The older Bomberman games, the Metal Slug games from the Neo Geo, Gunbird, King of Fighters 2002, Final Fantasy games like II (PSP is the most complete version), VI and Mystic Quest, コテ・DE・メクール (a PC-98 game), the first Shantae, modern homebrews like Tanglewood, Nyx - The Paradox Relic, Augury Red Code and Micro Mages, Mega Race, Kunio-Tachi no Banka (rebranded as River City Girls 0 in its recent release, and has an option to play with untouched dialogues), Wonder Boy in Monster World, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Phoenotopia (Adobe Flash version).
Commander Keen - Goodbye galaxy. Completely different but it’s right up there with Zelda for SNES.
Museum Madness - insanely creative and supremely educational game with an abssssurd amount of content for the time that must have taken ages to build. It’s the basics of major educational subjects so most would (hopefully) be review but it’s well done and the path to learn each piece and sub-ppieces requires constantly rejiggering your mind. Also a great way to teach modern kids how damn persistent you had to be to figure something out.
Oregon Trail
Where in the ______ is Carmen San Diego
Scorched Earth
SNES- super Street fighter 2 turbo, NBA jam TE, Ken Gruffy baseball, Zelda link to the past, supermarioworld, Earthworm Jim
N64- Mario kart 64, Mario golf, Goldeneye, 1080 snowboarding, blitz NFL, Gretsky 3d hockey, DK Country GTA2 - top down view and sound effects were fantastic.
Worms Armageddon. Like comparing Doom to Pong, this for me was the ultimate level of what started with Pong/cannon fodder/scorched earth. It took all that and made it hilarious and graphic and incredibly memorable. Easy to learn, difficult to master, top 5 party game ever.
Warcraft 2 is hard to go back to because of some of the QOL improvements war3 introduced but the sound board from war 2 may never be outdone.
Tribes online was one of the first mostly open world team based team fps I played. Some of the vehicle mechanics were clunky but many games never even bothered to try to implement such features before or since.
Diablo II - years of my life. Obligatory fuck Duriel
Unreal Tournament 2004 - weapon selection, play style and map variety options with bots that weren’t great but much better than what had preceded them. Graphics were incredible at the time and for me still look good on some levels.
Max Payne - the time slowing feature, consistent and well done noir theme and feel and an enjoyable narrative make it one that even though I only played through twice I remember 20 years later.
You might enjoy crpgaddict, a blog that is playing through every computer roleplaying game in chronological order, providing scores for each one on various metrics. The reason I bring him up is that he doesn’t rate on a curve, or give things marks for being “good for its time” - if pool of radiance scores higher than skyrim, it’s not because it was influential or good for its time, but because he thinks it’s outright better regardless of age (just an example - I’m not saying he would actually rate those two games that way, and he has not rated skyrim). There are early 80s games that he remembers fondly and had a huge impact on the industry that he rates as like 23/100 or whatever, because the scale leaves room for the Witcher 3.
It takes a long time to get through all those games, so he’s currently up to the early 90s, having updated his blog regularly for over a decade. But his list of highest rated games might be a good place to start.
Oh, and while we’re talking about old-ish RPGs that would score well on his scale, I might as well mention Morrowind and the Baldur’s Gate series (before 3, obviously), which he won’t reach for a long time but has been known to hold up as solid examples of the genre. Personally I still think Baldur’s Gate 2 is great. I’m also a big fan of the quest for glory series, which crpgaddict has rated, but might not make his list of top scoring RPGs, because they’re a hybrid adventure/RPG, so not all of their strengths appear on a scale designed for pure RPGs.
Sorry to let you down but Super Metroid sorry to burst your bubble but while NES may have had Metroid it was not the GOAT before the term was instituted.
They only care as far as going after large targets running rom sites (archive is much more than that, so they skirt by) and emulation of modern consoles (they go after the devs). They will never go after an individual just direct downloading and emulating shit.
I must admit I’ve never seen or played these. They might be a bit too new for me. I listened to an interview with the game designer on the retro hour a while back. It sounded intriguing.
Would you care to give an elevator pitch on why these are must-play?
The story is found and told through other characters. A lot of the story is shown rather than told.
Thief 3 has the most horrific level design ever in the orphanage. A game review had a review (really more of a worship piece) just on that one level. (I think this is the review: pcgamer.com/journeying-into-the-cradle-in-thief-d…)
The stealth mechanics actually require stealth and are multivariate. Most stealth games stealth systems now are actually less advanced.
God I remember having to actually disable enemy AI to get through The Cradle as a kid.
Thief 1 and 2 have incredible community made mods that completely overhaul the graphics and make it quite a beautiful game. Said community is still alive and well over on the TTLG forums, making fan missions for the game to this day (including the highly regarded Black Parade, which is basically an entire game made in the dark engine).
The only stealth games I’ve played that come anywhere close are Dishonored 1 and 2 (which, unsurprisingly, had a lot of Looking Glass veterans working on them).
I came here to say this! These games are highly underrated. Amazing story and world building, actually having to be sneaky even with low level enemies, amazing music, these were always my top faves.
Super Metroid because it’s amazing, and Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the same reason. I may be biased because those are two of my favorites ever but I swear they legit hold up.
As someone who didn’t play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn’t. Just as another opinion. I couldn’t really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I’ve played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It’s been a while since I played either, so they’re not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it’s possible that I’m just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.
Tangentially related, always amuses me how “metroidvania” has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like “this isn’t what I expect from a castlevania, it’s a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania”, and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania’s platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.
Ummm do not know who would disagree with you about Super Metriod but that is my go to game when I am sick of the stupid shit that is being pushed out today.
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