There are two games I have not played for years now but would jump at the chance to play again. The first is not strictly an RPG but we role played it anyway and that is Car Wars and the second is Champions, now known as Hero System.
Funnily enough I noticed on the forums Hero System got mentioned again recently in one of the Shadow World threads so it is nice to see that it is still hanging on. There are more Champions games on rpol.net than there are Rolemaster so the game does have a following still.
In fact just thinking about champions makes me want to play even more! I cannot actually remember what version we played, it must have been 1985 or maybe 1986 we were really into Supers role playing.
There would also be the dilemma of do I buy into Champions or Hero System? It looks like Hero System is the one being updated the most frequently but although the basic rules are just $15 the complete game is $50 which if I probably will never get to play is a bit of a waste. Champions complete is just $20 and is almost worth it just for the nostalgia factor.
I think CarWars is available as a free PDF direct from Steve Jackson. What you don’t get is the millions of counters you need to play the game. I have this somewhere and I printed it all out. It actually prints out in that stupidly tiny page size of the original plastic box. I then had to print and cut out the turning key as that was essential kit as well.
There is much more chance of me running CarWars from my group as an board game substitute than as an RPG. The only thing stopping me is that there are so many alpha males in our group that any sort of death match arena is going to end up with some very disgruntled people. (I love the word disgruntled. It is one of those negatives for which there is no positive version. There are many days when I am sure I am entirely gruntled, if only that was an option!)