Over the years,name your 3 'WOW' games

[Skanky Burns]

80's: Demon Stalkers / Starflight
90's: Doom
00's: Thief

[DrSpike]

Thief was released right at the end of the 90s though right?

[Skanky Burns]

1999.

I only got into it a few years after though, so it counts for this decade.

[DrSpike]

You waited to play a Thief game? Wow.

[General Ludd]

How did you play X-Com in the 80's - did you have a time machine?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by General Ludd
How did you play X-Com in the 80's - did you have a time machine?

He stole one.

[Solver]

80's - nothing. No one had computers in the USSR, nor game consoles anyway.
90's - Doom. Yes, I like Civ more, but Civ wasn't an immediate wow-effect on me. It accumulated as I played. Sequels like SMAC were instant hits for me, but those are, well, sequels. So it's Doom. Which I still consider to be the best FPS of the 90s. Close second - AoE2.
00's - RoN. I don't myself know why I stopped playing it about a month after it came out, but I regard it to be a fantastic game, and probably the best RTS out there. Never seen a game with such a polished interface and so well though-over, though.

[Adagio]

The only game I was impressed by at first sight was Lemmings... Even though there's many games better than it, this game was the only game that almost made be say 'wow' when I saw it for the first time

[Spiffor]

80's: Hybris
90's: G-Police
00's: Shogun Total War

Shogun was by far the "wow"-est game I've ever played. The aestetics are absolutely awesome, and even medieval isn't as good.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by DrSpike
You waited to play a Thief game? Wow.

Waited isn't quite the correct word. I didn't even know about Thief until a few people at Poly talked about it. A week later I spotted it in the bargain bin, so grabbed it. The rest is history.

Originally posted by General Ludd
How did you play X-Com in the 80's - did you have a time machine?

Wow, this game is *much* younger than I thought it was. Xcom was released in 1996.
List edited accordingly.

[DrSpike]

The European version of UFO: Enemy Unknown was out pre 1996 I'm sure, though not in the 80s.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Being a programmer, I've been wowed by games that I could not figure out how to reverse engineer, that is, how the code was done.

1. 1982's pinball contruction set.
2. '90's Castle Wolfstein (first fist person shooter).
3. Civ3 computer ai, not kill all, but very good.

I now understand how 1 and 2 were done. 3 is still a pleasant mystery that I am trying to solve.

[Traianvs]

G-police is that game in which you are a coppa flying in airborne police vehicles hunting down pirates and other trash in those dome-like cities right?

Was a great game with a good athmosphere. Unfortunately I never got past that 'train' level. I never found out how to prevent it from reaching the exit

Duke nukem 3d sure gave me a WOW when I played those first levels (and especially atomic edition's 4th episode ).

Thief also WOWed me. The first time I played that first level with those 3 guards at the entrance... What a suspense!
And after that the level in which you go down the mines, scary ****, even though there's not that much enemies/monsters to slaughter

[Adagio]

Oh yeah, Duke nukem 3D also gave me a wow like experience...

[Urban Ranger]

pre-80's:
Star Raiders, a cartridge game made for the Atari 400/800 home computers. An incredible game considering how much they packed in so little space.


80's:
Loderunner, for the Apple II

1941, Chris Crawford's Eastern Front cartridge game.

M.U.L.E., a timeless classic

Archon, another classic

Encounter, a Battlezone inspired game

Bard's Tale, RIP Interplay

Wizardry 6 - Bane of the Cosmic Forge, RIP Sir-Tech

Moria, a rogue-like dungeon crawl with ASCII graphics

Sim City, even if it wasn't a game...

Populous, first of the "god" games, a really cool idea

Railroad Tycoon, first of the tycoon games


90's:

Civ

Master of Orion

UFO: Enemy Uknown, this is a real "wow" on the first night mission.

Alpha Centauri, like Civ, an accumlated wow

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Superheros of Hoboken, a mad, mad RPG where you lead a group of wacky superheroes on a series of missions. Not really a "wow" except for the silliness

Dungeon Keeper - another Bullfrog fist, very cool idea

Omnitrend's Universe - a very complex RPG with an intricate story and expansive setting.


00's:

The games were getting lame, relying too much on chrome (graphics and sound) instead of having good gameplay. Nothing really sticks out.