Are they the ‘epics’ of their time, or some things that are less well known?
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Half-Life 1 (and expansions)
SimCity 3000, SimCity 4
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Deus Ex
Zoo Tycoon
Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail
Morrowind
Industry Giant 2
Fallout 1/2
Arcanum
SimTower
Great list. I think I will replay about half your list at some point over the coming years. And might first time play Love For Sail as well.
I still love all of the 90s FPS games like Doom and Quake.
Same. The rise of the boomer shooter was fun but you can’t beat OG.
Have you tried playing on a lower difficulty level?
I love you.
I’ll let my wife know that someone finally does!
Half-Life 1 was the peak of this genre for me
I still play through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at least a couple times a year though it’s usually with the randomizer these days. It is objectively the best video game ever made, which helps.
What do you think of the other Zeldas in the same style, like Link’s Awakening, the Oracle games or Minnish Cap?
All good to great games that build on the foundation set by ALttP. I’d gladly play any of them if you put it in front of me but nostalgia demands that I push the one I played when I was like 9 years old or whatever.
I’ll still crack open any one of the Age of Empires series from time to time.
You just reminded me I have the first version of that game around somewhere, I might dig it back out one of these days soon.
The original and Rise of Rome are great. If you don’t have Rise of Rome it’s almost mandatory, it runs a lot better and has a lot of quality of life improvements, like a higher population cap.
Half-Life 1
One mod specifically (Sven-Coop). Been playing almost daily since 1999.
I still fire up Duke 3d and Quake mods from time to time as well. There are lifetimes of user-made content in some of these older games.
Here goes:
pc:
- duke nukem 3d pc version
- blood
- redneck rampage (so funny!)
- cannon fodder
- day of the tentacle
megadrive:
- streets of rage 2
- road rash 2
- ea hockey 2
Wow Cannon Fodder. I felt so bad for the guys that got wounded and just stayed there suffering.
I actually felt real sadness when I’d been progressing with a name for several levels and then they get blown up by my own doing. When their name appears in the roll of honour!
Wow Cannon Fodder. I felt so bad for the guys that got wounded and just stayed there suffering.
You can shoot them, and shoot them, and shoot them and their body bounces around!
What’s special about EA hockey 2?
Tales of Maj’Eyal; all the old scumm games, daggerfall, toejam & earl.
Ayyy ToME oldhead gang represent. Been playing since about 2014 myself.
The modding community is what really kept breathing life into that game for me for so long. I’m hoping once we finally see the next (final?) DLC expansion that the modders will pick the game back up again. It’s been very stagnant for a couple of years now, presumably waiting for DG to release his expansion like a sudden kraken as is tradition. But it’s been 2 years now since the last update (which was primarily a scaffolding update for the Lost Lands content to come) and I imagine everyone who would be otherwise interested is now hanging in a limbo of not wanting to start work on a project when DG might drop a major update at literally any time and invalidate a bunch of your work.
Even just the regular base game kept me playing for years and years though. Solid 10/10 freeware game. I used to bounce between ToME and DCSS (also freeware, also recommend, this one actually gets regular updates) pretty regularly and that kept me covered on dungeon crawling roguelikes for the better part of a decade. I still keep coming back to them on occasion though, I’ve played a bit of both of those games within the last 2 weeks.
Guild wars 1. I don’t play it often but every once in a while I get the itch. It’s honestly still really compelling.
Fired it back up recently and went to one of the main hubs. There was a few other people running around, but it was pretty dead.
But yeah, the pre-cataclysm area was gorgeous at the time. The soundtrack is AMAZING. One of my favorite gaming experiences.
Final Fantasy 6 but, back in my day, it was called Final Fantasy 3.
Master of Orion.
MOO2
Best way to play this these days? I have a disk from the early 2000s, but iirc the last time I tried to use it, it just prompted an update that led to a blizzard launcher… idr if it wanted me to buy a new digital copy or what, but I ultimately decided it was more work than it’s worth and gave up.
…these days I don’t think I even have a CD drive lol.
All their games launch through their “Battle.net Launcher” now. It’s not the same as Battle.net was back then. I play on Linux via Lutris (add Battle.net launcher to Lutris).
I think if you have your cdkey on there you can sync up for a digital copy on their website. Same account needed for the launcher. It’s all annoying, but that’s how it works now. Plays flawlessly though.
Apparently the original game and Brood War expansion are free to install through the Battle.Net launcher these days.
If you have the original discs, the later official patches added the ability to copy the “mpq” files from the CD into the game’s directory, so you no longer need the disc in the drive. Of course, you’re still going to need a drive for the initial installation. That should work for single player (it’s been a few years since I last did it) but I don’t know about online multiplayer.
The Pokemon games on all of Nintendo’s handheld consoles emulate really cleanly on a smartphone.
I’m a sucker for the Gen 1 nostalgia every now and then.
Super Nintendo:
- Megaman X. I was never a fan of classic Megaman, but the faster, more action-oriented sequel/spinoff X series rates amongst my favorites. It has tight controls, good music, varied stages, and memorable bosses and combat encounters. I must have beaten the first game dozens of times over the years.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It and Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy were so close to perfect that decades later they’re still the basis of comparison for any new 2D Zelda-like.
PC:
- Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. it was the game that introduced Bioware’s trademark party banter and focus on interesting and likeable characters. The systems are a little rough but it still mostly holds up. Though it’s been a while since my last playthrough, and I usually stop once I hit the Underdark and the open world structure constricts for a few hours.
The music in the SNES Megaman X series is magic.
There are a lot of great mods for BG2 as well to keep the game feeling fresh. Even moreso if you don’t mind adding some fanfiction material, though I typically don’t.
Quake. Still hold up, modding community makes tons of maps to play so it stays fresh.
Dungeon Keeper - keeperfx is a modern update of the engine / bug fix that makes it easy to play on a modern system.
I sunk hours into NetHack, and I still occasionally dive into the dungeons. I also have a NES emulator on my phone, but it’s just not the same. I’ll play Zelda or Metroid for the nostalgia, but it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with friends.
not the same as sitting on the couch with friends.
That’s the biggie that the young kids of today just will never experience!
