates texture seams everywhere (and the original artists intend is often lost since the textures were designed assuming you could see each pixel unlike on N64).

A slightly dark example of a CRT filter vs standard resolution PS1 games:

View attached image.
View attached image.
4 days ago*
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That's a good tip. Thank you!

4 days ago
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So we're now referring to J2ME as "Pre-Obama Era Cellphone"? :P

1 month ago
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For a metroidvania I'll recommend Tomba on the PS1.

For puzzle I;ll recommend Wordtris on the SNES and DOS.

For turn based strategy/RPG I'll suggest Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics on the DS.

1 month ago
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Gamecube has my favorites because it had the best local multiplayer options. Not too many for your needs, but it has a couple strategy titles like Fire Emblem.

1 month ago
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I have an old Wii, and I'd love to hear more of your GameCube recommendations, when you find the time.

4 days ago
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There are not actually that many gamecube games in total if you're looking for english or other releases. I'd suggest looking at the list on wiki for basic suggestions of best sellers.

There's also this page with gamecube only titles: wiki

There are also options on metacritic to sort by genre and userscore as well as critic scores. Metacritic

Some games I think most people would enjoy:

  • Eternal Darkness
  • F-Zero GX
  • Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and the sequel
  • Kirby Air RIde
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee (Dolphin emulator/slippi.gg for online play )
  • Super Monkey Ball 2 (has been in some ports but I prefer this over the Xbox version because I like the gamecube controller more)
  • Custom Robo
  • Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (sequel on wii is good too)
  • WarioWare, Inc: Mega Party Game$!
  • Mario Party 4+
  • Pokemon Colosseum/XD Gale of Darkness
  • Spiderman 2
  • Super Mario Sunshine (has been ported to Switch but is no longer produced so you might have to buy used)
  • Viewtiful Joe Series (think it's 1/2 on GC)
  • Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3
  • Timesplitters 2/Future Perfect
  • Pikmin 1/2 (wii port is there as well)
  • Soul Calibur 2 (Link is featured in a 3D fighter other than smash)
  • Metroid Prime 1/2 and 3 on wii - can find them in a trilogy compilation on wii, too
  • Mario Kart Double Dash
  • Tales of Symphonia (co-op rpg)
  • Legend of Zelda (any/all have something to experience and the gamecube has some of the classics including Windwaker, OOT /MasterQuest, Zelda classics colection (contains like 4 games), and Twilight Princess)
  • Resident Evil 4

One thing that is troubling about recommending most gamecube games is that the majority of the big titles were ported to other systems like Resident Evil 4 and/or have solid remakes (RE4 does too as well) now like Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. Honestly, it's hard to find games that I want to recommend that haven't been ported and are more easily accessible elsewhere. I'd suggest looking into the price differences between versions and picking whichever one is cheaper if they are not significantly different somehow.

4 days ago
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Thanks!

My sons loved the Teen Titans game. It's drop-in, drop-out co-op, and does a really good job conveying the characters (as sourced from the Teen Titans cartoon (not "... GO", the previous one)).

3 days ago
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I used to watch the original Teen Titans. I haven't checked out the game, though. Might do so now.

3 days ago
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MSX and MSX2 has a surprisingly deep library of interesting games and active homebrew community. Many can be played without knowing Japanese, or have translation patches out there. (If you like mid-1980's style games)

1 month ago
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I did hear quite a a bit about MSX games (I own Metal Gear Solid over GOG). Do you have the best ones that you can recommend?

1 month ago
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In terms of hardware/quality, original MSX is similar to C64 level of hardware. MSX2 is similar to NES level of hardware. Just to get an idea what to expect from the games. If you do not mind such old and relatively simple games, it is great. A lot of the famous games of the time like Lode Runner, Boulder Dash, etc. are available.

Konami made loads of games for both systems, including famous ones like you said Metal Gear, Castlevania (Vampire Killer), etc. Compile also made a bunch of games, including some exclusive versions of Aleste which are usually considered the best on the platform.

An MSX1 game made by Casio, The Stone of Wisdom, is an action RPG that is basically a gameplay clone of The Legend of Zelda...
Another MSX1 game, Payload is basically how Euro Truck Simulator would have looked in 1985.

Here's a video showing lots of different game clips, for an idea of what kind of games to expect.

1 month ago
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Beside the latest consoles (except the switch although Yuzu has been taken down) basically most is just easy to emulate and install, so i don't see why you restrict yourself to just one system.

I like the gamebase versions because then you get 1 easy oversight with screenshots of those games (and thus judge you might like it or not) because of the size of the oldest consoles, the collections aren't that big in size.
Dos has an alternative collection called Exodos.

Still abandonware/emulation is still considered piracy, and i don't know if this clashes with the rules.

1 month ago*
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I limit myself mostly due to time constraints (I could try two of them this month, though) plus I decided to fish this forum for opinions and determine if anyone from the community knows any old games that still hold up on their own.

Thanks you for suggestion.

1 month ago
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There are a lot of good choices there. I would add the Commodore 64 to the list. It has a huge library of games, both its own and solid ports from the Spectrum, Apple II and Atari 8-bit. It has the best sound of any 8 bit machine, to the point where the best C64 game music programmers became legitimate celebrities among the C64 community in the '80s.

I'd also recommend the Atari ST. While most of its best games were ported to the Amiga, it has its own charm and some quite good exclusives. An excellent games machine that too often gets overlooked.

1 month ago
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They seem like good starting points. I will look at them later.

1 month ago
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I'd love to play Twisted Metal, Gran Turismo 5, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Race Driver: Grid (2008), Slender: The Arrival, Alien Isolation, Rocksmith 2014, Brutal Legend, Spec Ops: The Line and others I can't name off the top of my head on the PlayStation 3. Who knows if there is emulation for that yet. I know PS1 and PS2 can be emulated but never heard of PS3 or PS4 emulation.

1 month ago
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There is emulation for the PS3 and I think It's pretty solid by now.
Not sure but I think there's also PS4 emulation already and they're probably looking to crack the PS5 already.

1 month ago
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Interesting, probably won't ever get into it, seems difficult. No way there is PS4 emulation already though, that's insane.

1 month ago
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Yeah, looks like I went too far. There's only PS4 emulation for indie 2D titles atm.
Do not fear going to the Dark Side. There's a bunch of complete tutorials out there.

1 month ago
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I have PS Vita and a DS Lite. I bought the Vita a few years ago and I love it. In addition to the beautiful yet small Vita library, I can run PS 1 and PSP games. I have about 250 games on all those platforms in my backlog.
A few months ago I got a DS Lite to try out some Nintendo games since I'm not familiar with Nintendo and I'm not impressed at all. The library isn't that big or impressive. I'll finish the games I want to play and then sell it.

1 month ago
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As the one who used to play on the PSP, PS Vita is a decent consideration. I am not sure how easy it is to set up emulation for it though.

1 month ago
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SEGA Genesis' "Sink or Swim" alternatively known as "S. S. Lucifer Man overboard"

1 month ago
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Well, Zero Wing was on this try, so I might give this platform a chance.

1 month ago
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SNES > GBA > NDS

1 month ago
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No need emulator since I have a snes really close from me.
But here's some nugget I'm lucky enough to have that I hope you might like and found: adams family values, illusion of time, illusion of gaia, donkey kong country, lemmings, king arthurs world, another world, secret of evermore, pilotwings, good troopn chrono trigger, a link to the past, secret of mana, super mariokart

4 days ago
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I already did download Pilotwings and I may give Illusion of Time and Illusion of Gaia a chance.

4 days ago
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I miss Munkiki Castle on my 3410 (I know there is one, and it runs as bad as the original game. I should take time to do a remake)

4 days ago
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