Another that stands the test of time for me and many others, one which nearly all space strategy games are compared to, Master of Orion 2 (MOO2), even over a decade later, i still play it, it's also one of the few games that will run natively in all OS's from DOS to 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP (not tried Vista or 7).... how many games have been released that could be played on so many OS's without some form of patching or emulation.... the game itself is also a classic, i really have no idea how many hours i've sunk into it, the re-playability is just massive.
Master of Magic, another fantastic game, all be it very biased towards Light.
X-COM series, or UFO in other countries. X-COM Defense - UFO Enemy Unknown, Terror From the Deep, Apocalypse (probably the best one for me), the 'After-' series didn't get good till the 3rd one, but thats because of a different developer.
Civilization, colonization as well.
All of the above games are summed up with the word - Microprose (Simtex if you want to be accurate as well). God i miss them...
Dune 2 didn't quite strike a chord with me, it was just a semi-tone off with its lack of multi-unit selection, if it had that, then yes, it would of been brilliant, Dune 2000 just didn't have the same feel despite the extra polish. But to be honest, Emperor Dune was the masterpiece for me, the music was fabulous, the difference in play style and mechanics with the 3 races and the sub's made replay immense. The super cheesy live cut-scenes were just brilliant.
Red Alert, C&C, etc etc.... Westwood Studios...... God i miss them as well.... curse EA...
Simcity and Simcity 2000 are contenders. Elite and Elite 2: frontier.... i still find elite 2 amazing, a full 3D map of the galaxy with semi-accurate names, all the missions, graphics ship designs, the length of gameplay, so on and so forth.... all fit on a 700k floppy...
For more recent games that i thoroughly enjoy.... Mass Effect series, not original (very heavily based off Babylon 5) but just put together in such an aspiring package. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, i've spent 100's of hours in that and still not finished everything. Phantasy Star Online for the dreamcast... 100's of hours spent playing using the built in dial-up connection, just a shame about the hacking.
Final Fantasy VII, definitely a classic for me. FF: X, probably the last decent one, wasn't epic or brilliant, but was good enough. Xenogears and Xenosaga are definitely up there with some of the most complicated and grand stories i've come across, the game mechanics let them down. Shenmue, another Dreamcast classic, one of the few games whereby you get satisfaction out of doing day-to-day activities like grocery shopping, working out, gambling, generally being social and working...
Thats enough for now. Interesting to see common links, the question remains, what gave them that spark that so many of us get all excited about?
