The Oldie Top Ten

I figure since there was a renewed interest in top tens. I would start one that is near and dear to my heart. I bring you ladies and gentlemen, ghouls and ghoulies, vampires and vampiresses, skavens and skanenies. Drum roll please (closest thing to a drumroll we got.) and now without much further ado I bring you

The CRPG Top Ten Oldies But Goodies List

*Brought to you by the Great Skavenlord himself, you all know him, you all love him, you murder in his name everyday and if you didn't he'll murder you, let's give it up for The Horned Rat

The great horned rat would like to thank all the little skav's out there that every night go out in his name to sow the seeds of chaos within the disgusting human cities. Warpstone for all you my little scurrying and scratching underlings.

Now that the ado part is over lets get down to the meat and potatoes of this list. You can name any top 10 game that were made a loooonnnngggg time ago. I'm talking old here folks. Dos/NO WINDOWS/C64/Amiga/even old consoles since they shouldn't be left out either/ Intellivision/Atari/Nintendo/Super Nintendo (NONE PAST NIN64. Basically if it was out before Windows then go crazy.

Also, this is for nostagia's sake only. Don't be comparing these poor old guys to what the new and improved guys can do, or if you want go ahead and tell the The Horned One why your old game is far superior to the junk they make now. That's ok. But No telling about how this new game is sooo superior to the old ones (remember I'm skaven, so I can cheat and bend the rules a bit )

Here is my list to start things rolling,

1)Ultima 4 -Was the first one that added a lot of depth to the game and the fact that I could finally run away in combat. Ultima 3 you had to stick it out and fight.

2)Bards Tale - Played this on the C64. I had a blast try to figure out some of those puzzles and I think it was the first real RPG to that had so much stuff to uncover and figure out. The classes were really cool too.

3)Pool of Radiance - By far the best D&D that will ever be made just for the fact that it was the first D&D game I played. It brought everything I had been reading in the Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters and Monster Manual to life for me. All the while I was playing it I kept saying to my mom it's the Pool of RAD iance. Like in totally rad, tubular, awsome, bodacious (I grew up in California and was a bit of a Jet Skier)

4)Quest for glory or Heroes Quest- (It was heroes quest when I bought it but they had to change the name later on) This is one of the best games ever written. Funny, adventure, and you get to really steal from places. My dad was driven nuts when I thought I could up my lock picking skill by picking our locks at home lol (I was 8 or 9)

5) Realms of Arkania 3 - Shadow over Riva - No words can tell you how awsome this game is. Do you like depth in a game then step right up it's got depth. You like tons of stats got that too. Great monster Check. Different system than other fantasy games check. Awsome plot check check and you could go to bordellos for to help you relax after a hard night of killing baddies. What more could you want.

6) Ultima 5 - I had to include this one because it is one of my favorites. Actually a little more than Ultima 4 but I gave nostalgia points for 4. Once again great story, great characters and in the beginning no big foozle to kill. You can count Blackthorne as the big foozle but I thought of it more as a detective story. Hunt down the clues as to why British is missing and go save him. Great game. Great upgrade from the previos Ultima.

7) Wasteland - Everyone knows Wasteland and most of you love it so I will leave it at that, still one of the greatest games ever made.

8) Starflight - Hybrid RPG/space adventure I'm adding this one in because this could be considered the granddaddy of all sandbox games. Words describing how good Starflight is just don't compare to actually playing it. Go out there and kick some Uhlek butt.

9) Sword of Aragon - Another Hybrid RPG/Strategy one of the best if still not the best game. I actually was dissapointed with this game (Only wanted RPG)when I first got it for Christmas and tried to return it. I'm glad my mom couldn't, so I popped it in and right from the start I was in love with this game. I'm a mage commanding armies, how cool is that. This game is still worth it to play even by today's standars. If you don't mind the graphics or the beeping noises.

10)Battletech: The Crescent Hawks Inception - One of the first Battletech games. They made it a RPG/Strategy game that I just loved. Also the plot wasn't too bad. Lot's of interesting characters and items to upgrade to. Plus I liked the mechs and the way that combat was handled. They never made another one like this unfortunately. The sequel is one of the first RTS games and the speaker actually spoke to you but I never liked it more than the first.

Sorry about all the fuss but The Horned Rat insisted that there was a big opening to the list.

I'm a late comer to the game. I definitely have no interest in anything pre-Windows and really, anything pre-Fallout.

I think there should be ancient and modern epochs, defined by the birth of Fallout, since it's seen by so many to be as close to RPG Messiah as can be. Much like BC and AD, it should be B.F. and A.F.

Ten pre-Windows cRPGs? Hm, can't say I played or liked cRPGs back then. While I played the occasional trivia game on my friend's Amiga and jump'n'run games on my Atari 2600 and later NES, I couldn't accept anything but true blue pen and paper as a roleplaying game.
I remember trying Bards Tale (1985?) at the only PC at our part of University, and I Megatraveller 1 (1990, PC)really, really disliked it. Later, a friend tried to get me interested in Pool of Radiance... it was so not my cup of tea, I wanted to play my trivia games! Later still, another friend convinced me of playing Hillsfar with her on her Amiga (must have been 1989 - yep, looked it up). For some unfathomable reason, I liked the game, but it was about the only pre-90s-cRPG I liked.

I can make a list of ten pre-Fallout (i.e., pre-1997) cRPGs I really, really liked, however:

Megatraveller 1 and 2 (1990 and 1991, PC): It was Traveller. Which was enough for me. Really captured the feel of the p&p game.
Eye of the Beholder 2 (1991, PC): Great atmosphere despite the AD&D background.
Shadowrun (1993, SNES): This one was great. Good story, good game mechanics, god NPCs. Cyberspace wasn't so great (the Genesis Shadowrun game did that better), but why would a shaman need Cyberspace, anyway?
Lands of Lore 1 (1993, PC): Still the pinnacle of cRPG for me. The atmosphere, the enchanting graphics... and a lass named Hugo.
Shadowcaster (1993, PC): more of an adventure, but the Raven folks knew how to make captivating games... yep, even back then. Favorite shape: the Opsis!
Ultima Underworld II (1993, PC): It was vast and seemed aim- and endless. That's how I like them.
System Shock 1 (1994, PC): This one really, really scared me, and Shodan was so mean.
Arena (1994, PC): I will never forget my invisible, thieving fireball bomber. This game defined my favorite type of character class for years to come.
Daggerfall (1996, PC): More of the same. Buggy as hell, but oh so entertaining... I could roam the snowy mountains of Ephesus like, say, forever.

xSamhainx said:

I think there should be ancient and modern epochs, defined by the birth of Fallout, since it's seen by so many to be as close to RPG Messiah as can be. Much like BC and AD, it should be B.F. and A.F.

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He heh, now that is maybe a tad extreme I mean, sure Fallout is a great game but I don't see it as being *that* revolutionary - there have been many equally great rpg games before it and also a bunch of equally great rpg games after it.

Anyway, great thread! Even if it makes you feel old and extra nerdy...
It's hard to put together a top-10 of the old rpgs - choosing the ten candidates is a tough job and putting them in order is even harder. So here goes my list of 10 really great old rpgs..

1) Ultima 7 Serpent Isle: Well, really the entire Ultima series. I started with Ultima 6, which was great, and then went on to U7SI which blew me away completely. Since then I've become a true Ultima fanboy and have played and enjoyed the rest of the series as well.

2) Ultima Underworld 2: Again, both games were great but I really loved the (at that time) epic scope of the sequel with the castle and all the different "worlds" you could travel to.

3) Heros Quest 1: At that time I played a lot of Sierra adventure games, and I loved pretty much every one of them. The problem was just that you could get stuck, and since this was before the time of the Internet it was not so easy to get a hint. HQ1 had another approach to adventure games. It was non-linear and even when I was stuck I would just run around in the woods and kill monsters to improve my skills and earn money. Eventually I did complete the game, and I took my character all the way through the rest of the series. Great experience!

4) Betrayal at Krondor: This game had such a different approach to the rpg genre and with its different setting and vastly superior writing and story compared to the other rpgs of its time it just blew me away!

5) Might & Magic 3: Compared to some other rpgs the M&M series have a laughably weak storyline, but what it lacks in story it makes up for with its great hack&slash game mechanics and its dungeons with riddles. I remember playing MM3 with a friend and having a great time talking to each other about how we discoreved something new or how we figured out an especially hard puzzle or dungeon.

6) Daggerfall: It had bugs.. and lots of them. But it also offered a *huge* and open game world, and it was the first time I ever played a game where the goals were to vaguely outlined for the player. I had a great time just building up my character with the generic dungeons and quests - and an equally great time following the story though the hand crafter special dungeons.

7) Outcast: Looked *great* with its advanced software voxel based rendering engine (it had graphical features that are still considered fairly new on todays modern graphics cards). Also it was huge and had an interesting setting.

8) Ravenloft - Strahd's Possession: A great take on the EOB game play. I liked the dark setting which was different from the standard rpg worlds.

9) Lands of Lore 1: Westwood made some really polished and beautiful games at that time and the first LoL game were no exception. It played like EoB but with much more interesting story, locations and characters.

10) Stonekeep: Looked really great at the time and there was some quite advanced AI going on for the enemies.

ONLY 10!!! Let's see:

1. Treasure of Tarmin (Intellivision )
2. Ultima 5 (C64 ) followed by the rest of the series
3. Bard's Tale 3 (C64 )
4. Quest for Glory 1 (286 ) followed by the rest of the series
5. Eye of the Beholder 1
6. Lands of Lore 1 (but NOT the rest of the series )
7. Ultima Underworld 2
8. Betrayal at Krondor
9. Might and Magic 3-5
10. Arena, Daggerfall, System Shock 1, Wizardry 7,.....

These are in no particular order and I'm sure I've forgotten at least one great game somewhere!! Ah, they sure don't make them like they used to!!!!

i kind of agree with xSamhainx, imo there really isnt any other rpg that succeeds as well, and on as many fronts as the fallout games does..
that aside, here's my dos top list (not all strict crpg i guess):

10. TES: Arena
9. Castle (Adventure?)
8. Faery Tale Adventure
7. Dungeon Master
6. Stonekeep (too new? oldskewl feel anyway )
5. Jagged Alliance
4. Syndicate/Syndicate Wars
3. The Might & Magics
2. TES: Daggerfall
1. Eye of the Beholder 1-2

We've had a couple of threads on this, one was for someone trying to find old DOS games and even went so far as to reject self-booting games, in spite of the fact that they were made in DOS anyway (and most were easily cracked back to DOS in those old BBS days).

Here's somewhat of a repeat of my list. I probably have them in a different order.

1. Ultima III
2. Wizardry I
3. Might and Magic III
4. Ultima 4
5. Dark Heart of Uukrul
6. Bard's Tale I
7. Wizardry IV
8. Questron
9. Tunnels of Doom

then I'm split between AD&D – Treasure of Tarmin and Odyssey 2's Quest for the Rings.

I wouldn't say post fallout, the revival of RPG's is first heralded by Might and Magic VI, although some argue for the first Diablo.

Thanks to something called the in ter net a sudden craze in emulation led to an underground revival of our old favourites and we started seeing them updated.

RPG's dominated the mid-80's PC (Home Computer) craze and they were first really hardcore games if you don't count text adventures. Most games before them were arcade clones or very simple console fair where memory constraints forced them to be innovative and creative.

The return of the console, the emergence of 16 bit Japanese fair, as well as the "multimedia" craze of CD-ROMs and 8 bit sound cards revived Adventure games and made RTS, relagating RPG's to the "niche" market. Ironically, this is when the jRPG craze hit.

@Corwin Treasure of Tarmin. Now that wasw a great game. I played the cloudy peaks one but never got to the dragon. The sounds coming from the TV were one of the best parts of Cloudy. You wuold hear the breathing or flapping wings before you saw the creatures. Lands of Lore with Patrick Stewart as the king. A great game

@Jaz Shadowrun was very cool. It's too bad they never got it into their heads to make a real Shadowrun RPG nowadays. What goes through some of these devs heads is beyond me. Dev "Lets make a Shadowrun game that the fans will hate and the masses will ignore. Oh, let's also make it on an OS that nobody has yet. Can you feel the money just pouring in "

I see alot of cool oldies here. Thanks for participating. I was worried that there wouldn't be too much interest in this list, but I've been a nerd from waaayyy back and thought it would be interesting to see what other people's favorites were.

@dyze Stonekeep is great it isn't too new. I remember picking that up at Best Buy. It had the coolest looking box ever

I missed out on old RPG's but have started picking them up and have played some. I think I am planning to pull *way* back on reviewing in 2008 and enjoy some old games and replay stuff and basically take it easy ... but then again, who knows ... perhaps something bright and shiny will come along next week and I'll forget all about that

edit: oops, this is an oldie top 10 list. nm. too tired when I wrote this.

Anyone who doesn't have System Shock on their list must not have played it.

Unfortunately, that's a large number of people!!

The really old (non Windows) ones:

1: Ambermoon (Amiga)
2: Amberstar (Amiga)
3: Wizardry 4-7 (PC)
4: Dungeon Master 1 (Amiga)
5: Bards Tale 2 (Amiga)
6: System Shock 1 (PC)
7: Ultima 4-7 (Amiga+PC)
8: Ultima Underworld 1-2 (PC)
9: Might and Magic 2-5 (PC)
10: Betrayal at Krondor (PC)

...

skavenhorde said:

...Now that the ado part is over lets get down to the meat and potatoes of this list. You can name any top 10 game that were made a loooonnnngggg time ago. I'm talking old here folks. Dos/NO WINDOWS/C64/Amiga/even old consoles since they shouldn't be left out either/ Intellivision/Atari/Nintendo/Super Nintendo (NONE PAST NIN64. Basically if it was out before Windows then go crazy.

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Cough cough, can't you come with a more clear rule? I mean that for newbie Baldur's Gate has been made a loooooong time ago. And DOS/Windows, not clear limit.

Games before 1990 or 92, I don't know something like that. For me the nice rule could be games before 1996 (Fallout is from 1997).

Any game before Windows was an OS. The first Windows OS was WIN95 so then any game before 95

@JDR13 I was torn between putting System Shock in or not but the others won out in the end, there is just too many too choose from

skavenhorde said:

Any game before Windows was an OS. The first Windows OS was WIN95 so then any game before 95

@JDR13 I was torn between putting System Shock in or not but the others won out in the end, there is just too many too choose from

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GOOD GRIEF!!!!!!!!!! There were MANY versions of Windoze before 95!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was about iteration 5, I think!! I well remember versions one and two!!

Corwin said:

GOOD GRIEF!!!!!!!!!! There were MANY versions of Windoze before 95!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was about iteration 5, I think!! I well remember versions one and two!!

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Well you are doing the reverse exaggeration! If I remember well Windows 1 was a total DOS crap totally ugly and that nobody was using. Windows 2 ain't better. This really starts with Windows 3. Windows 3 was a bag of bugs as all MS products so the first real version of Windows was the 3.1 that last a long time. Other windows version wasn't really for public like Windows NT. So after 3.1 is 95.

skavenhorde said:

Any game before Windows was an OS. The first Windows OS was WIN95 so then any game before 95

@JDR13 I was torn between putting System Shock in or not but the others won out in the end, there is just too many too choose from

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If I can throw my 2 cents, I feel that include 96 and 95 would be the more cool. I was looking at some CRPG lists and well games from those year still feel quite old. Yeah some setup some features that will take more importance in more modern CRPG but from this point of view older games already did that.

Lucky Day said:

Odyssey 2's Quest for the Rings.

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Wow, there's a blast from the past. I can't even get a good memory of it beyond knowing that I spent a lot of hours with it. It was a real nice oversized box, right?

How about Mines of Moria? First RPG I played, on a friend's Apple ][ Plus no less. Tons of hours of ASCII goodness.

Don't know that I could go much beyond that without getting a better definition of "oldie", preferrably one that doesn't refer to Corwin.

Okay... here's my (ever changing) list... I'll keep it to DOS games. In no particular order:

1. Pool of Radiance (gold box)
2. Wasteland
3. Demon's Winter
4. Ultima 5
5. Magic Candle
6. Wizardry 5 (or whichever one was "Bane of the Cosmic Forge")
7. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny
8. Shard of Spring
9. Twilight: 2000
10. Dragon Wars

EDIT: I don't have System Shock on my list... and I did play it It was a great game, but it's not currently on my top 10 DOS games...