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What was your first love TBS game?

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What was your first love TBS game?

from Stardock Forums
Given the "How old are you?" post showed some people of my generation I wondered if anyone else fell in love with "Lords of Midnight" by Mike Singleton on the ZX Spectrum.


It was a brilliant game with a format that has never really been mimiced.
I even got a spectrum emulator to play it years later on the PC.


As TBS goes it was a simple concept of a 1st person perspective strategy game. You'd start completely on the back foot as you had 4 characters to try to get enough force together to withstand a huge invasion. It used to frighten the life out of me at times. When you'd press next turn and the screen would clear see thousands of enemies in front of you. Hold on they might not be enemies after all... better go check. Argh... there are 1000 soldiers of someone who may be your ally (if you had the right character talk to them) and they are surrounded by 10,000 bad guys. Do you try to salvage their army or just run away.


Mike Singleton tried a couple of other titles but he just kept making the game worse rather than better. Anyway, what was the first TBS game you loved?
off-topic
77,024 views 81 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Being the geek I am, I not only typed in all the code for Hammurabi (see comment #5), I modified it to extend the fun of playing it. The very first time I wrote any code!

I think romance of the three kingdoms (NES) was the first in the traditional strategy line for me (sadly I’ve played it on a NES emulator for old times sake in the last six months). Followed fairly closely by Masters of Orion (I still have it and played it as recently as two years ago) and Civ I. There is also another very good Sid Miers strategy game from the early years called Colonization. My brother still cranks it up occasionally and plays it now.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Alpha Centauri was awesome. the way it pulled you into the game, you actually started to care about the goals of your faction. Like being the industrialists and wiping out the pathetic tree huggers. Ha Ha
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Keoe's line of games on nintendo, starting with Nobunga's ambition.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hotseating the original Reach for the Stars. I usually played a race named "Cute Furry Pacifists." The CFPs often failed to live up to their name, however.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nobanga's Ambition I and II on the PC. Reach for the Stars.
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"The Swarm!" on Commodore PET. (Don't know if this counts.)

One of the old Star Trek Unix games. I forgot which one.

"Starfleet Battles" and "Robots!" with hexpaper and dice. (I suppose these are more tactical than strategic.)

Then, something like Risk on the Apple II, except that it created random maps (way cool at the time).

Then, "Strategic Conquest" on the pre-OS X Macs. (First time I had to explore the map to see terrain!)

Then, "Reach for the Stars" on the PC. Civ3. GalCiv.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For me it was Empire
Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For me it was Empire



I was starting to wonder if anyone else had played this, I still have it on a 3.5 720 k disk.
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Anyone remember M.A.X. and M.A.X.2 Now that was a fun game.

and of course lets not forget the very first computer game to ever come along. Star Trek, granted it was all text based and worked on a 64x64 grid space with a
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow Trade Wars I used to run that one when I ran a BBS years ago. It was great. I figured out the codes for that thing and unlocked the game editor. My kid brother and I were always on that game. Until the cooler graphic games came along.
We use to actually map out the game so we knew where stuff was and best trade routes etc. I especially like the lottery that the game started your turns off with. 3579 were the most frequent numbers ( scary that I still remember that) But I used to make a ton of money once I started using those numbers only. I loved the fact that you could go to a starbase and get special tech for your ships there. ( hmm possible new feature for GC3 ) Tech Base Traders.
Reply #37 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Origonal Master of Orion and the first X-COM game are two of my all time favorite games.
Reply #38 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My great first love when it comes to TBS games would have to Star Trek, BTOF. Despite it's many bugs and interface issues, I will always fondly remember the "red alert" sound everytime my ships were engaged in battle. I also still feel that the cinematic battle scenes in that game are the best of any TBS game.
Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All those old school games mentioned are worthy. Puppy love for me.

My first total head over heels in LOVE was X-COM UFO DEFENCE

The perfect marriage of strategy and tactics, ive played games as good (maybe) but still have to find one that can beat the nostalgia and great visceral play.
It was recent enough (omfg 11yrs ago!!) to be played with my pseudo surround sound speakers and old enough that you still had to use your imagination in many ways. I wish someone would just do a remake and not try to fix a classic.

Yours in nostalgia,
Star Dagger

P.S. my favorite games would have to be Starfleet Command and Starfleet Command 3 (i boycotted SFC2 because of their treatment of the Romulans). I has so much fun in SFC1 using the Plasma against the poor Feds.
Reply #40 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nobunaga's Ambition (Nintendo)

Genghis Kahn (Nintendo)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Nintendo), and for the Amiga500 if I recall correctly

Civilization I and II (PC)

Jagged Alliance (PC)

Panzer General (PC)

UFO Defence-Enemy Unknown (also called X-Com-UFO Defence) (PC)

Master of Orion II (PC)

Heroes of Might and Magic II (PC)

My first introduction to TBS was probably Nobunaga's Ambition way back when, but my all-time favourite TBS game was "UFO Defence-Enemy Unknown". A killer game, some great theme music, even made me jump at times, very creepy atmosphere, and I loved the research most of all in that game. Very fond memories indeed!
Reply #41 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
First, my Uncle Bob introduced me to Civilization. Not too long after that, he got me hooked on Colonization. I found Master of Magic by accident years later, and it's the most addictive one of them all.

I also played both Civ: Call to Power games (which were neat, due to the Public Works system and the futuristic stuff), but they soon started collecting dust when I got my hands on Civ III.

Today, I've got Civ IV, and--of course--GalCiv II. They're still nowhere near as addictive as Master of Magic, though.
Reply #42 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Oregon Trail. I got hooked on it in school, then we got in for our old Apple (the kind where it was a monitor, and a huge keyboard with a floopy drive mounted ont he side, only had green and black color, I think it was a //c). Rafting down the Columbia river was awesome, and wiping out herds of buffelo while hnting (if you were patient enough!)

M002 came next, followed by Fallout (it had turn bassed combat, so I figure it counts).
Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My great first love when it comes to TBS games would have to Star Trek, BTOF. Despite it's many bugs and interface issues, I will always fondly remember the "red alert" sound everytime my ships were engaged in battle. I also still feel that the cinematic battle scenes in that game are the best of any TBS game.


Second that. Birth of the Federation wasn't the first TBS title I played (that honor would go to Lords of the Realm 2), but it was definitely the game that got me forever hooked on the genre!
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks Mistoffeles that was it!!! Purge, you wouldn't be willing to share your code with me would you I'm too lazy to type out 118 odd lines of code. Another slightly less really really old favourite of mine was the DOS version of VGA planets, basically an email type startrek themed space game however there was no way I could wait a day/turn lol but it had several mods and I'd use the computer opposition one. It was a bit of a pain exiting the game and running a batch file to process the turn which would take ages in the mid-latter stages of a game but then I discovered smartdrv.exe, oh the joy.
Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top
Quite a few votes for AC.

I missed it at the time... Young family and all.

Would anyone recommend me getting a copy even now?
Or will I just think it hopelessly out of date?

Reply #46 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Does anyone remember Shattered Alliance from SSI?

It was more of a war game than a proper TBS, but it predated most of the typical TBSs.

Others:

Sword of Aragon: it had to be the inspiration for the Heroes of Might and Magic series!

Empire: that was a classic! The Deluxe version was awesome as well.

X-Com: was it the first tactical turn based game? Great ,either way.
Reply #47 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Tasslehoff the code died with the bad memory and dead green screen on the KayPro II computer and my inability to read CPM based formatted floppies

Kind of wish I did still have it!
Reply #48 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Star Trek on the old VAX. And Empire on the original IBM PC. Definitely required a lot of imagination, since all you saw was characters. but they had the same hook of exploring, conquering and building your world.
Reply #50 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Genghis Kahn (Nintendo)


That wierd chinese game, Genghis Khan on the pc. Used to play it hot seat, 15 of us after roleplaying till some really sad time in the morning, drinking beer. Those were the days...