What's the oldest game you actively play?

I don't have any traditions, such as playing so-and-so at least once a year, but I always enjoy going to back to older games every so often. I replayed the two Dino Crisis games back in November of last year for example, along with all four Onimusha games shortly before that.

Probably Mount & Blade: Warband. Every few months I boot that up and dick around for a couple of hours.

I play through games like Chrono Trigger, Silent Hill 2, and Metal Gear Solid every couple years. It's most probably a nostalgia thing but I feel that they hold up and are generally short games. I don't know if I have an appropriate answer for the question though, since I don't think there is a single game in which I feel that I've played for years without letting up. For me it used to be the original StarCraft until like 2005, just because of all the amazing custom maps people made and I didn't have the cash to buy a lot of new games at that time. I bet it's WoW for a lot of people though.

I replay Majora's Mask at least once per year. That's made even easier now with the 3DS version.

Smash Bros Melee on GC.

Contra III on SNES

TF2, AoE 2, and CC: Red Alert all still on PC

I have this weird habit where every year I either complete the Grand Campaign in Rome: Total War once, or complete a match of Civilization III on the hardest setting.

I still play super Mario world occassional, Diablo II as well.

I play old games fairly often. I don't which is the oldest and most common one I play though.

Street Fighter 3rd Strike, Darkstalkers 3, MvC2, MK3, KoF '98 are all games I play fairly consistently. Usually just a few matches here or there, but still playing most of these around once a month.

I will still play Heroes of Might and Magic II (1996) on an occasional basis. Also I've been meaning to play more of the first Suikoden this summer, which came out the same year.

Age of Empires 2, also City builders like Pharaoh or Caesar III, and Disciples: sacred lands, but mostly AoE 2

Up until a few years ago, I would have regularly said the Quest for Glory or other old Sierra games, but I haven't played through those since... mmm... 2010, at least. I'm thinking I want to revisit Police Quest 3 & 4 and Leisure Suit Larry 5-7 at some point. And maaaybe some of the later King's Quest games since that's coming out in late July.

I just replayed Final Fantasy IX last year, so I think that takes the cake. There are some PS1 RPGs I've been meaning to replay on my PSP, but I have no idea when I'll do that. Good video games hit so often these days that I just don't have the time or the real desire to go back.

Fantastic game! I love a personal take on the samurai.

Battle Garegga is an arcade shoot-'em-up from 1996, and I've been playing a ton of it. I've probably put in over 100 hours over the past few months, improving high scores and working towards a clear. It has an absurd amount of depth.

I still dip into Morrowind for a few weeks at a time throughout the year. The overhaul mod has done a nice job in updating the game, mostly from a graphical perspective.

I play one of the phoenix wright games every day and have for about 5 or 6 years.

DJMAX Trilogy, I guess. It's 7 years old which isn't THAT old but for a rhythm game that might as well be dead as shit. I still play it at least once or twice a month.

I am always playing some older game but I will always go back to Civilization 2. I end up playing it for hours and hours every 6 months or so probably.

My friend and I regularly play through Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3 back to back.

@paulmako: ya dumb cookie crumb

@dobedobedo: I just played Streets of Rage 1 and 2 for the first time with a friend who had also never played it. Amazing music. Amazing game! Absolutely will play again. I never had any Sega systems growing up so just played a few of those classics here and there. Any other beat em ups or co op games you'd suggest?

Probably Fallout 3. I've played around with it for a few days out of a year since 2012.

Quake 3.

There are lots of older games that I still like to go back to frequently. I'm currently doing a playthrough of Final Fantasy IX and Morrowind, both of which are in my top 10.

I play Street Fighter 4 almost daily and I usually load up 3rd Strike, Vampire Savior, and Mark of the Wolves every few weeks. Outside of fighting games I find myself playing Final Fantasy 8 and 9 about once a year, though I rarely play past the first disc. Does WoW count as an old game?

I guess System Shock 2. I find myself replaying that every two years or so.

oh man, check out Final Fight. I could come up with more but yeah, Final Fight is a classic.

And to the original question, not sure if emulators count but my old standby has and always will be MAME in one form or another. The aforementioned Streets of Rage series and Final Fight, Vectorman (and Vectorman 2), a round of Punch Out or maybe even Super Punch Out from time to time....Ikaruga, Excitebike...so many good games.

Edited to add: There was a four (sometimes six maybe?) player X-Men arcade beat em up that was a lot of fun. Don't know of it's availability beyond the actual arcade game or an emulator.

I feel I should add that MAME legally only entitles you to play ROMS from arcade game boards you actually own.

Civ V which is not really old. 2010

I still very regularly play Skyrim. In fact, I hope to get a new mod-build up and running this weekend. It's long been my goal to assemble and install the perfect (for me) game of Skyrim.

After that, I still really enjoy playing Geometry Wars 2.

Resident Evil 2, I guess? I agree with the sentiment that "actively play" is a weird term. I fucking love RE2, but once you've unlocked the HUNK mode, it's not like there's much more room for personal advancement. Besides speed running. That said, I still beat it about once a year or so.

I'm almost always chipping away at another playthrough of Cave Story because that game is superb and it makes me happy. I've got Cave Story+ so I switch the artwork/music quality between retro and updated every time. It's the first game I've ever played that once I'd completed it I immediately started up a new save and began blasting through it again.

I'll throw in Chrono Trigger like a lot of other people but I only play it every now and again because there's always something else taking up my slot on the DS. What a perfect game that is.

Max Payne 1, in the winter Max Payne 2 in the fall Max Payne 3 in the spring.

F.E.A.R.

Sleeping Dogs

Mirror's Edge

Deadspace 1 and 2

Crysis

GTAVS GTASA GTA4, GTA 5 in time

Counter Strike Source

RE4

When there's no new games out these are usually my go to games and others I'm forgetting I'm sure.

Probably Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs Hokum and Jagged Alliance 2.

Playing through KotOR2 again for the Nth time.

Can never get enough.

Mount and Blade, I got into that game when they were doing early access before early access was the cool thing to do and still play it to this day, love that game.
I also boot up the older Total Wars more often then the newer ones. Medieval 2, Rome. I think it's a comfort thing, I get the systems by now, don't care to learn the upgrades.
I do a Fallout run a lot, not so much 2, but the original.

Probably the oldest one I play on a regular basis though is ActRaiser, short, awesome music, genre shifting so I can take a break for the action or world building, and the gameplay is still so god damn good.

My SO doesn't like any current videogames, but is nostalgic for SMB 3 so we bust that out from time to time. I'll play FF7 every couple of years...I rarely make it to the end but once in a while I get the urge to turn that game on. There's a few fighting games that I have in constant rotation: SF2 Hyper Fighting (NOT ST, HYPER FIGHTING, DAMMIT!), KOF '98, SFIII Third Strike, and USF4.

Final Fight arcade cab in my garage. Just finished a couple of weeks of Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 for snes. I'd kill for some quality time with the defunct City of Heries mmo. Was playing a bunch if SSI gold bix games on amiga a few months back but got distracted.

Finally comprehensively played Morrowind.

As a kid I wasn't skilled enough at pen & paper gaming to make a powerful character, know it's limitations, and get the most out of my time. Very glad I did. I modded the shaders and added ground-cover but not the models, sounds, or textures. It's very worth it.

It's not really a branching plot game, but you do get to make a bunch of cool mutually exclusive choices, which is something I think modern RPG's have really failed to earn their genre title for.

I've been playing through Phoenix Wright lately, so that's about a decade old. Other than that...Revolution Under Siege is a strategy game about the Russian Civil War I've been playing but that's only from 2010. Not in much of a retro mood lately. Last time I went to play Morrowind I couldn't get the graphical update mods to work unfortunately.

Still trying to beat Omikron: the nomad soul, maybe 1 sitting every couple of months.

As far as regularly play though it is probably TF2, although I often visit back to the 8 and 16 bit era I never regularly play the same game.

Actully it is Gazillionaire 3, but I doubt anyone has heard of that.

Various versions of Puzzle Bobble, Raiden 2, and Metal Slug 3.

Runescape

No love for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri? The greatest of all the civ games? :( I am a sad panda. I play SMACX every now and then because the writing and world building are fantastic. The original xcom with the fan patch that lets you actually change the difficulty (there was a bug in nearly all versions where when you changed the difficulty it didn't change) a still a great game although I think Xenonauts has finally replaced it.

A very old MMO named Asheron's Call which I believe was released in November of '99 and I started playing in December of '99.

Well, thanks to Jeff and Unprofessional Fridays I found myself playing 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand over the weekend. On occassion I feel the need to play through Red Dead Redemption or the Mass Effect Trilogy again.

Just bought Earthbound on the WiiU virtual console, so I'll probably start that up this weekend.

I still play from time to time the remastered version of Fable: The Lost Chapters, Fable Anniversary, Silent Hill 2, and Resident Evil 0.

I'm also playing Terranigma (SNES), but I'm disappointed with it, as the story is weak compared to Illusion of Gaia.

Probably because old games are still good. A game doesn't magically become terrible if its older than 6 months. Conversely, experiencing a game more than once appeals to a lot of people, even if it doesn't have NG+ or unlock something. To provide a more personal answer, I've become dissatisfied with a lot of modern games, whether its art direction, core mechanics and design philosophy, or shady pricing and content practices. There's still good new stuff, obviously, but its so much easier and cheaper to dig into older titles again.

I revisit Wario Land: SML3, Super Mario World, and Metroid Fusion pretty often and make sure I do something with RE4 at least once a year. I also found myself marathoning the main 6 Ratchet & Clank games in April and May, which was rather refreshing.