How old do you want them? Horace Goes Skiing? Space Invaders? Centipede?
And what exactly do you mean by "active genres"?

Some seem to prefer III actually. I've also seen some hail the sixth as the best, though I think that might have something to do with the age of the audience. I dunno.
I've personally got World of Xeen (as part of Ultimate RPG Archives), VII and IX (which I bought "used" still in shrink wrap for $8). Don't know which I would call my favorite, since I actually didn't played that much of any of them until recently.
Despite what I posted before this, I actually bought VII first, because of the HOMM 3 craze when I was still in elementary school. Needless to say, I was rather surprised when I started to play it. But from what I've played I've enjoyed it more than HOMM.
DOSBox mofo. That's how I play it. I do seem to have some random freezing problems with it (might have something to do with the redbook for the voices) , though it seems to be an isolated incident, since I've never found anything similar on other place on the net...
But I'm going to mess around with the settings, since the last few posts made me want to give it another proper try.
Swords of Xeen seems to work fine though.

I'll give it a try with dosbox. The problem is last time I tried (a few years ago) it didn't work. I guess I was just too clumsy...

I don't think you need to worry about showing your age where I'm concerned. So are you saying that a true RPG needs to follow PnP conventions?
And sorry, but I've never heard of Bungler's Grate.

Wouldn't that be 'Bungler's (Who the hell is Bungler anyway?) Gait? Dunno about any Gods living in the sewer or sumthin'...

Hehe, that's just how I've referred to Baldur's Gate since the day I defenestrated my copy. :)

That would be Raki, the Norse god of sewers and cods.

Baldur/Balder/Baldr - Norse god
Gait/Gate - play on words/sounds
Bungler - one who bungles
- bungle - "To work or act ineptly or inefficiently"
Grate - " To cause irritation or annoyance"

Ineptitude Annoyance, then.
Meh, I like BG and IW. The combat works well enough, though I do agree that the pathing can cause a great deal of annoyance, but after playing Warcraft 2 for years beforehand I've gotten used to it...

I suppose it is true that the original Gold Box Pool of Radiance didn't have a lot of trouble with pathing.

Most likely. I had the same problem. I thought it was a great game, until I got to my very first battle, whereupon my opponents proceeded to wipe the floor with my entire party. After that, I exited the game and uninstalled it. No game should have a learning curve that steep.

Well that's the point.. With the original Gold Box games, the game was entirely turn-based.. You controlled the path of your characters, not the computer. My pathing skills rock! :)

Hah, wow. I have no problems with the combat. Sure, some require some extra planning, use of buffs and spell properly, but once you wrap your head around that it becomes easy. Heck, if you want hard you should look into one of the Wizardry games. None of the Infinity Engine games are even comparable in difficulty.

That's as may be, and I don't mind that, but for the very first battle in the game? That ought to work as an introduction to the combat system, not as a fight where you have to use every trick in the book just to survive.