Older games recommendations

[King of Worms]

Haha and now we have complete history here
Just kidding, there are so many games, but it seems we know them all... still looking for that one missed gem I have not played
Really awesome games mentioned, Im in a good company!

PS: Those arcade games you mentioned IK, some of them are looking beautiful!!!

The Settlers
Command and Conquer
UFO: enemy unknown
Tony Hawks ProSkater
BattleChess
Contra
Monkey Island
Descent
AvP 1 + 2


Grimrock 1 + 2 (not so old but oldskool type of gameplay)
Prey 2 (not old but very System Shock like)
Soma (not sure why it is here but its great game)

[jayhova]

Betrayal At Krondor (My original rpg love, and it forced me to learn to read pages of english )

.. I heard rumours a year or two ago about Neal Hallford working on a remastered version, I wonder if anything came of that. Probably nothing.

He worked on a sort of demo of what could be done with the engine he was playing with. I think he didn't wish to take it too far to keep from stepping on anyone's toes.

[BadLuckBurt]

Nice lists from everyone. I'll drop a few too, some have already been mentioned:

Abuse
Albion
California Games II
Claw
D-Generation
Dune 1
Eagle Eye Mysteries
Doom
Strife
Prince of Persia
Commander Keen
Duke Nukem (platform games)
Duke Nukem 3D
Jill of the Jungle
LucasArts and Sierra adventure games
Jazz Jackrabbit
Street Rod
Tie Fighter
X-Wing
Worms
X-COM (the originals)

[Jammer]

Also, Terminator Future Shock, anyone? Another flawed, inefficient gem full of bafflingly stupid design choices that nevertheless performed small miracles for its time, lovingly made by Bethesda.

Not a bad game, same engine as Daggerfall. At one point I remember opening the map screen and thinking "yep, that's Daggerfall" =D.
Also the first game to have WASD+mouselook controls by default.

I just realized that Julian worked on the previous Terminator title for Bethesda, "The Terminator" (1991). The description goes "a 3D open-world action and driving game", set in a scale map of Los Angeles (several kms in size I think). Sounds like GTA3, 10 years before.
Going to give it a try.

[ByteMixer]

Since I haven't seen it listed, and you can get it cheap on steam,

The D&D Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara arcade games. (they're a single item on Steam for less than $15 IIRC)

Most others I see have already been mentioned from my lists, so I'll add a few PC games I liked and haven't seen mentioned:


Might & Magic 3, and 4/5 World of Xeen (maybe Swords too) Haven't played the newer ones.
Might & Magic Dark Messiah

Not necessarily "old" but:
Gothic 1 & 2, followed by the Risen games (though I've only played the first Risen)
Planescape: Torment
BG 1&2, IWD 1&2 (basically most of the infinity engine games)
NWN 1 I liked the story/writing in 2 better, but it's a shame so much was unfinished, kinda like with Kotor 2. I understand Mask of the Betrayer was quite good, but I never got around to playing it. Though I generally like Obsidian's writing better, in that time period they tended to just not have enough dev time to finish the projects.
Fallout 1 & 2
La Mulana (not real old, but has that old style and difficulty to it, particularly if you use the original graphics from before it was on steam)
Divinity series

And a bit of a cult classic with FMV, Realms of the Haunting. A bit hard, but I did like it and managed to get through it. Some of the 3D platforming was "meh" but it was good overall.

Since console games were brought up:
NES:
Crystalis
Swords & Serpents
Clash at Demonhead
Dungeon Magic
Startropics 1
Dragon Quest 1 thru 4
Willow

Genesis: Shining Force 1 & 2
Shining in the Darkness
Phantasy Star 1, 2, 3, and 4 (I didn't really play a lot of Genesis games back then)

SNES: Too many to count, so I'll list a couple of the more obscure ones.
Act Raiser
King of Dragons
Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia/Terranigma
Ys 3: Wanderers of Ys
Axelay
7th Saga (and Mystic Ark if you use the fan translation)
Romancing Saga 3 (again, fan translations)
Dragon Quest 5 (needed a fan translation for it)
Paladin's Quest (and the sequel, Lennus 2, which needs a fan translation, admittedly I didn't get that far as at the time I checked it out the translation was unfinished.....I should look into that one again.)

I haven't played Valkyrie Profile, but I know of it. I've played other games in the same vein: mostly style and music composition (Motoi Sakuraba) I'm not as Proggy (or skilled) as Motoi or Mitsuda, but I'm in a prog-ish pop/rock band as the keyboardist.

[Ferital]

Some of my favorites are already mentioned here, but I didn't see these ones:

PC:
- Might and Magic VI: I saw the previous ones were mentioned but this is the only one I played and I have quite good memories of it
- Heroes of Might and Magic III: one of the most addictive turn-based strategy game I ever player...
- Civilization II: ... but this one was really the most addictive in my case (one more turn... 10 hours later... one more turn); check FreeCiv which is a really good alternative
- Dungeon Keeper: I didn't play the second opus, but the first was simply awesome; also check the KeeperFx remaster which is as faithful to the original as a remake can be (thanks to MrFlibble for the link)
- Warcraft II: "yesh milord", "hello", "the town is under attack!", "ready to work", "zog zog", and the amazing OST ("Your soundcard works perfectly.")
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: the best one in my opinion, because of if its awesome 1980s atmosphere...

Mega Drive/Genesis:
- Golden Axe: the arcade version was mentioned by Interkarma, I enjoyed especially the first one on Mega Drive
- Streets of Rage I and II: just listen the soundtrack of the first one and remember, ooyah! (and thanks to Yuzo Koshiro for making the Mega Drive sound like this!)

Game Boy:
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: the best Zelda ever

[Ommamar]

One game I haven't seen mentioned that I totally forgot about until I saw a lets play was Dark Earth. The premise was that after a nuclear cataclysm only a few places had access to sunlight which logically led to the sun being worshiped. You play as a guard who while protecting a priest of the order is infected by a dark poison. The cool thing was that you could access the darkness growing inside to make yourself powerful but each time you did the darkness became more prevalent. This cause the world to react to you very differently then if you didn't use the power growing in you. If you did use the darkness your view point also changed when you interacted with objects in the world. It was very ground breaking for the time and I haven't seen any other game implement it in quite the same way. Here is the release trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CptOvWThi8U

[Seferoth]

Oldest game to recommend from me might be "Journey to Silius". It's a side scrolling shooter for NES. Still, it's soundtrack is out of this world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNCrpIL2XlY&

[Orbarth]

Most old favorites have already been mentionned, hard to add more as there have been so many titles already listed.
I'll try to add a few more from my dos collection

4D Boxing , probably the best boxing simulator (fun building a guy career and stats then coming back to a fight against one of the early opponents that gave you trouble)
Aces of the Deep , it was a fantastic subsim in its time
Aces over Pacific , very good even on keyboard flight sim during the pacific war between USA and Japan
Colonisation , a very good 4X based on the colonisation of the newly discovered American continent by old European powers
Covert Action , amazing "superspy" agent/detective simulator, incredibly replayable with cases and villains generated
Darklands , very good in its "freeform" gameplay especially for its time, the illustration were incredibly good at delivering the atmosphere of the game
Frontier Elite 2 , incredible evolution of the old Elite, newtonian physics, 3D and etc , ah the good old Sol - Barnard Star cargo run in the beginning to make money
Heroes of Might&Magic 2 , while the version 3 that has already been mentionned is the best of the serie, HoMM2 is still very good to play
Hidden Agenda , an interesting political game in which you try to manage a fictional South American country after the fall of its dictator
Lords of the Realms 2 , it was a nice kingdom management game, going through seasons with possibility of diplomacy
Master of Orion , my favorite space 4X , i even find it much better than its acclaimed sequel Master of Orion 2
Pirates , in its time it was a very good game, exploration piratey stuff and ship battle, the only low point was the fencing part it was utterly bad
Red Storm Rising , incredible game in its time with fantastic elements of modern sub simulator mixed with a dynamic campaign reacting to your win/loss
Sword of the Samurai , excellent game in medieval japan, leading your clan (or yourself as you could travel solo) to war, honor and death, a masterpiece from Microprose
Theme Hospital , lots of fun in this hospital builder game with insane type of disease to heal
XCOM1 (UFO Defense) , great tactical battles, super unfair too as you'll lose squaddies in dozens each months but tons of fun

[Nystul]

lots of great games have been already mentioned, I would add "Lands of Lore - The Throne of Chaos" - liked the story and atmosphere when I played it years ago...