Era can be defined as a console generation, a decade, one specific year, whatever you want. I’d encourage you to give a list of your favourite games from the generation of choice and why it was the best to you. Nostalgia is a totally viable reason too.
I’ll go first. For me, the 360 era is my GOAT. As someone in their 20s, I grew up with the 360 so nostalgia is definitely a big factor. But on top of that, I still feel like the games during that time were some of the best we’ve had. 2011 alone was a fantastic year, with Dark Souls, Skyrim, Portal 2 and many more great games. I was going to list out my favourite games from 2005-2013 but I love so many it would be far too long of a post.
I’d love to hear some of you talk about your favourite time period of games too, whether it’s agreeing with my choice or giving different opinions
My first machine was a ZX Spectrum.
I love the 8 bit games I grew up with but I’m not stuck in that timeframe. I appreciate that I can still play all my old games and the new ones.
I just wish I had more time to enjoy them.
Excluding the 8 bit games, the games where I spent more time are: Doom, Half-life, Portal, Bioshock Infinite, Skyrim.
If I had to choose one, it would be Doom. Such a simple game, so much brainless fun, so many great mods.
I still regularly play the original Doom on my PC. A couple years ago a friend and I found an RTX mod for it that we played a ton. I still play that all the time
Try the Brutal Doom mod if you haven’t already for an added dose of violence and gore. Combine it with mods like Eviternity for huge new maps and enemies. Enjoy!
The present. I can use emulation to play all my old favorites, often for free, and there’s never been such a rich plethora of indie and studio games available.
Very logical answer. What are some of your old favourites you like to emulate?
NES: River City Ransom, Crystalis, Zelda ][
SNES: Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Link to the Past
GB: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Minish Cap, Tetris
DOS: The Quest for Glory series, ZZT
Great choices! Some classics there for sure
If you haven’t played Terranigma, you should do that. It’s on the level of Chrono Trigger in how good it is.
It was never released in North America, so get the PAL ROM along with the NTSC (60Hz) patch from RHDN
I did play that on emulator a decade or so ago. It’s part of the same series as Illusion of Gaia, right? I don’t really remember Terranigma that well, maybe it’s time for a replay.
Yeah, but the stories aren’t really connected; they’re all standalone games.
Adding a separate comment to add, if you’ve never played it, Super Mario X was a very fun, apparently not-entirely-legal fangame made my Redigit (who went on to create Terraria). He took it down at Nintendo’s demand, but you can still find a copy.
I’ll look into it, thanks for the info
LAN parties. I remember the first time I could connect two PC together. It was Doom, with a serial-to-serial cable. We were two players on the same fucking map. It was awesome!
Then coax cable networks with friends. We used to have two or three different networks during a LAN party since you could not disconnect the coax cable to add a player without stopping the current games. The players arrived later would plug a new network just for them, and launch a game waiting the first players to finish theirs.
Yep, we made LAN between three 5 floor houses and we have eventually 10 people in it. That was AWESOME! We are have played: Warcraft 3, cs1.6, quake 3 arena, C&C Generals/Red Alert, Diablo 2, Titan Quest, Disciples II, Heroes of might and Magic III, and freaking World of Warcraft on our private server!
Oh man that must’ve been a great time. Very jealous you got to experience that being brand new!
2004-2014. That captures the great tail end of the sixth generation of consoles and the golden days of the seventh
Got my first console in 89. First PC in 99.
My choice is current year, because it encompasses every year before and the amount of emulator projects is greater than it’s ever been.
I can make any system from history with a Saturday of effort.
Plus all the indie games that capture the retro feel. Idk, gaming is in a great spot if you don’t bother with big studios.
Is that a lame answer? O well, it’s sincere.
I knew I’d get one saying that but honestly it’s the most logical choice and I respect it. I guess in a way that’s probably everyone’s choice
Okay, I thought about it and edited my post with a version in line with the spirit of your question :-)
I like your updated answer! I’m surprised and impressed EverQuest is still populated. That’s awesome. I had a couple friends from college who would play it, and that wasn’t too long ago for me
EQ Live is still populated. But the version I play is called p99, it’s a free to play passion project by former players who took the source and run their own custom servers.
The most popular custom servers just happen to be the ones locked at 2002.
pQuarm is the new kid on the block. A server that will lock at PoP.
How beginner friendly is it? I’ve never played it before but free to play passion project sounds awesome
The community is the best of any MMO I’ve ever played. If people find out you are new, it’s not guaranteed, but likely benefactors will find gear to donate to you. Largely because the game is HARD. It’s old school MMO. No hand holding. Press the wrong button and attack your own city guard. Hail the wrong demigod and they kill you for bothering them. Dying is often a huge deal (not at first). All that said, difficulty like that breeds community, and the community is like no other game that exists.
DM me and I’ll either be a guide for you or direct you to some friends of mine who can recommend starter guilds and such for you. I know quite a few players on p99Green and pQuarm.
I appreciate all the help! I’ve got a few other games to finish up atm but when I find the time to delve into it I’ll send you a DM
Lame? Not really. Cheating? Maybe a little bit but yeah, if we were to go by access to the history of gaming then “current year” always wins.
Yeah, my choice is basically, “all of em” lol.
I like to cheese what can I say.
But idk, no other era had that. Sure we had emulators in 2005, 2010, but nothing like the selection of today.
Nothing wrong with that.
The ability to play all that old stuff is a thing of beauty and seems to be getting stronger, both in practice and as a general concept within the industry, with each passing year. It’s great!
I’ve been working my way through Atari 2600 games right now, they have over 500 to choose from!
There’s some great games for that. My friend’s dad had one we used to play on as kids, and always had a great time. Got any favourite games?
The Commodore Amiga in its prime was one of the coolest times to be a teenaged gamer. Though NES was a hell of a thing at its time too.
Around the turn of the millennium. Games were designed for offline use and had way more immersive campaigns, were shipped by and large ready and bug-free, and so were add-on campaigns.
And since graphics were not as refined as they are now, additional efforts were placed on gameplay.
My top list (by release year):
- Diablo II (1996)
- Dungeon Keeper (1997)
- Half-Life (1998)
- Thief: The Dark Project (1998)
- Thief 2 (1999)
- Dungeon Keeper 2 (1999)
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 (1999)
- Gothic II (2002)
Never had a console and don’t get along with controllers whatsoever, so those are all referring to the PC versions.
I recently picked up a few of those games on my pc. Wanting to try Gothic II out soon ish, and Thief 1 & 2 as well soon
I really hope you enjoy Thief 1/2! The two are some of my top games of all time and the second one is after 25 years still the best pure stealth game.
As was already said, do make sure to install TFix or T2Fix (depending on the game) to get widescreen/high resolution renderer and just modern hardware support in general.
Gothic 1 is my all time favourite RPG. 2 is everything a sequel “should” be: bigger, some mechanics improvements without losing the core, and (with the expansion) callbacks to 1 and familiar characters. And yet it also lost some of the atmosphere. This is why 1 will always be my favourite.
Despite that, it’s still a great game, and many people’s favourite. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
For Thief and Gothic II there are unofficial graphic mods out there that improve things massively. They basically replace the original models with those from Thief II and Gothic 3, and also fix some bugs.
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429 - that’s a user made campaign for Thief, the thread also has links to all the patches and updates. The campaign is also absolutely great with overwhelmingly massive maps, but you should play the original first.
Awesome, thanks for that! Appreciate it
Aw man that’s a good list!
I’ve recently replayed Thief and Thief 2, they still hold up well!
Tried Gothic II, and unfortunately the controls feel very clunky today. Or maybe it’s just me. But somehow third person view doesn’t really work for me anymore.
'95-'05 with the advent of 3d gaming
Definitely a pivotal moment in gaming for sure
Probably fifth and sixth gens (PSX-PS2 era), for three reasons:
- graphics - there’s something about art styles used at the time that aged surprisingly well and is just pleasant to look at, even compared to later games.
- variety - both gens were filled with mid budget titles trying out new, often weird ideas that didn’t always work but can be really interesting even to this day (as long as you can overcome jank usually present there).
- (least important point) there’s a lower chance I’ll find games from this era to be too old-school for me. I have a high tolerance to old game design but I’m not immune to it. Sometimes there is such thing as “too old” and that’s alright.
Do you have any favourite games from those console gens? My first console was an original Xbox but moved on to the 360 very quickly so I don’t know too many games from then, especially not on the PlayStation
Couple of disclaimers to start with: I’m primarily a PC player, even most of the console games I played happened via emulation so I’ll drop stuff from both. I’m also really fond of games willing to try something different, even if they end up mediocre or bad - these ain’t GOTY material.
With that out of the way, here’s a short list of titles I really enjoyed:
- Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (PC, PSX, Sega Saturn) - 3D platformer with relatively slow and clunky gameplay (kind of similar to classic Tomb Raider games). Colorful, cute and simple.
- Kao the Kangaroo (Dreamcast, PC) - series very similar to Croc though might feel a bit less polished at times. Don’t really care about the sequel even though it’s not a bad game.
- Parasite Eve (PSX) - JRPG set in 1990’s New York. Interesting combat system focused on guns and positioning, great art and fun story.
- Gothic I & II (PC) - German RPGs with a unique atmosphere and world. Surprisingly open-ended with some of its quests. Has an unusual keyboard-centric control scheme.
- Sheep (Mac OS, PC) - game about herding sheep through various wacky levels. Lots of humor.
- Metal Wolf Chaos (Xbox) - crazy story about an American president fighting FOR DEMOCRACY in a mech suit, created by From Soft. Has modern ports for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
- Oni (Mac OS, PC, PS2) - the best Ghost in the Shell game without actually being one*. Third person action with a great melee combat, big empty levels and rough difficulty spikes. Has a community made “Anniversary Edition” with fixes and access to mods.
* I haven’t played all of the GitS games to back that up.
Metal Wolf Chaos sounds hilarious in concept. Will definitely have to check it out. I also own Gothic I & II and want to play them sometime. How do they hold up? I’m not too picky on graphics, but overly janky can be unfun sometimes for the modern gamer
Yeah, Metal Wolf is a cheesy action movie filtered through Japanese lens. It’s crazy, stupid and unintentionally hilarious.
As for Gothics, I think they hold up really well as long as you can overcome a few things:
- get used to the controls - they really aren’t bad but they were created when standards weren’t as established as they are now.
- treat them as worlds you are a part of rather than games - it helps figure out alternative solutions to quests and avoid some unpleasant surprises (in universe, not bugs).
- game world does not revolve around you - early on even basic wildlife will be a challenge, treat enemies with respect.
- there’s no level scaling - some areas will be unavailable to you until you’re strong (or crafty) enough.
- don’t play Gothic II with Night of the Raven expansion installed from the start - it adds a bunch of difficult enemies available from the get go and will make the game way harder if you don’t know how to avoid them.
I think some of those points might sound more serious than they really are but should make for a good primer anyway. There’s a lot to like about those games (even compared to another titan of that time, Morrowind) so I hope you have fun!
I appreciate the help. When I decide to check them out I’ll be coming back to this comment. Thanks!
Xbox 360 was a fun time. Gears of War is still striking today. Also, the best designed controller ever made
In terms of consoles, I got the most enjoyment out of Super Nintendo. I think that’s in part because my kids were still young at the time and we played a lot of coop mode games on it before they got older and their tastes started diverging from mine.
It was the golden age of platformers I guess, and the focus was still solidly on game mechanics over production. I especially liked Bomberman. The gameplay was just perfect the way the challenge scaled naturally even as you got upgrades or added a 2nd player. Literally a blast!
I’ve got a lot of fond memories playing DK Country on the SNES with my dad. Good times
The 90s era of gaming, extending to the early 2000s. SNES, Genesis, PC Engine, N64, PS1, PS2, GameCube.
It was the era before the Internet and video gaming became extremely linked. The sheer number of classics that still hold up today, even compared to modern games, are very numerous.
There’s lots of late 90’s-early 2000’s answers here. You’re definitely not alone in that thought
I’m guessing a lot of people grew up in the late 90s to early 2000s, so it’s largely nostalgia.
It’s not just that. 2023 was a very good year for gaming, right? A lot of the heavy hitters last year were from long-running series. Look and see how many of those series had either their genesis or consensus fan favorite entries in that time period.
Not only that, Steam, Unreal Engine, e-sports, the mainstreaming of game mods, and even AAA development itself all trace back to innovations from that time. Historically, it’s a massively important time period for video games.
Add one more here. Some of the greatest games came out in that period.
I made before a list of the top 10 games that impacted me the most and a large part are from that period. In no particular order:
- Worms (particularly Worms World Party)
- The Settlers II
- Master of Orion II
- Heroes of Might and Magic (particularly the first 3)
- Phantasmagoria
- WWF WrestleMania
- Monkey Island (especially 1-3)
- Dizzy (all games in the series)
- Jet Set Willy
The best thing about this reply is that literally none of those games are on my list, since I haven’t played any of them (except for a Flash clone of Worms as a kid). That just goes to show the sheer amount of quality gaming that there was.
My list is moreso comprised of console games. In no particular order, and includes some later indie games:
- Chrono Trigger (GOAT, ranked number 1 above all the rest of these. Fantastic story, gameplay, music, pacing, etc. I haven’t played any other game as polished as this one)
- Terranigma (A surprisingly deep and philosophical game for the time, even compared to other great JRPGs of the same era, or of any era)
- Yoshi’s Island (just raw fun)
- Super Mario 64 (also just raw fun)
- Majora’s Mask (Surprisingly deep and emotional for a Zelda game)
- Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 (2 in particular opened my eyes to actually being able to feel emotions for the first time)
- Super Meat Boy (Addiction: the video game)
- The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Crack: the video game)
- OMORI (another fantastic and emotional game, almost on the level of Silent Hill 2, but replay value isn’t very high IMO)
- A Link to the Past (Just raw fun, but in Zelda form)
- Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 (I was especially involved in the customs scene back then)
- Final Fantasy VI (A fantastic story in general)
- Super Smash Bros (the series as a whole)
I didn’t have any consoles, so couldn’t play a lot of those games. But on PC (and on 8-bit computer before that), I played hundreds of games. There were no copyright laws in my country when I was a kid and my dad got everything he could get his hands on. In the 8-bit era he collected over 40 cassette tapes (8-10 games on each). Then when we got the PC there were boxes and boxes of floppy disks (I remember Need for Speed was on over 30 disks). Then CDs came out and I remember one CD that had 200 games on it. And as my dad collected, I tried every single one of them.
That just goes to show the sheer amount of quality gaming that there was.
I made that top 10 list years ago from some silly Facebook game that was going around at the time. The hardest part was picking just 10. My initial list had about 70 games on it.
Emulation is magical. It’s how I discovered most of these games.
Yeah, I remember when I first got ZSNES and suddenly I had access hundreds of games I wasn’t able to play before. Played through Super Mario RPG, spent so much time in Harvest Moon, and finally played the first Final Fantasy games and Legend of Zelda.
Probably the period of '95 thought to '05. Mostly because they were the days of local multiplayer with friends and also the jump in technology made things even more interesting.
Combined we had all the 4 player games on the N64. So Goldeneye, SSB, F-Zero, Mario Kart, Snowboard Kids, DK Racing, Perfect Dark, WCW vs NWO and more.
Local multiplayer–especially couch co-op–is a lost art. I definitely miss it.
For PC I’d say 1999-2010 was absolutely amazing time to be a gamer. PC parts were dirt cheap, you could overclock the hell out of your hardware, and micro-transactions and pay-to-win didn’t exist.
Micro-transactions and pay-to-win are reason enough, those are some of the worst things to come to video games
