From 1994 to 1996, these three years were a very special year for many veteran players.
If you're a veteran player and have a computer before that, congratulations, you've caught up with many of the ultra-classic games released in the past two years.
How classic are these games?
Although their sales and monthly income, compared with the current hundreds of thousands, millions of people online, monthly flow of hundreds of millions or even more of the big factory mobile games can not be compared.
Although their picture with a small capacity, may only be a few M, 640 * 480 resolution and 16-bit color screen. Compared with the real picture of a few G, 4K HD and 32-bit (64-bit) colors now, it is also incomparable.
However, looking at the gameplay and gameplay alone, the reputation and circulation of these classic games are countless files higher than the mobile games that are almost a set of leather bags to reply to the engraving and focus on krypton gold rather than experience. It has even become one of the core means by which many games now try to impress them with affection.
These games are Age of Discovery 2, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Warcraft, Paladin and Heroes of Might and Magic.
Let's go back and see what kind of charm these games released nearly 30 years ago have that can make people addicted to it for thirty years and can't help themselves.
1 Age of Discovery 2: Pioneer of the open world, the master of the seafaring game where adventure, knowledge and achievement coexist
You can hardly imagine, in 1994. There will be a game that no one can make 30 years later.
Unlike the traditional RPG monster upgrade, the ACT pass operation is different. The Age of Discovery series can be said to have truly pioneered a new game genre module.
And this game genre, built at the same time as the birth of Age of Discovery 2, is fully mature.
The intersection of multiple protagonists and the open-ended plot experience, in this way, can be described as a complete restoration of the grandeur of the medieval era of great navigation. Even after thirty years, no game dares to say that its plot content and character personality can do more depth than Age of Discovery 2.
The commercial trade game of profiting from the transfer of goods; the adventure game of discovering a variety of rare items, the shelling of the grand fleet platoon, and the battle game of wearing a rare divine soldier for white-knife warfare.
Three completely different sets of gameplay, perfectly unified in Age of Discovery 2.
Reselling madeira sugar, the golden route between Athens and Istanbul. Gold in South America, from glass balls bought in Amsterdam to high prices in West Africa that can sell hundreds of times. The kind of commercial profit of a million dollars, and the huge wealth from hundreds of gold coins to tens of thousands of gold nuggets, few people can afford it.
And the Venetian gunboats, ironclad ships and large steamships; the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, the Paladin Sword and the Paladin Armor... These names, I am afraid that every old player of the Age of Discovery can still remember it to this day, right?
As for how many people have fully expanded their geographical, historical and biological knowledge by playing Age of Discovery 2?
Today, the Age of Discovery series has launched seven games, including 1 to 5, Gaiden, and Grand Voyage OL. Although each work is highly evaluated, later works are getting better and better at being realistic. But for many veteran players, the real highest evaluation in their hearts is still this Age of Discovery 2.
2 The Legend of the Three Kingdoms: The master of the Oriental Wargame, the most in-depth game for Chinese players.
There are thousands of games in the world, but the only one that allows players to study for decades and almost to the level of madness is the Legend of the Three Kingdoms.
Also produced by Glory, the time when the Three Kingdoms Chronicles of Heroes was released was 1 year later than the Great Age of Discovery 2.
However, it is different from the orthodox sequel of the Great Navigation Age 2 series, and it is higher evaluated than the previous game to become Taizong's positioning. From the very beginning, the legend of the Three Kingdoms is a pure sketch + fanwai.
Remember that at that time, the glorious housekeeper game was the strategy SLG's Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. Originally designed to alleviate the gap between the two orthodox works, the additional production was not SLG, but a partial turn-based level strategy wargame.
Therefore, in the biography of the Three Kingdoms, we can see many painting styles that are different from the rigorous and thick of the Glorious Orthodox series.
From the appearance of completely original martial artists and even female generals such as Li Ming and Fan Gong; to the Japanese magic obsession line that retains Guan Yu's immortality and Liu Bei's final victory; to the obviously witty and even somewhat funny line painting style.
The entire Biography of the Three Kingdoms almost subverted everyone's stereotyped and rigorous impression of glory before.
But although the plot is funny, the game content is very well designed and excellent.
Infantry to lancers to chariot soldiers vs light cavalry to heavy cavalry to guards, infantry > bows> cavalry> infantry characteristics and restraint are vividly reflected; and the actual combat effect brought about by the differences in the different attributes of each warrior is also extremely prominent.
Although the game capacity is very small, and the various attributes are far less than the number of attributes that cannot be loaded on a screen of mobile games now, a variety of elements such as positioning, restraint, strategy and luck have combined a peak in the history of the Game in the biography of the Three Kingdoms.
So much so that nearly thirty years after the game was launched, countless mainland players are still racking their brains to dig deeper into the content of this game.
First of all, there are a large number of players who are pursuing the extreme gameplay challenge of The Legend of Heroes - because of the limited number of levels in the game, the large number of characters and the poor level experience. Therefore, how to let his warriors cultivate as many full-level characters as possible before the final battle has become the goal of many players' challenges.
From the initial pursuit of 1299 and 1399; to the pursuit of 16, 17 and even 1899 through deception and counterattack, burning fire dragons, etc.; and then to the final combination of positioning, the use of props and self-descending attack power, players have spent more than 20 years to achieve 22 level 99 characters and even 23 level 99 characters.
The degree of hardship in the middle is not exaggerated, and it is not too much to write a textbook of tens of thousands of words, which shows the high degree of ashes of Chinese players.
What's more, there are many players who say that this is not too addictive, and they need to continue to increase the difficulty by modifying the mod themselves. A variety of perverted versions of over 100 levels and more than 6000 offensive and defensive levels came into being. Let these players enjoy the feeling of pain and happiness every day.
Today, there are dozens of mods in the Tale of the Three Kingdoms alone. Not to mention the subsequent works of Cao Cao and Kong Mingchuan in the glorious series.
Of course, it is a bit of a pity that with the decline of the wargame itself, the series has not produced the latest works since 2006. So to this day, many players can only complete the Yingjie pass over and over again, challenging their higher limits.
3 Warcraft 2: The Supreme Real-Time Strategy Game, the originator of World of Warcraft.
Like the Legend of the Three Kingdoms, in 1995, another iconic real-time strategy game, Warcraft 2, also took the stage of computer games.
This magical real-time strategy game produced by Blizzard, like the Age of Discovery, has laid the basic disc of the entire series from Generation 2, but Age of Discovery 2 is the peak of the Grand Voyage series, and the later Warcraft 3 is the highest peak of the series.
But that doesn't stop warcraft 2 from being classic. After all, in the core game genre of real-time strategy, the Warcraft series began in the 2nd generation, gradually competed with the Command and Conquer series and eventually replaced it.
Unlike the previous real-time strategy games, which only value quantity and do not value quality, Warcraft 2's approach is not to engage in large army organization - so you can't see the grand scene of hundreds of pairs of hundreds in the game, but through dozens of battles, Warcraft 2 realizes the core gameplay experience of micro-manipulation, which is the core of real-time strategy games.
Starting with Warcraft 2 and ending with Warcraft 3, Blizzard finally perfected this logic and completely dominated the real-time strategy market.
Moreover, the logic of the hero unit also began to appear from Warcraft 2, and it was not completely perfected until the 3rd generation, becoming the two core characteristics of Blizzard.
Of course, if you want to talk about actual gameplay and expressiveness, Warcraft 2 can only be said to be quite good, not to the peak. However, his series of pioneering ideas were carried forward in the later Warcraft 3.
Finally, if you want to talk about a classic of Warcraft, it is his world view and plot, which is actually the original prototype and originator of World of Warcraft.
Just by rushing this, Warcraft 2 will go down in history forever.
4 Legend of paladin: Even today, it is the best computer game that combines love elements, and there is no one
The first few are produced by Japanese and American game companies. In fact, in 1995, the mainland also gave birth to a love myth RPG game that can be called the peak today - the legend of Paladin.
Li Xiaoyao, Zhao Ling'er, Lin Yueru and Jiu Jianxian, these names to this day, even people who have never played games have a general impression. The source of these characters is the legend of the Paladin Sword produced by Taiwan's Daewoo Company in 1995.
If you simply look at the graphics or gameplay, the legend of Paladin Can only be regarded as good, but it is still not a grade compared with the contemporaneous Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
But when it comes to the plot experience, it is especially in line with the Oriental people's outlook on life and love. Then the legend of the Immortal Sword is the pinnacle and the ultimate song in this field - there is no immortal sword before, and there is no fairy sword after it.
Whether it is the poignant love story and tragic ending between the protagonists, or some other supporting characters in the game are endlessly memorable. No game has ever written to this level before.
How good is this plot? More than ten years later, when adapting tv series, the legend of The Immortal Sword has been able to impress the hearts of countless TV audiences, and has won a number of major actors such as Hu Ge, Yang Mi, and Liu Shishi.
At this point, except for The Immortal Sword, we haven't seen any game adaptation reach this height, even the World of Warcraft movie that later cost hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt.
However, like the biography of the Three Kingdoms, the legend of the Paladin Sword in the subsequent series, there is no better work that can surpass this work. This also leads to the fact that in everyone's mind, the truly classic immortal sword is only one generation. I have to say that this is another regret of this work.
5 Heroes of Might and Magic 2: The pinnacle of Western strategy wargames, the battlegame of Heroes and Heroes
Like Warcraft 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, a Western-style strategy wargame, is also a key work in the entire Heroes Invincible series.
The Heroes of Might and Magic Generation, which was previously released, pioneered a new western wargame mode of large map + turn grid combat. However, there are still quite big problems in the overall design and balance of the picture and the game. In the second generation, although some problems have not been solved (talking about you, Black Dragon), but instead of being much stronger in terms of gameplay, it directly makes this series popular with most people, and three years later launched the strongest work in the series, Hero Invincible 3.
The best thing about this work is that it combines the strategic significance of urban construction, class hoarding, the tactical significance of hero selection and troop combination, and the combat significance of skill release, class mobile attack, and action choice.
If nothing else, the choice of the six races alone has made players have to judge carefully for a long time. From the modest knight's castle to the fast-attacking witch's castle, from the witch's castle with the strongest class of black dragons to the barbarian castle that attacks the strong and the weak.
Starting from The Invincible 2nd Generation, this choice of different strategies has brought players a great sense of happiness and accomplishment. So that in the 3 generations, only a certain numerical balance and racial additions have been carried out on the basis of the 2 generations.
Of course, the appearance of a near-BUG class like the Black Dragon does not make the player feel unbalanced, but thinks it is interesting to weigh between extremely strong strength and extremely expensive expenses.
History is always strikingly similar. For the Hero Invincible series, on the basis of the 2nd generation, the 3rd generation launched in 1999 reached the peak of the series. However, in the years that followed, the quality of subsequent products could no longer be broken, and the situation of the entire wargame declined. As a result, this series was only launched until the 7th generation of 2015, and there will be no follow-up products.
Players who like this series have to look back again and again and continue to find their own happiness in the 2nd and 3rd generations.
6 Conclusion
In addition to the above works, there are many computer classic games from 94 to 96 years. For example, Monopoly 2, Command and Conquer in 1995, Quake and Tomb Raider in 1996 and so on.
These games may be unfamiliar to today's players. After all, in 1996, the price of a 586 computer in China reached 10,000 yuan, which was almost the income of a small family at that time. Therefore, many post-80s players were gradually exposed to these games after the popularization of computers in 2000.
But this did not detract from the classics of these games, and also allowed them to span 30 years of time and are still loved by many players today.
Compared with these games, these mobile games on the market that are now filled with various page game quality, one knife 999, one person, one gun and one dog, etc. are exactly the same routine and commercial model, which is simply a faceless character.
However, the mobile games that these people spurn can still maintain the level of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of monthly turnover - even less than 1 month of income, which is already equal to the total sales of the above games in China.
For this situation, we don't know whether to laugh or cry.
All in all, if you've also experienced that golden age of games, feel free to write your favorite old game in the comments section. Take a look at what games you enjoyed the most at the time.