90s FPSes

[Algus]

I've just played a quick game of Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (thanks GoG!) and it's made me realize how much I like these old maze shooters. The genre was much more interesting to me when it was about crawling through dank hallways, wondering when your next batch of supplies was going to come up and hoping you didn't run into any of the nastier enemies.

 

Wolfenstein

Blake Stone

Doom

Rise of the Triad

 

These were some great games. They haven't really managed to pull this off since the late 90s I don't think. I remember when Prey came out, it had a sort of old time feel to it (mainly with the weapons) but it was still a straightforward game. Doom 3 and Quake 4 might have been the last two that tried to capture this style of game play but I miss the episodes thing. I guess that kind of died with Apogee/3D Realms as a relevant game maker?

 

Has there be an indie outfit that has tried a throwback FPS? Something where you've got to pop that map open and explore every inch of a level?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

They might be a little more complex than you're looking for since they feature the ability to look up and down plus items in addition to weapons, but Blood and Shadow Warrior are two of my favorite 90's first person shooters that come to mind. They both play fairly similarly to Duke Nukem 3D, but with their own distinct flair. Another that fits your description a little more closely is Marathon for the Mac, which looks and plays a lot like Blake Stone but with the addition of a complex plot line. Zero Tolerance on the Sega Genesis also matches your description perfectly, if you can live with it's fairly low frame rate. Heretic, Hexen, and the original Quake could be worth looking into too if you haven't played them yet; and if worst comes to worst there's always Redneck Rampage.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Jin

[Lord Innit]

If you have access to a Sega Saturn or PS1 the I'd highly recommend Exhumed ( Powerslave in the US) It had look up and down but there was much exploring the maps to do, especially if you went hunting for the hidden team dolls.

 

I think it may have also been released on the PC.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Lord Innit

[xenomorpher]

I've always been a fan of the Quake series. The first one is my favorite and wish they would make a proper sequel. The first FPS game I've played was Alien Trilogy on the original PlayStation and I still pop it in time to time. Duke Nukem 3D is another game I played on PC since it came on a disc I think from PC Gamer. I also played the crap out of Aliens Vs Predator on PC in the late 90's and was one of the first games I played online. Half Life is another one I played a lot. I'm currently doing a play through on the Dreamcast.

Edited October 1, 2015 by xenomorpher

[Pixelboy]

Dark Forces was always my favorite among the FPS games of that era.

[Austin]

I played a lot of Corridor 7 back in the day (uses the Wolf 3D engine like many of the ones you named). It has a lot of interesting features. The level design isn't as good as the ID and Apogee games, but it has better atmosphere and some cool enemies and weapons.

 

Look into the stuff on the Build engine, those games pretty much have the same kind of gameplay, just with much more intricate level design. Duke 3D, Blood, Powerslave, etc. Then of course there's the DOOM engine stuff, like Heretic, for starters.

[Algus]

Excellent! I have not heard of a number of these. Corridor 7 looks fun.

 

I've played Heretic, Hexen, et al. but probably not since the 90s save for some multiplayer on N64 Hexen a few years ago (N64 version of that game did not hold up well lol). Heretic I mainly remember for trying to use the Doom cheat codes and then the game would kill you, heh.

 

Wiki says there is a freeware fan remake of Powerslave. That might be worth checking out!

 

One game I want to get back into is Jurassic Park on SNES. That one I haven't played since Jr. High or whenever it came out but I remember my brother and I played the shit out of it and eventually we got lost in the boat and couldn't get out. No save feature was bullshit but I have emulators with save states now...

Edited October 1, 2015 by Algus

[leods]

If you never played Dark Forces and the Sequels (Jedi Knight series) You're in for a treat.

 

Serious Sam, the original one, is cheap and good. The third one is garbage though.

 

I don't really know other FPSs that have that cool fast and free gameplay. In a sense Borderlands partially achieves a bit of that oldschool feel, but not really.

[BassGuitari]

Doom/II, Quake/II/III Arena, Duke 3D, and Half-Life are the greatest '90s FPSes IMO, and are still some of the best ever. I loved Alien Trilogy on PS1 but it's a pretty marginal game by today's standards (great music, though!). There's actually an amazing Aliens: Colonial Marines total conversion of Doom that reuses first-person weapon sprites and music from Alien Trilogy, and I highly urge any Aliens fans to check it out (you might need some pretty beefy hardware, though; the maps are HUGE and, at certain points, spawn so many enemies that your framerate just shits itself).

I enjoyed Dark Forces a lot way back when but I haven't played it in a long time. It was a good game but I didn't appreciate the things it brought to the genre (maybe because at 10 years old I didn't have much frame of reference) until much later. Ditto for Duke Nukem 3D.

Doom's endless modability has given it incredible longevity. It can be practically any game you want it to be. Mods like Brutal Doom and source ports and tweaks of the original game--not to mention the practically infinite amount of custom WADs, many of which could have been commercial releases in their own right--make the game highly playable even today. If you're feeling nostalgic, there's always good old vanilla Doom.

Half-Life was the first game I played that truly felt epic. Everything about the game was awe-inspiring, just the scale of it. It was the first game that really felt cinematic to me.

There was nothing like a Quake III LAN party back in the day. That game could be just bonkers. It might be the last fast, smooth, arcadey FPS I played before the whole COD thing blew up and forever changed FPSes for the worse.

[gozar]

Does Unreal Tournament count? Looks like it came out in '99, so I guess it would!

 

That's my favorite multiplayer FPS.

 

 

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[StarPath]

Last few days I've been digging the game Battle Frenzy on Sega CD. Great variety of different weapons, steadily ramping difficulty, and a fun level format in which you destroy these "plasma nodes" and then have to escape back to where you started before the timer runs out. The flaws are mainly in the graphics dept. with a pretty low framerate, but considering the hardware it's not bad enough to make the game un-enjoyable. For a 16-bit FPS I would say it's pretty darn good and a hidden gem.

 

[leods]

Lovely Planet is an amazing good hardcore fast paced FPS. But it's not similar to Doom or any of those. Still if you like adrenaline and cute Colors you might enjoy it.

[xenomorpher]

Another game to check out is Strafe for the PC. It's being made for people who loved the 90's FPS games on the PC. Not sure when it'll be released but you can download a work in progress for free.

[omegadot]

https://alephone.lhowon.org/

 

You can grab the Marathon games there for free now. I just gave Marathon a go and it works in Windows 10.

[Algus]

Another game to check out is Strafe for the PC. It's being made for people who loved the 90's FPS games on the PC. Not sure when it'll be released but you can download a work in progress for free.

 

This game looks totally sweet and is exactly the kind of Indie project I was interested in playing. I see they have a Mac demo. That is just delightful. +1 sir

[Austin]

Wiki says there is a freeware fan remake of Powerslave. That might be worth checking out!

 

I think the freeware remake is of the console versions, basically converted to PC. The original computer version is a linear game--start a level, kill a bunch of stuff, find some keys, then find the exit, then go to the next stage, ala DOOM. The console versions are non-linear where you are constantly gaining new abilities and you need to revisit previously played levels to get to new areas you might not have been able to reach before. Both are great, but I just wanted to make that clarification so you knew what you were getting into.

 

 

Does Unreal Tournament count? Looks like it came out in '99, so I guess it would!

 

Haha, not quite! Although the first Unreal might be up his alley.

 

UT '99 is awesome though. It and Quake III Arena were *THE* deathmatch games to play back then. Both were stunning when they were released and still play very well today.

[xenomorpher]

Ziggurat is a newer game I recommended a ways back in the Doom 4 thread for people who liked the Hexen games. Lichdom: Battlemage is another similar game but a lot of people had issues with it and I'm not quite sure if the developers fixed it all yet. Gggmanlives is a channel on Youtube I highly recommend checking out as he does well done reviews of FPSers primarily on the PC. I actually discovered Strafe by watching his video of it. Neon Shadow is worth getting too if you have an Android device. It works best with a controller like the PS3 one.