Simple "console" games for integrated graphics

[velis]

I'd like to have some easy games that can be played on a PC with HD 3300 integrated video, but I don't know even where to look for them.
Ideally these games should support gamepads and one to two players as the PC in question is actualy a HTPC.

Pretty much anything would be fine, but sports, racing and Mario Bros variants are preferred.

If anybody can direct me to a decent online catalog or suggest a few examples, I'd be very grateful.

 

[WildW]

Trackmania Nations Forever is a good freebie racing game that doesn't need too powerful a GPU. http://www.trackmania.com/index.php?rub=downloads . Works well with a gamepad/HTPC setup

 

[Fox5]

Most console ports will play fine on the HD3300 IGP, at lower settings. (resolution around 1024x768, low to medium settings)

You can play:
Dolphin, the gamecube emulator (and wii too, if your cpu is fast enough)
All older emulators (dreamcast down to NES and beyond)
Console ports, Street Fighter 4 is a good one, as is Bionic Commando Rearmed (the 2d remake, not the 3d one)

 

[Pia]

You definitely want to do emulation IMO. There just aren't a whole lot of games for Windows that are any good and have local MP.

The fighting game genre is an obvious choice. Many (most of?) shoot'em ups (e.g. Gradius) and run-and-guns (e.g. Contra) also have local MP. Here are some individual game series to think about which are not from those genres.
Bomberman
Puyo Puyo
Donkey Kong Country (for platforming; old Marios don't have true multiplayer but DKCs do)
Worms (Windows native!)

One more super-fun MP game, and a true classic from way back: Rampart.

 

[gszx1337]

You can play:
Dolphin, the gamecube emulator (and wii too, if your cpu is fast enough)

Holy shit! Do you have any benchmark data (I have an HD3200 IGP on my HTPC)?

Back on topic: Independant games are a good place to look.
http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?CID=0
http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/
http://www.rakeingrass.com/

 

[Fox5]

Holy shit! Do you have any benchmark data (I have an HD3200 IGP on my HTPC)?

Back on topic: Independant games are a good place to look.
http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?CID=0
http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/
http://www.rakeingrass.com/

Sorry, no benchmark data, but in general, people consider a geforce 6100 igp to be overkill.

However, it eats cpu power for breakfast. The gamecube's gpu has a weird pixel shader format, and a lack of vertex shaders, so all vertex shading was done on the cpu, and it's apparently very cpu intensive to convert the pixel shaders to a format usable by current gpus. A lot of gamecube effect's rely on the cpu, so the cpu load scales with resolution .

A 4Ghz Core i7 is considered fast enough/the bare minimum to run most wii games at full speed.
So something around 3-3.5Ghz i7/core 2/phenomII would run just about all cube games full speed. (though you can play games with less, I have a 2.4Ghz phenom I and a 2.5Gz core 2 and sometimes it's way faster than the cube, and sometimes much slower)
Dreamcast emulators are probably much speedier.
There's also ps2 emulators, which are even more cpu intensive than the gamecube emulators.

 

[Zoomer]

There's also a full catalogue of older PC games that will run spectacularly well on low end hardware. Just look for the top blockbuster lists of games that were all the range 5, 10 or even 15 years ago.

 

[Firsttime]

The only game I've played that fits those reqs are the Lego Star Wars games which are excellent, and have good local mp.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The only game I've played that fits those reqs are the Lego Star Wars games which are excellent, and have good local mp.

Second the lego games. BTW, it really irritates me that there are not more games for the PC that allow split screen co-op or head to head. There really are very few.

Some turn based games for the PC do allow turn-base head to head gameplay. I believe the Civilization series, and the Heroes of Might and Magic series allow this. Not sure how they would run on integrated graphics, but I think they would work.

 

[Crow550]

Split screen......I know Serious Sam has this......As well as a port of Doom which I can't remember the name. I think it's the Doom Legacy port and Left4Dead 2 has a split screen mode you can unlock with some console commands.

 

[jlee]

I have a Radeon HD 4650 PCI-e kicking around I can sell you...shouldn't pull much power at all.

 

[velis]

Thanks all for the suggestions.
Will take some time for me to browse through all the stuff