There have been a lot of great computer games that have come out over the years, and recently, they have some awesome graphics. But some of the earlier games often get overlooked because they don’t have as great graphics. But they were GREAT games. Here’s my ten:

1. Starflight: This was such an awesome game. It’s a bit of a steal from Star Trek, but even though it seems a bit like that, it’s really it’s own animal. You live in a galaxy where we do space travel, and you are allowed to build your own crew of five people (you know: captain, first officer, science officer, engineer, etc.). Then you explore the galaxy, which you quickly realize is starting to be destroyed, and it’s up to you to save it. You burn endurium for fuel, you explore and gain artifacts that do interesting things to your ship, and you sell the things that you find to make your crew and ship that much stronger. Such a great game with so many little nuances to the story that you mitght never expect. I remember when I was playing it, and I was in the Army, one of the GIs came running to my room to wake me up because he had discovered something absurd and wonderful. You don’t see that sort of thing happening in a lot of games we play these days. Made by Electronic Arts.

2. Empire: This is a fun little game that you could end up playing all day long and never realize you’ve been playing for ten hours straight. It’s like the “other” game like Sid Meier’s Civilization II, where you think to yourself: “Just one more turn” and then you’ve played 50 more turns, and you’re at 2am in the morning. The game is pretty simple: You build armed units, take over cities, and then build different types of units. This goes on until you meet an actual enemy on the field, and the real game starts. Lots of fun.

3. Phantasie: One of the early D&D types of games where you build a party, roam across the countryside, meet monsters and enemies, and you build up your party to powerful levels, and then you discover the enemy you have to defeat. A great game. It also has two sequels, but at the time of its conception, you could only play Phantasie I and III on PC. I have no idea what happens in Phantasie II, so it might have been Lord Bouncebunny that you have to defeat for all I know. Made by SSI.

4. Star Command: This game was so much fun. Man, I miss the days when games were this fun. You start out with a simple ship and you explore the triangular zone of control and then explore a little further out, where the good loot and bad guys exist. You build up your team (6 people with all sorts of awesome skills), you build up your ship, and you fight stronger and stronger enemies until you go after the big baddy. My favorite thing of this game was that I had a phyops character that had a killer ability that NEVER worked. And then against the big baddy, it worked, and it was instant kill. Oh man, that was a great moment. I still remember it today. Made by SSI.

5. Wizard’s Crown: Such a fun game. Even though the graphics were so limited back in the day, it didn’t mean the game wasn’t a blast. Another D&D type adventure, where a big baddy wizard was doing evil things and you have to take him down. You gain levels with each of your crew, and they become more and more powerful. The cool thing I remember was you could change a character’s name constantly through the game, so I had a wizard named ??? who I then changed to “Uh, it’s Tim” and then a few changes later he was named Timothy Smedlap III. A great beginning to RPGs that would come later. Made by SSI.

6. Ultima IV: The Ultima games, made by Richard Garriott and then Origin Systems (his company) were the forefront of RPG games that led the way in computer game systems. Ultima IV was generally the first of the Ulitmas that a lot of people experienced, as it was the first to really gain a foothold in the gaming community, although I got my start with Ultima III. The beauty of this game was it was the first to introduce a morality system into a game, and this set it apart from everything before its time. It also created an Earth-like terrain, in that if you went all the way to the west, you ended up crossing over into the east. A few games had done this before it, but it was still one of the early ones to avoid the inevitable wall on any edge of the screen. It was also a lot of fun. You were this character that could start out in any profession, but in the end you were going to start striving to be an avatar, a creature that seeks to excel in all attributes of existence. Every other game after this in the Ultima world starts you out as THE Avatar. Made by Origin Systems.

7. Everquest: One of the early MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games). Unlike other games, you are plopped into this world and given the opportunity to come into your own. It was one of the more difficult worlds, as there’s really no indication what you’re supposed to do. And unlike World of Warcraft, which comes some years later, the way to improve yourself involves killing creatures close to your level. There were a few quests you could do, but sometimes even finding those quests was an elusive task that was almost as hard to find as it was to accomplish. The Internet with lots o clues was still a ways away, so those solutions were often very hard to find. Having said all of those negative things, it was still an awesome world to exist in. I remembe being a young human running through a small farming village, knowing that there were some powerful creatures around me, and also knowing that some years ago I had been killed by some roaming monster that was way more powerful than anything else in that zone. And one of my other favorite memories was being in a dungeon and hearing someone yell: “Train to zone entrance!” and seeing everyone dash out the zone entrance cause they knew tons of monsters were coming towards the entrance, and anyone left in the zone near the entrance was going to die.

8. Dark Age of Camelot: Another MMORPG. This was often considered what was going to be the Everquest-killer (game to defeat it). It offered a lot of better features than EQ, but it also offered something more, and that was player vs. player, which was sometimes rare to find. It also offered it as a concept called realm vs. realm instead of just pvp. The problem it had was it didn’t really have a lot of player vs. environment, which is what most people liked to play. And what people quickly discovered is that players don’t always enjoy being killed by other players, so that a rare group of players get a lot of fun out of the game while others decide to just quit it. It’s kind of what caused so many problems with Ultima Online, and when they tried to fix it by adding a non-player killer realm, it sort of proved that players don’t often have a clue of what they really want. Now, having said all that, the game was fun, especially if you were in a powerful guild. Heading out to battle as part of an army was a blast. Going out alone, well…sucked. Made by Mythic Entertainment.

9. Star Wars Galaxies: Star Wars: The Old Republic came years later, but in the early days of MMOs, Star Wars Galaxies came out and offered everyone a place in the Star Wars universe. You could play as any type of character and profession, except for jedi knight. The story took place after Episode 4 (the first movie), so jedis had been hunted down already, leaving none but rumors of their existence. But you could be a moist farmer, a dancer, a bounty hunter, or any other profession known in the time. You could have housing, entire towns and villages or just roam around on your own. It was a lot of fun, except it was missing actual purpose unless you brought that purpose yourself. They needed quests and some type of growth in the game to keep people coming back. But that was missing. Yet, people still claim this was the best Star Wars game ever released. And depending on when you read this, that claim may be really old. Made by Daybreak Game Company.

10. City of Heroes: This was an earlier type of game where you could be an actual superpowered hero. And the types you could be were all over the map. The missions were so much fun, and you could join up with a group to defeat the villain population. I had so much fun. However, after some time, the company that made it decided that it either wasn’t making money for them, or something else happened that they never wanted to disclose (like licensing or something like that). The game went out of business. However, some years later, a private server appeared and started running the game again. They may have gotten licensing, or something else is going on. All I know is that a private server is runnng the game. And about a year or so ago, I received a notice that a game called Ship of Heroes is in process (ot is already in service). I played it for a short period of time but it was definitely in beta so I’m waiting to see if I hear anything more about it.

Now, this list is not in any order. They were all games that I loved. And they were all extremely enjoyable games. If you get anything out of this list, it’s that somehow computer games have forgotten that fun should be the most important ingredient in a game. And if you can’t add that, then you’re going to have a product that few people are going to play.