What game company from your childhood do you remember with fondness?

Telorand@reddthat.com to Gaming@beehaw.org – 68 points –

I was thinking about how I remember Maxis fondly, and I got to wondering what other people's experiences were like!

Is your favorite still around? Are they still the same, or did they "change directions under new management?"

143

sierra ❤️

also bill pogue

Haha, that's exactly the kind of game I want to make but with graphics and a little less dry. Didn't even know about that one. Also I should probably actually figure out how to start that once I'm settled in here. It's amazing how much planning and thought goes into getting one truck across the country. It's like Oregon trail but you die of stupidity, yours or others, rather than dysentery.

Westwood studios. Command and conquer tiberian sun was my very first computer game, which I loved dearly (and still have on my computer since it’s freeware now and has been fan patched for modern systems)

Well and then came EA.

@GregorGizeh @Telorand you can get it free now?? I had given it up for dead...

Yup, it’s Freeware since a few years now and has even spawned a brilliant standalone mod using its engine. Here is the link:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/tiberian-sun-client/

And if you want to check out the mod I mentioned, it’s called twisted insurrection. It delivers on many things that were lacking in the original, and has an extensive OST with some pieces by frank klepacki himself (made a lot of the music used in the original series). You can check out some trailers on YouTube. Mod Link:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/twisted-insurrection

Electronic Arts :(

Yeah... Gotta wonder what the original founders would say if you could tell them what they'd become.

I remember going to EA games on a field trip for school and even back then the corporate feeling was strong. I remember this panel about developer freedom and not a single student was interested. Granted, nobody from my school was on track to do any kind of game development

Lucas Arts

Are they still around? /j

Yep, some classic point and click games, like Full Throttle. It's from games like that that I learned Mark Hamill is an amazing voice actor.

Sierra On-Line

King's Quest is still one of my favorite series ever and the one they put out a few years ago was a great retelling. I cried at the end.

Maxis was the one that came to mind for me, too! I played everything of theirs that I could get my hands on. Still playing The Sims after all these years!

Will Wright is a genius, and deservedly so, but just did some reading on what he's been up to, and I'm not sure if this new venture will fly.

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/20/will-wright-voxverse-gala-gallium-blockchain

Sounds like SecondLife (another of his creations) with NFTs, or the various failed attempts at a Metaverse, except rich crypto-whales get to be the Lords, and the rest of us are the surfs. Then again, maybe there's some aspect to it I don't understand.

Sierra entertainment! I was a big fan of the kings quest games, and Sierra online was my first experience with online gaming.

I was super into Sierra as a publisher. They seemed to back some of the highest quality games no one knew about. Ground Control, Gunman Chronicles, Homeworld, Aliens vs Predators 2, Empire Earth, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, and of course Half-Life. They published some quality games.

Don't forget the SWAT series. Really loved the third game and always played the 'Children of Terrone' map on lan parties

The SWAT series was amazing but now I just look back at it as copaganda.

I loved the Quest games! They were my first real introduction to the English language. Simple phrases like Open Door and feed chickens were a great way to build my basic vocabulary. I kept pestering my dad for translations until he got fed up and taught me how to use a dictionary :)

I have so many great memories playing those games, on my own and together with my dad. It really was a bonding experience.

Valve.

Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they're finally getting back to their old selves?

Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they're not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they're letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.

So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.

Yep, buying a Steam Deck this Christmas. Not played one, myself, but I have been a Steam Controller user for years, and they seem to have nailed their latest offerings.

There was definitely a period in there when they felt very anticompetitive (apathy-competitive?), though.

I just bought the Steam Deck. Its amazing. More and more games keep becoming Deck Compatible and the community has uploaded so many controller configurations.

Linux is a gaming OS now and its wild

I love the Deck and Controller, just a heads up that the Deck "feels" slightly different from the Steam Controller. I've had a hard time adjusting to the trackpad on Deck and still haven't quite gotten it figured out. It may just be a practice thing. Basically the way I'd describe it is it's like the rotation setting for the Steam Controller is never quite right and the slightly smaller trackpad and different positioning maybe affects whatever muscle memory I'm trying to use or something.

As an example, I made the top community config for Monster Hunter Rise, but on Steam Deck it just isn't quite the same and I needed to pretty heavily adjust the settings for the mouse input, even still I can't quite get it right.

However that said, it doesn't actually matter too much, the Steam Deck overall is awesome and I'd take it any day of the week. Luckily, Bluetooth w/ the Steam Controller feels exactly the same as it did on PC w/ dongle and it's sooo nice.

Thanks for the heads up! I'm going to be getting a dock, because I will be playing it with family, and my only Bluetooth controller is the SC. 😅

When I eventually pick up MH:R, I'll be sure to check out your config, too!

Sounds like you're all set to go then!

And if you do I hope you enjoy it! I've spent a long time in the MH series and so to finally have mouse input alongside the control input... Phenomenal...

Microprose. Silent Service II and Special Forces were so good

C'mon can't leave X-COM out.

And Roller Coaster Tycoon! (although it was technically under Hasbro at that point)

That was the weird Atari/Infrogames time period right?

Yeah. They got sold once around 1996 and then again to Hasbro in 1998 after they were failing IIRC. So they were kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of different companies

C'mon, can't leave master of Orion out

Interplay, Microprobe, Sierra On-Line, Bullfrog, Dynamix, Origin, all long gone.

Activision is still around, but it's something completely different. Same with Atari (although theres a nostalgia brand now, so maybe back).

Of them all, I think is have to say I'm most nostalgic for Sierra On-Line, although Origin gives them a run for most nostalgic.

I worked for Interplay back in the 90s. It was pretty great for me, launching my IT career. Working in QA did temporarily ruin my ability to play games for fun though.

Dynamix' Earthsiege was such a magical thing back then. So were Bullfrog's Syndicate, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. Many, many years ago when Peter Molyneux was not a dumbass but gave us gems like Populous and Black&White.

The list of games that EA has destroyed is long.

I loved Earthsiege! IIRC I got the game with an expansion card (STI Lightning 128?), and it really was fun playing with my first flight stick, a CH Products flight stick.

Westwood I had fun with Red Alert 1 & 2 for a long time. Super casual player though.

Infocom.

Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>

Squaresoft, Bioware, and Bethesda are three companies whose logos I once considered a seal of quality. None of the three really exist anymore, although there are new much larger companies using their names.

Bethesda game studios is the same studio as always, just under Microsoft

Origin "We create worlds". They definitely did with the Wing Commander series. Played a lot of WC 3, 4 as well as Privateer.

I don't think anyone mentioned Lionhead Studios. Black and White was fun. Sadly it's in copyright limbo if I'm not mistaken.

Also played a lot of Civilization 1 from Microprose back in the day.

My favourite games from childhood were the Ultima series (3 onward).

Never tried any of the Ultima series. :p

Never finished most of the Ultima Games. Started U4 again a few years ago. Tried picking it back up, and I've misplaced that damn balloon again.

Westwood Studios, Sierra Online

I never played the classic "Quest" games that Sierra made, but they published a bunch of really good ones from other developers, too.

I remember their logo coming up before each of the Half-Life, SWAT, Tribes, and F.E.A.R. games. I was always like, "dang, someone there knows how to pick 'em."

Hard to pick but early to mid 90s era Maxis, Bullfrog, Bungie (Pathways/Marathon/Myth era), Blizzard, and SEGA all come to mind. All either gone or changed.

Psygnosis, later known as Studio Liverpool.

Sony shut them down a few years ago. Man seeing that old owl logo hits me hard in the nostalgia bone.

Harmless games, also bought and shut down by Sony.

They seem to consider only massive franchises like GoW and TLoU and Horizon worth their time... But most gamers need variety outside the mainstream game genres, so I don't see why they are shutting down anything with a smaller fanbase.

Maybe those smaller teams create tools or assets (or maybe it's the team itself) that they want.

Capitalists can't let anyone have fun when there's profit to be made.

Apogee Software for Rise of the Triad, Blue Sky Productions for Última Underworld and Bullfrog Productions for Syndicate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBm44oWwsk

I can't see the name Apogee without hearing the fanfare.

I miss Wacky Wheels.

I’m always reminded of finding and playing the midi files from the game music on my 486 as background music.

Rainbow Arts (Turrican on Amiga), Maxis (SimCity) and Digital Illusions (because of their pinball games)

All of them gone except Digital Illusions which became DICE.

A fellow old person! I'll add Ocean Software and US Gold from the Commodore era.

I was going to say Digital Illusions but for Motorhead, the racing game. The OST for that game has been in my music rotation for decades and it's still in my top 3 of all time.

As soon as I saw the title, I was gonna say Maxis, too. I like how they called their games “software toys”.

The 3 Bs, baby. Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda.

Blizzards dead to me, Bioware fell off after dragon age 1, and Bethesda refuses to take its limiters off anymore (no drugs)

I'm enjoying heavily-modded DA:I, but I do feel like DA1 had some better writing and direction.

The only thing I can remember from inquisition is trudging through some high level desert looking for high level rocks (which very blatantly cut their drop rate from earlier zones) so that I could make an armor and weapon that still sucked and looked like pajamas.

also that the party loves to litter

Any recommendations for mods? I'm putting together a new build for it ahead of my semi-annual replay of the trilogy

Yeah, definitely!

I'll skip the skins, because I assume you'll want to pick your own that fit your tastes, but you can find all of these at NexusMods. Some of my favorites are:

  • Speed Launch
  • 60 fps in cutscenes
  • No fall damage
  • Infinite Respec Amulet
  • Party At The Winter Palace
  • Shorter War Table Missions (75%)
  • Party Banter Time (5-10min)
  • All Bard songs for CC Music
  • Stay still in CC - Natural Edition
  • Face Ash Begone
  • Bugs Be Gone
  • Skills Enhanced by NinjaReborn
  • Inventory Capacity

You'll also need Frosty Mod Manager to set all those up (they seem to work for me in the order I listed) and Frosty Fix.

  • Set up the mods and load order in FrostyMM, and close.
  • Launch Frosty Fix.
  • Choose the profile/pack you want.
  • Mash go.
  • FrostyMM should open back up.
  • Open the pack you created.
  • The game should launch automatically with the mods correctly enabled.

All these mods feel "vanilla-ish" and shouldn't spoil the original experience to any significant degree.

Bullfrog for Populous and Dungeon Keeper (ruined by EA).

Troika for Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (ruined by Activision).

I only remember Syndicate from Bullfrog

How has no on said this yet.

B U N G I E

Booting Halo was my go-to for like 10 years as the first three games came out. Literally 10s of thousands of hours.

Depends on people's age! I was beyond childhood when that came out, but it was a game changer for me getting to play a FPS that was couch co-op. All FPS games to that point were mostly (all?) multiplayer competitive. PvE was always a solo experience until then!

Bungie gave me some of the best gaming childhood memories.

So much Halo. I was obsessed with it as a kid. The gameplay, the story... It was a SciFi gaming masterpiece. Super fond memories.

I'm also a HUGE fan of classic Marathon and Pathways Into Darkness. People don't give these games the credit they are due, and everyone should play them. You can find the Alephone engine, open-sourced by Bungie, and play all of the Marathon games and community scenarios completely free. A well-respected community member even ported Pathways to the engine.

Neversoft, Rareware, Sega, Activision, EA, and Bethesda created a lot of great memories from my childhood. Neversoft is defunct, Sega still makes some decent stuff but nowhere near what they did in the 90s, EA is EA, and the rest are now owned by Microsoft... so...

I just got THPS3 for windows (from Neversoft) running on my Ubuntu pc yesterday. So much fun, I find a way to play it once every ten years or so.

THPS1 and THPS3 are untouchable masterpieces. The Tony Hawk license never faltered when they were in charge.

Blizzard. Without Activision.

Apogee!

I had the Apogee game collection on a CD that was super important to me growing up. I'd like to find it again

Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, Origin... basically any studio that EA bought and destroyed.

Frontier for Elite
Psygnosis for Lemmings and a bunch of other fun games on the Amiga.

Fun fact: Rockstar (back then DMA) developed Lemmings.

Elite was a game changer for a lot of people. Lemmings was super fun, as well!

Novalogic - Loved the earlier Delta Force games, and Tachyon: The Fringe

Aspyr! I was a Mac user in an era that was 95% Windows, and Aspyr brought quality games over to our side of the pond. I remember they ported Alpha Centauri in particular, but there were lots of other ones too.

Also Bungie back in that era—they were Mac-exclusive and putting out the amazing Marathon series. I was heartbroken when I saw the trailer for the new “Marathon” game that looks nothing like the originals.

Valve is the only one of mine that's still around as more than just a brand name used by EA.

Bioware, Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, and more... All gobbled up and turned into shit by Electronic Farts.

Others that just died on their own include Black Isle and Interplay, Sierra and LucasArts. Some of these might be around in some capacity, though afaik they're just used for the names.

Dice with the OG Battlefield 2 on PC. That's what I mostly played. Now I haven't touched a BF game in years. None have lived up to that game yet.

Neversoft. THPS2 had a banger soundtrack.

Blizzard and Westwood studios. It's unfortunate what happened to them.

Fighting Fantasy books

Have most of them still! I think all of them into the 20's, and hit or miss after. There's been a couple of reboots.

Westwood, but not for Command & Conquer or Dune 2. I still remember them fondly for their Kyrandia games. I loved the art design, the music and the jokes.
Kyrandia 2 being one of my all time favorite adventure games, Zanthia was an awesome protagonist. Especially for her time.

It’s nice that their strategy games picked up the way they did, but part of me wishes they stuck with their fantasy games.

Level 5, I still go back to play dark cloud 1 and 2 every couple years. Now if they'd just make the third one I stead of another professor Layton or yokai watch that'd be great!

Red Storm of OG Rainbow 6

Acclaim of N64 era, Turrok in particular

Time to login to mplayer to see which games weren't using the heartbeat sensor 😔

WildTangent and FATE specifically lol i never got past like level ten

Don't know if you're aware, but FATE is available on Steam. Relive those memories, boss.

Oh, WildTangent! I've only played Plants vs. Zombies from them.

Small misconception, PvZ was created by PopCap. WildTangent was just a service on which to play games. I remember so fondly using my limited free tokens to play Polar Bowling; it really was just the best.

Psygnosis simply for Drakan. I recently replayed it and it holds up pretty well, even if the melee combat as Rynn is a little clunky.

Another one, who is still around and very successful in their niche, is Egosoft. X4 at release was a little so-so, but mostly due to performance issues and me being spoiled from years and years worth of mods for the previous games (but also, without any of the really good DLCs, only three of the six or so factions are in the game).

I grew up with tony hawks pro skater 2, need for speed 2 se, and prince of persia sands of time. So no.

I dont remember the name of it, but you flew around in a blue spaceshit type thing. I think the story involved you being in some futuristic scifi navy/army. One word I can remember being said a lot (i think your wingman or something said it sometimes when you got a kill) is "Casbah".

Its not a lot but I was very very young, and played it on my uncle's PC over a summer while I was visiting my relatives abroad. If anyone has even remotely any idea what Im blabbering about please tell me 😂. Ive been occasionally thinking about it for years.

Oh shit that was Battle Engine Aquila. I loved that game

Holy crap thats it! Installing now through lutris. You people are awesome

Edit: its asking for an iso so i guess ill need to get it on steam

That game came bundled with my ATI Radeon 8600 XT. It was such a cool game.

Camelot

They made the Shining Force and Golden Sun games, both of which I loved, but these days they have been relegated to making the Mario Golf and Tennis games. Which are still pretty good quality, but I miss them making rpgs.

What I would still give for a true Golden Sun 3. Ah man, that ship seems to have long since sailed. I'd be happy with an anniversary remaster or whatever at least. Imagine them with full voice acting!

PopTop. Railroad Tycoon 2&3 and Tropico 1&2. They got bought by 2K, which eventually killed the studio. The Railroad Tycoon series is dead. Tropico is still around, but I'm not excited about the latest interation. Some of the guys tried to kickstart a new Railroad Tycoon but it didn't fund. Phil Steinmeyer was an underrated developer, though I believe he's retired today.

It's too bad it worked out that way. I think they could have been on the level with Paradox as far as strategy games are concerned, but focusing more on economic games, city builders, and the like. On Steinmeyer's blog he said he didn't think there was demand for heavier games anymore about mid 00s. That might have been true then, but so many games out now prove that wrong.

I just looked at my Steam stats today and 52% is RT3. There may be plenty of games that surpass it in visuals, but game mechanics are a different story, and without a stock market I don't see much of a point.

I played Tropico 3-5, but gave up after they refused to give us highways and overpasses.

Ambrosia probably provided me the most hours of gaming entertainment over the 90s. They published Mac software and, if I remember correctly, most of their games were shareware and the non-paid versions were pretty well featured.

I wonder how many hundreds of hours I played Escape Velocity and Escape Velocity Override. Those were some absolutely amazing games and they supported plugins (mods) and had a thriving mod community.

For the 90s mac users, you’ll probably recognize a lot of their games (listed on the Wikipedia page). Here are some from the 90s that stand out to me:

Maelstrom

Chiral

Apeiron

Swoop

Barrack

Escape Velocity

Avara

Bubble Trouble

Harry the Handsome Executive

Mars Rising

EV Override

Ares

Escape Velocity Nova

SSI for Dark Sun. They merged into Mindscape which then dissolved according to Wikipedia.

Quintet for the Soul Blazer/Terranigma/Illusion of Gaia trilogy. They just kinda disappeared in the early 2000s.

Treasure! Dynamite Headdy, Gunstar Heroes. Bangai O. Not to mention the shmups. Damn they made some amazing games with super cool mechanics. Last I checked, they made a few anime tie-in games or something in the 2010s, but nothing since then.