Oldest game you've actually enjoyed.

[Nikku4211]

Well... the oldest system I own is the NES, and I own a handheld system from the 1990s that's compatible with a console that in Japan is just as old as the NES...

 

Hm...

 

If I've played a port of a game, does that count as enjoying the older game, or does it count as enjoying a game that released later on that is a port of the older game?

 

If the former, then I'll say Galaxian. It was a bit fun on its own, even knowing it's the predecessor to Galaga.

 

As for 'enjoyed on real original hardware', I'm going to have to say Super Mario Bros 1. I don't own any Atari console or computer, and I've also never owned any home computers from the 1980s, the oldest computer I used being a 1990s IBM compatible running Windows 98 on MS-DOS.

[vyruss]

Played a lot of Laser Blast! on Atari 2600.  Montezuma's Revenge too.

[Billa]

I enjoy Mancala, it's at least 8000 years if that counts

[DoomPlayer00]

H.E.R.O (1984) & original pitfall (1982) for Atari 2600. Granted, I haven't played them on the actual console but rather on PS2 through Activision Anthology

[TasAcri]

It's probably Ghost and Goblins on the arcades. That was released in 1985 (first played it myself around 1987, though i never managed to finish it). I don't remember any older game that i can say i enjoyed myself. I need games to have clear star/ending with a certain amount of different levels and encounters that change a lot as you progress to keep it interesting.

 

I was never a fan of games that only have a few different looking screens where the focus is point accumulation. That's why i don't think i ever enjoyed a single Atari 2600 game that wasn't a competitive 1 vs 1 thing.

[Hitboi]

If arcade machines count, then it's Pong, for most of the time I played against my relatives.
The oldest and first console game I ever enjoyed was Spider-man (2002) for the Playstation 2.
The true oldest console games I enjoyed but are actually console ports are Sonic 1 & Sonic CD (Playstation 3) and Street Fighter II (PSP).
The oldest pc game? I'm not sure but I think it's Dangerous Dave, played it on DOS-Box.

[Mr.Rocket]

Mostly the original arcades before Doom etc:

 

Galaga 

Berzerk and Robotron

Joust

Mortal Kombat , all but MK4.

Spy Hunter

Contra or Super Contra

Pole Position

Rolling Thunder

Double Dragon

Shinobi

 

Several console games:

Not going to make a list atm, would be a pretty long list 

in the oldie console days of NES and SEGA Genisus  

 

PC games:

 

Bards Tail

A number of games - by Apogee 

Out of this world - by Interplay

A couple side scroller Apple 2 games

I made a small Pac-man like game on the Ti99/4a

And something similar in GW basic on an old 386 

 

Non-video games:

Cards, I usually kick everyone's ass in Rummy.

Darts

Pool - 8 ball

Chess

D 'n D

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Mr.Rocket

[Rifleman]

I'll go with River Raid and Frogs and Flies on my Vietnamese copy of Atari 2600 I got for my 4th birthday.

[azerty]

Machete kills. But idk if that counts. I found it to be so bad that after a while I started enjoying it.

[magicsofa]

Chess

But if we're talking video games only, I'd have to pick Pac-Man. Pong is alright but I'd rather just play ping-pong IRL. Pac-Man, despite its limitations, manages to take you to another universe entirely, and the fact that the ghosts have slightly different AI makes the actual gameplay less predictable than you'd think at first glance.

When I had my first computer I spent a ton of time playing Arctic Adventure and Pharaoh's Tomb, but I'm not sure I would particularly enjoy them today as they are frustratingly finnicky once you get to the hard levels. 

[dybbuk81]

Arctic Adventure!! I forgot all about Pharoah's Tomb

[Killerratte]

 

Playing this with two players was great fun.

[Tetzlaff]

Emerald Mine, released on the Amiga in 1987.

[RHhe82]

I have enjoyed a lot of early 1980s games, nowadays much less... But I still enjoy and regularly (although increasingly seldom...) play games such as

 

- Maze of Galious (MSX, 1987) - a fun metroidvania on a computer rather than console. There are some modern ports that retain the original experience quite accurately, and I unironically still enjoy it.

 

- Dungeon Master (Amiga/PC 1987/1991) - I use the Return to Chaos -remake, which is still faithful to the original... and I love it. Nostalgy has nothing (or very little) to do with it.

 

- Super Mario Bros. (NES/Emulators, 1985 is it?) - I didn't own NES as a kid, but I still find this original a decent platformer, even though my experiences come from emulators.

 

- Manic Miner (MSX 1983) - This is a bit stretching on the enjoyment department... but I guess I do; it's not that many years since I last played some modern remake of it, and while I wouldn't spend hours playing it, I guess it still holds a bit. 

[BGreener]

I’ve been going back and poking at the old Ultima RPGs. I got exposed to the first one as a wee youngin’ when I was going through one of those lates 90s demo disc compilations with hundreds of demos and other stuff from the past few decades.

 

III through VII are all quite cozy and neat. I also want to try Darklands, came out the same year as Ultima VII and looks real fun.

 

I seem to be on a “ye olde” RPG kick…Maybe I’ll finally give those Wizardy games a try, too!

[Mr Masker]

Wow you people have gone way more retro than I did, I've always found it hard to get into old games. I've tried to get into very old games but I feel like I never am able to. Maybe it's the visuals, arcade game style (not to say all games use that), age, etc.

 

For me the point is like 1997 really, which marks stuff like Fallout 1, Symphony of the Night, etc. Exeptions might be stuff like Mario World, Doom, Super Metroid, etc. Maybe I just have a modern games mindset, idk.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Mr Masker

[Naarok0fkor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiShX2pTz9A

[Azuris]

8 minutes ago, Mr Masker said:

 

For me the point is like 1997 really, which marks stuff like Fallout 1, Symphony of the Night, etc. Maybe I just have a modern games mindset, idk.

 

Even not Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VI or Street Fighter 2?

 

[RHhe82]

9 minutes ago, Mr Masker said:

Wow you people have gone way more retro than I did

 

Well, I was born in 1982 and been playing games since 1985, so while I maintain that nostalgy doesn't play that big of a part, it also feels obvious that some element of familiarity is at play here. If Doom was the first game I ever played, let alone some 1997 game, I might have found it harder to genuinely enjoy older games.

[Matthias]

The very first Castlevania

[CittyKat112]

I was going to say tetris, but I only played it to kill some time. It was fun, but not that much. I also used to have an old SEGA console (don't remember which one exactly) and had a lot pirated cartridges for it. But as I grew older I stopped caring about them and never wanted to play them again once I stopped being a teenager. So I'll say Sonic Heroes instead because it was the first game I had on PC and I replayed it a few times over the course of a few years.

[forgettable pyromaniac]

I used to play Prince of Persia (1989) during class using Archive.org, I never managed to beat it, but it was a fun distraction.

If you'll only count games I own physically, and don't count Doom (for obvious reasons), I have a reproduction cartridge of Chrono Trigger (1995) which is quite fun.
I need to continue my previous save file :p

[Azuris]

43 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

 

Well, I was born in 1982 and been playing games since 1985, so while I maintain that nostalgy doesn't play that big of a part, it also feels obvious that some element of familiarity is at play here. If Doom was the first game I ever played, let alone some 1997 game, I might have found it harder to genuinely enjoy older games.

 

I would also say that your age is playing a Role.

Younger Kids normally do not care so much how old their Toys are, if they have Fun with it.

 

I am sure you can give an four years old one a older PC with 90s Games and he will have some enjoyment.

 

But Kids also know if something is crap :P

[MDevlin]

Probably Myst for me. I thought new VR port was fantastic. Only issue that I found is that the ladders are a bit finicky when you're trying to step off of them. The timed puzzle on the Stoneship Age is a real pain because of it.

[Mr Masker]

1 hour ago, Azuris said:

 

Even not Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VI or Street Fighter 2?

 

I went back and added Mario World, although I've never played FF6 and I'm not much of a fighting game person

[Kor]

I remember the first game I got into was Super Mario Bros 3.  Got it with our first gaming console, the NES, in like 1992, and me and my brother played it all the time.  We were really into it.  I remember one summer day we had been playing it for hours, and we had to go to somewhere.  Well you couldn't save your game in SMB3, so we just put the game on pause and left the NES on for an hour or so we could get back to it.  I mean, we had made it all the way to World 8.  To have to turn off the NES at that point woulda sucked.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Kor

[Dubbag]

i played with this thing for hours as a kid

Edited June 15, 2022 by Dub Bag

[Martin Howe]

Chess, for obvious reasons; if we're limiting it to video games, then Rogue on Ultrix (DEC customised Unix for VAX minicomputers), which I discovered at uni in 1987. Rogue is a text mode only game; the AI is kinda like the Doom engine games but much more primitive; tunnels are represented by # symbols and you and the monsters by other text characters. The monster roster is somewhat like Heretic and HeXen. There's no reason one couldn't implement Doom in the same way, with much reduced AI, or even keeping the AI but presenting it the way Rogue does; some people have created games based on Doom that work like that.

 

Of course, having played a 3D maze game on 8 bit Z80 processors in the early 1980s and wished you could fight actual enemies or something, for me Doom was just that: a 3D maze game with enemies. I was never really interested in video games until Doom came along (I didn't discover Wolf3D until after buying Doom).

 

Honourable mention to Phoenix arcade game (they had one at tech college, which in England comes between high school and uni) because it was an imaginative take on Space Invaders :)

[TheFocus]

unless it's a rare exception, like OG Ninja Gaiden, the oldest game i can really enjoy is Super Mario World from 1990.

[Wyrmwood]

I still fire up the original x-com games from time to time. Apart from the odd exception (mostly RPG's or tactics games) don't really go back further than SNES or Amiga games. I feel they were too hampered by technical restraints and a lot of devs at the time were making what they could as opposed to what they wanted to make. That said some games like Mario Bros are still great today.