me on its less superficial merits. In short, a game consisting of 320×240 pixels, each the size of a baby’s fist, no longer causes quite so many people to scoff dismissively at it. Secondly, digital distribution services – notably Valve’s Steam and the great-in-the-States-but-crap-over-here Gametap – are gradually adding classic games to their online stores – legal, free from floppy disks, and dirt-cheap. A slight spot of whimsy and e https://bet8.info/ few dollars is all it takes to enjoy yesterday’s finest.
While it’s early days for this, things can only get better. On Steam alone, the last few months have seen the rediscovery of ancient treasures such as the earliest Wolfenstein, Unreal, Doom and GTA games. The past is indeed another country – but, when it comes to old PC games, lately we’re talking more Isle of Man than North Korea.
Until these electro-stores are fully stocked, plenty of options remain to locate your desired fragment of yesterday – eBay, second-hand stores, free fan remakes and (mumble) bittorrent (mumble) abandonware (mumble), for instance. Somewhat sadly, old PC games don’t seem to retain much value, even for mint-condition boxes. I’d be lucky to get a hundred bucks for one of my proudest possessions, my still-sealed copy of Dungeon Keeper.
Still, that’s great news for buyers. But where to start? Over 20 years of PC gaming is an impossibly large subject, so how we’re going to approach it is by breaking it into key genres (albeit composited ones) and looking at the games which defined them, or alternatively took it to interesting places that have been sadly left unexplored since. The obvious names – yer Dooms and C&Cs – will go unspoken in favor of games you’re less likely to have played. For the sake of argument, history began in 1987 – a year that saw,