Shit. I just had to share this with everybody.

A few days ago, after getting a haircut, I decided to pay the electronics section in adjacent "superstore"--(that's a canadian version of grocery/apparal stores) a visit. Anyways, I had heard a great deal about a game called "Alpha Centauri". And just sitting there, on the bargain rack was a stack of jewel case copies for $8.00 cad. So I said what the hell. Picked up a copy despite promising myself to lay of the comp games. Brought it home -- and didn't play it.

I tried to play later that evening, but the graphics were less than pretty and I didn't know what the hell I was doing anyways. A few long days later, I woke up in the morning, and after a light jog, decided to give it a chance. So I figured the damn thing out. And like a lot of things that I've been discovering lately, it's damn good.

What pisses me off is that on the next shelf, there are games with enhanced graphics, pretty interfaces and $80 pricetags that don't live up to these old gems. I can't believe I spent nearly a hundred $ cad. dollars on Civ 3- a game which lost it's gloss after a few weeks, and became nothing but boring old shelf space.

From now on, I only buy the good old bargain games.

I guess I'm the only one that likes this old strategy game:bugeye:

i like oldschool strategy games, i just can never find them, i've been trying to find copies of total annihilation, and imperium galactica 2 for a looong time, noone likes them anymore, well the masses dont at least

I like any games as long as they are enjoyable. I still have my Sega CD for Eternal Champions CD. I enjoy SWAT 2 for PC, and it is an older 2D game designed to run on Windows 95

Heroes 3 is another example, though a little bit more newer (1998 I think), it is sprite based and only runs in 800x600 - wonderful turn based strategy.

I loved the Double Dragon series for the original 8-bit Nintendo - of course the Original NES has become a relic now, I wonder if they have the Double Dragon series included in any of those Class Arcade Hits from like Namco and what not.

Never played Alpha Centuari, but I have heard good things about it from different people.

It's a great game. I spent many hours on it.

The best part about it is the interludes and the technology/secret projects/building sound bites. They really invested a lot of effort in it.

Some other distinctive qualities of this game is Social Engineering and the Units Workshop. Unfortunately Firaxis decided not to implement these two options in Civilization 3. :bugeye:

Nice to hear some replies :cool:

Anyways, that's one more thing I wanted to open up. After all these years of experience, all of these great idea's, why haven't we learned to make good games yet?? Why the hell is it all about graphics. My friends will not play old games because the eye candy is not there. They wont even put in the effort to learn them because you can't "see their noses".

From what I've seen, there are an incredible number of good idea's in games like alpha centauri. Things I realize should have bbeen implemented into a game like civ 3, but never were. And of all the fun I've had with that game, I can only imagine the potential it would have met if only the simple-stupid idea's of old skool were it's foundation. Rather than the pretty graphics where you can see the slaves' noses. Is this generation of gamers really so superficial that we don't care about gameplay?? My god, it pisses me off...

I can only hope things will change five years from now. But the outlook is bad.

Hey Elbaz,
I love AC! It's the best game, next to UT2003! I still play it pretty often. We should try and play together sometime. A few months ago me and a few friends pitched in to buy Alpha Centauri 2:Alien Crossfire off of ebay. It's pretty good, also. :D

Yeah, I LOVED Alpha Centauri far more than Civilization 3. Civilization 3 was terrible, but addicting nonetheless. Alpha Centauri was addicting, fullfilling, intriguing, and just plain fun. And, I got it on Kazaa, so those who are in the mood for an awesome turn-based strategy/sim, go get it. ;)

Recently bought Master of Orion 3, which I am rather dissapointed in(Master of Orion 2 was way better). It went with extreme macromanaging, where Civ 3 went with extreme micromanaging. I'm not sure what is wrong with Infogrames. :confused:

Sweet! I can't find Alien Crossfire 2, here, but maybe the two are still compatible. I think this game is playable over 56K. We'll have to play sometime. And I must warn you, though, I'm pretty damn good now :cool:

Balder1,
Yeah, I was thinking of getting MOO3 from what I heard of the previews, but when it came out - nothing but garbage. Worse than zoo tycoon(which I made the shameful mistake of buying). I thought MOO2 was fairly fun, but it compares nothing to AC. _AC is plain sweet.

CHeck this site out:

http://www.the-underdogs.org

Now talk about getting the OLD classic killer games, thats the spot, like the old 80's-early 90's games.

Remember Wasteland? The Mars Saga? Roadwar 2000? Bad Blood? Wing Commander? and a 1000 other old classics from the Commodore hayday that are mostly downloadable(AND NOT ILLEGAL BTW ADMINS) and can be played on the PC. Some of the OG titles you cannot download due to copywrite is still on.

Remember Ultima1-4? :D

i played alpha centauri back when it came out. i thought iwas pretty awesome. multiplayer games are so much more fun than the single player games. turn based strategy is pretty much my favorite game genre. civ 3 is pretty boring playing single player but i thought it was pretty fun palying with other real ppl. i really like how controlling resources can really shape the game. you can prevent people from getting good troops and stuff by hording the resources (: the diplomacy was pretty good too. MOO3 i thought was an awesome game. it had a multiplater bug though that freezes some players who joined the game. besides that i love that game. it is super complex. it wasnt fun until i really understood how to play it though. there is a steep learning curve. the diplomacy does need some work though.

has anyone playd star trek: birth of the federation? that is probably my favorite game ever. i love star trek so the playable races just make the game so much cooler for me ( : i guess im a bit of a star trek dork. oh well. if you guys havent seen it you should look into it. i have been hoping for a long time that they would make an updated version of it. but i doubt that is going to happen.

romance of the three kingdoms is pretty cool too, they dont have it for the pc though. so that sucks