First Generation games that didn't suck

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

Since I am tired of hearing all the whining of the TPF fanboys who use the excuse that TPF should be cut more slack because it is a first generation title, here is a list of first generation games that not only didn't crash or were missing major features, but were actually fun to play! Feel free to add any titles. Not just sports ones.

Microleague Baseball
Front Page Sports Football
Earl Weaver Baseball

[Poli]

Final Fantasy.

[Eaglesfan27]

Earl Weaver Baseball was such a great game in its day Me and my friend used to play that for hours.

[TredWel]

The original Civilization was one of the best PC games ever.

[mckerney]

High Heat Baseball

[kcchief19]

Originally posted by LastWhiteSoxFanStanding
Microleague Baseball
Front Page Sports Football
Earl Weaver Baseball

Micro Leage Baseball gets the dubious distinction of going downhill with each subsequent release. My Mircro League 3 or 4, the franchise was a shell of the original.

The first FPS Football was gold. It's only "flaw" was that the AI couldn't adjust to trick plays at all. Other games that have come since were certainly more sophisticated and advanced the genre, but it was very challenging and enjoyable to the level of gamers at the time.

I would add almost any game made before 1994. Competition in the gaming industry and the sophistication of the games and hardware resulted in an increase in complications, and the rise of the Internet inspired companies to release buggy games and patch later.

Since then, I would throw in any LucasArts release. Granted, I haven't played some of the more recent releases like Galaxies, but earlier games like Rebel Assault, X-Wing, Tie Fighter and the like were fun, I never had a crash and I never had to patch.

[MrBug708]

Bases Loaded

[sabotai]

Super Mario Brothers
Donkey Kong
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I'll second Front Page Sports Football
Dark Forces (Jedi Knight is traced back to this one)
Doom
Quake
X-Wing (I basically consider Tie Fighter and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter to be sequals of this one)

[Daimyo]

Sim City

[LloydLungs]

Fast Break College Basketball. Came out several months after originally intended, but the final product shows why this can be a wise course for a developer to take. Has improved with patches, but was very good right out of the box.

[Dutch]

Civilization

Front Office Football

[Coffee Warlord]

X-Com
Master of Orion
Pirates!
Civ

Wow. First 4 games that came to mind were all MicroProse games.

Didn't even realize it, but geez. Don't find many major dev companies anymore that just produced...amazing stuff time and time again.

Edit: Oh, and I'll jump on the FPS: Football and Sim City bandwagon, too.

[Neuqua]

Originally posted by LloydLungs
Fast Break College Basketball. Came out several months after originally intended, but the final product shows why this can be a wise course for a developer to take. Has improved with patches, but was very good right out of the box.

Beat me to it.

1 crash reported in the first 24 hours. Not bad.

[Marmel]

Originally posted by Neuqua
Beat me to it.

1 crash reported in the first 24 hours. Not bad.

Fanboy.

[FloridaFringe]

Jagged Alliance
Master of Magic (Proof?)

[Taur]

Railroad Tycoon the original. Each addition to the Railroad line has gotten a little prettyer and little dumber.

Any game before 1995 or the internet explosion. Back then games could not be patched so they had to work perfect out of the box or face a recall.

Bring back the old days of the unpatchable console systems where games were perfect right out of the box. When companies employed entire teams of beta testers that did nothing but play games all day for a very nice salary.

In these days of free-beta testers you get what you pay for. Don't blame the people at .400 for bad beta testing blame the patch happy industry. You need look no further than right here and the 2 patches that had to be released in a week after FOF2004.

Good Beta-testing is a thing of the past and multiple patching is a thing of the future.

[Capital]

Heroes of Might and Magic
Diablo

[Raiders Army]

Civilization
NFL 2k
Warcraft
GTA 3 (consider this one being first generation since it was the first one to go 3D)

Also, to add on to Taur, I think console games are overall pretty good nowadays, with notable exceptions, but will eventually go the route of the PC with broadband and downloadable content (i.e. patches) becoming more prevalent.

[Buccaneer]

SimCity
Railroad Tycoon
Civilization (didn't play, but I'll take the word for it)
Wolfenstein 3D

Most all games since then has failed to measure up because of hype, unrealistic expectations, publishers pushing early releases, internet gaming forums, "me-too" attitudes and catering to an increasingly more immature market. Imo.

[Buccaneer]

dola

I remember playing the first version of FPS Football and Earl Weaver. I thought both games were mediocre at best. FPS paled in comparison to Tom Landry Strategy Football and Earl Weaver had noticable holes in the game, iirc.

[Tekneek]

Some of it is perception as well. The customer is generally more sophisticated now, when it comes to video games.

[gstelmack]

Originally posted by kcchief19
I would add almost any game made before 1994. Competition in the gaming industry and the sophistication of the games and hardware resulted in an increase in complications, and the rise of the Internet inspired companies to release buggy games and patch later.
[/b]

I am always amused when someone brings up the "heydey" of gaming and how older games and console games never needed patches. Anyone else remember the Microprose BBS for downloading patches? One of the old Gary Grigsby titles for SSI (Pacific War tactical combat, with counters of squad-level size, sorry I don't remember the title) refused to run on my Amiga 1000 until I sent off for a patch floppy, and even then did not run very well. And in the old Nintendo days, bugs were called "cheats" and the strategy guide industry got its start by pointing these out to players.

But you are correct, more complex games running on more complex hardware does mean it's more difficult to find and squish all the bugs. Especially when the bugs are often in software outside of the game company's control: remember how many motherboard driver patches there were when DX8 came out? It took about a year before there were stable motherboard/video card/sound card drivers for DX8.

But to think that only modern games have had bugs like this is to put blinders on to the problems of the past.

[WussGawd]

First, I think the level of complexity of coding for new games vs. older, smaller games lends itself to things slipping past beta testers, which is part of the reason why I think a lot of companies wind up patching games.

My trouble isn't with the obscure little things like what slipped past Jim G in the release version of FOF2004. These things were just obscure enough I could see them getting past beta testers. Yes, I want those things fixed, but I don't see them necessarily as deal breakers.

My problem is with companies that put out things with obvious holes wide enough to drive a truck through them (TPF and the missing 2 point conversions, fake kicks and onside kicks, or Imperialism and its mysterious disappearing/reappearing frigates) and then never really fix them (EA Games is notorious for this now, Sierra used to be notorious for it back in the mid 90's before they got swallowed by the corporate death star known as Vivendi).

A corrollary of the pre-1995, pre-Internet "never need a patch" belief system is that games were released with showstopper bugs or crashes. The only difference was that there was no quick way for consumers (gamers in this case) to spread the word. I distinctly remember SSI's Medieval Lords being so buggy I could never get it to load on my C64, and don't get me started about the steaming piles of poo that some of Sierra's early-90's releases were out of the box.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally posted by Buccaneer
I remember playing the first version of FPS Football and Earl Weaver. I thought both games were mediocre at best. FPS paled in comparison to Tom Landry Strategy Football and Earl Weaver had noticable holes in the game, iirc.

Tom Landry Strategy Football. Good catch. I know we're talking about first-generation games, but the sequel to Landry was even better than the original, which I didn't think was possible at the time.

I loved Earl Weaver Baseball, as many others did. I don't remember any significant holes in the game. Either I was wearing rose-colored glasses, or the game was improved for the Amiga version, which is what I played.

As for my votes, I'll go with Tom Landry, Civilization, X-Com, and good old Omni-Play Horse Racing (also known as Sport of Kings).

[Ragone]

in honor of bucc..

Pirates!

[Buccaneer]

Thanks, Ragone. Like Civ, I didn't get into Pirates until the sequel but I know it belonged on that list.

Pumpy, I would suspect that the Amiga version was different than the PC version.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally posted by Eaglesfan27
Earl Weaver Baseball was such a great game in its day Me and my friend used to play that for hours.

If anything, the original Earl Weaver was so good that there really wasn't much reason to get future sequels. It was so bang-on in terms of gameplay and so easy to customize that you didn't need to upgrade.

[Pumpy Tudors]

In the Amiga version of Earl Weaver Baseball, you could actually enter phonemes to have the PA announcer say any name you wanted. I'd create all the MLB teams, and I had the game correctly pronouncing everything from Bud Black to Orestes Destrade. It sounded like a robot voice, but I thought it was pretty revolutionary at the time.

Ohbytheway, congrats to myself on my 600th post!

[Philliesfan980]

How can anyone forget Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Hours and Hours of enjoyment.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally posted by Pumpy Tudors
In the Amiga version of Earl Weaver Baseball, you could actually enter phonemes to have the PA announcer say any name you wanted. I'd create all the MLB teams, and I had the game correctly pronouncing everything from Bud Black to Orestes Destrade. It sounded like a robot voice, but I thought it was pretty revolutionary at the time.

You were able to get it to pronounce all the names correctly?

You obviously never used a team that featured Todd Stottlemyer.

[hukarez]

Double Dragon
Metroid
Zelda!

[PineTar]

umm... Half Life. Anyone ever hear of that little title?

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by PineTar
umm... Half Life. Anyone ever hear of that little title?

Yes! and loved every minute of it.

Here's to version 2!


Todd

[Mota]

Earl Weaver Baseball ... best game ever.

[Coop]

monkey island
Grim Fandango
Splinter Cell
Thief
System Shock
DEUS Ex
Halo
Mafia

Good times

[gstelmack]

Originally posted by MizzouRah
Yes! and loved every minute of it.

Even the Alien level jumping puzzles? I've never met anyone who actually liked those levels...

[Buccaneer]

Originally posted by PineTar
umm... Half Life. Anyone ever hear of that little title?

Wasn't that based on a previously developed engine? If so, I don't think it would count since most of the games on the first-gen list were developed from scratch.

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by gstelmack
Even the Alien level jumping puzzles? I've never met anyone who actually liked those levels...

It wasn't my favorite part, but yeah the whole game was great...

The intro blew me away... In fact, I watched the intro, then went to Best Buy to get a new Video Card.


Todd

[KWhit]

Originally posted by Buccaneer
Wasn't that based on a previously developed engine? If so, I don't think it would count since most of the games on the first-gen list were developed from scratch.

I think it was a new engine, but I could be wrong. I know a lot of other games used the engine from HL, but they all call it the Half-Life engine, so I assume it was new for that game.

[Coop]

it was based off the quake II engine iirc

[TheCount]

lol funny no one said FOF

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally posted by TheCount
lol funny no one said FOF

Dutch did.