I have been going through some of my old games lately and playing through some of them to see how they hold up….This is just a few of my favorites:

Toonstruck – Let me just say that I love this game…the humour is great, the voice acting is fantastic and the animation is amazing….the games stars Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown from Back to the Future) as a cartoon animator named quite cleverly Drew Blanc who falls asleep and gets sucked into a cartoon land where he has to fight the evil Count Nefarious (voiced by Tim Curry) to save the world.

Although the game is somewhat short and fairly easy…each puzzle is unique and the one liners are funny….helped by the great acting from the entire cast who if you have ever watched a cartoon will sound familiar.

I would suggest going out and getting this right now if you have not played it.

Blood, Doom, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake – My 6 favorite all time Classic FPS games…each one is unique and focuses on a different aspect – Blood parodies the horror genre, Shadow Warrior parodies the kung-fu genre, Duke Nukem parodies the action genre, Redneck Rampage does not parody a genre but has a gun that shoots saw blades….SAW BLADES!, Quake is still being played competitively to this day and spawned it’s own convention – Quakecon…and what is there to say about Doom that hasn’t been said already….is set the tone for all FPS games that follow it…and still has some truly scary enemies and levels…Each of these games is loaded with Easter Eggs, Secrets and great levels, weapons, enemies and bosses…I would say you need to play these….but if you have not at least played Doom you aren’t a gamer, and are probably not going to read this.

Day Of The Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit The Road – I put these together as I played both at the same time after buying a Lucas Arts Pack. These are 2 of the greatest games ever made…they are hilarious, the puzzles are brilliant, the animation is fantastic and the characters are unique.

Day of the Tentacle follows 3 friends Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie trying to stop an evil tentacle trying to take over the world…during the game they get separated through time…Hoagie 200 years in the past, Laverne 200 years in the future and Bernard in the present….and they must work together to get back to the right time and stop the tentacle.

Sam and Max is the story of 2 Police officers trying to track down a missing Bigfoot for a local circus and during this adventure, defeating evil and saving the world…sort of (you have to play it to understand)

I know Sam and Max has been remade…and I have played these, but they never really captured the spirit of the original….they have not remade Day of the Tentacle yet….it would be interesting to see what they would do with this one.

Darkseed and I have no mouth but I must scream – Made by the same developer – Cyberdreams….these are still 2 of the darkest games I have ever played.

In Darkseed you have to fight an alien race who are slowly taking over a small U.S. town….and thanks to visuals designed by H.R. Giger (the artist responsible for the Alien from the Alien movies) this game has some of the creepiest scenes ever in a game.

I have no mouth but I must scream – is a game where you play as the last 5 humans on Earth, kept alive by an insane computer for his own joy, each character has a unique story and fear that is exploited by AM the computer….this is a very adult game and deals with themes such as murder, rape, drugs and Nazis.

The problem with these games and the reason I can only recommend playing them with a guide is that they are full of game breaking bugs….if you don not do things in the right order, you can become stuck and unable to complete the entire game.

Unfortunately Cyberdreams closed it’s doors in 1997 after releasing only 5 games…the other 3 being Darkseed 2, CyberRace and Noir: A Shadowy Thriller…I have played Darkseed 2 and while being a great game, it was not a good as the original.

These are just a few of my favorites…I will cover some more in another part

*images from Wikipedia.