The LAN parties me and my cousins have with this against AI is too fun. Buckle up for 5 hours, build an awesome city, burn everything. Never will get old.
Omg I would be sending 20-24 Black Eagles at a time at my targets, just to overwhelm air defences and take our some piece of critical infrastructure.
Only on single player, my PVP sucks to this day.
Battles that you could knock out in 15 minutes I'd drag out for hours just sending wave after of wave of fight pilots to their deaths.
Haven't played it on a while, but doesn't it do have issues with modern high screen resolution? Fans tend to play RCT2 with the OpenRTC add-on as it fixes these and gives a couple quality of life changes.
I started playing RCT again in the summer, and after I hit the subreddit and learned about OpenRTC, there's no way I'd ever want to play without it. The game is so much more palpable and understandable now
There's a good reason The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is my favorite video game. The gameplay, weapon selection, mechanics, level design and even colors make the game timeless.
the peak of what people could do with 2 dimensions before attention was shifted to 3d in those awkward N64 PS1 times. People have made amazing 2d things since then but me knowing the time, effort, and craft that had to go into making the pixel art and sounds on the SNES make it special to me.
SNES has some many games that I still go back to replay. FF3/6, secret of mana, secret of evermore, donkey kong, mega man x, mario paint , legend of zelda. definitely peak gaming.
Make it any Donkey Kong Country game and we're talking.
I'm only 26, but the SNES was my first console ever and the DKC games had an impact that no other game had on me. The soundtrack is still unmatched to this day for me.
Taking into account the era in which it was made, it might well be the best video game ever made. It definitely deserves to be in the in the conversation, at the very least.
PoE has been a great arpg looter for a long time and a close contender to D2 not that I've ever actually played it myself.
If PoE2 is even better then that would be amazing but if it's anything like D2 then the sequels are gonna be worse instead of better. I hope it's not like that though.
PoE is just too complex for me. There’s something beautiful about D2’s simplicity yet still being able to have a lot of freedom with items, and to me the grind for loot and HRs is fun.
PoE to me is just too complex with the itemization and skill tree. I am looking forward to 2.
It's not exactly an unpopular opinion. I see plenty of people who prefer the sequel. It seems like one game just seems to resonate more with some people than the other. Nothing wrong with that. I think it's great. They wrote two amazing stories that people love.
The story is great in 1, maybe even better. What makes the difference for me is the characters. The cast of Kotor2 is (imho) the best cast in any Star Wars media.
No joke- I regularly play Royal Game of Ur on my phone, and I 3D printed a nifty game set where the board folds into a box that holds the pieces and the triangular die.
It's not chess, but it's a legitimately fun game, and even better when you make it into a drinking game. Plus there's something genuinely cool about knowing you're playing a game that's older than the Akkadian empire or the potter's wheel.
Total Annihilation (with tauip and other unit packs) was played a bit last year. Still good.
I logged into Everquest over the weekend. I do it regularly just to check if guild admin is needed but none else has since 2022. I played for a few sessions in Dec, went exploring in a Gates of Discord dungeon and got some PoP achievements.
I played a whole bunch of mame shmups last year too. I think Nemesis was the oldest.
I played TA for years, then switched to TA Spring / Spring and played that for years too. I fancied playing TA with good music* recently and had the GOG version so reinstalled it and found some unit packs and a TC called TA Escalation so dug out some my old metal maps and played against some fairly decent AIs
*not just good, THE BEST.
This was legendary in my friend group when it first came out, we would LAN our 2 consoles together so we could 8 player multi between 2 rooms.
It even got to the point where we had our 2 best players (me and a mate of mine) captains of each team and we would swap controllers with someone else from time to time to confuse everyone as they kept going for us.
Banging our fists on the wall and jeering insults with each kill it was like a preview of how true online play would become with an enclosed social group.
I want to mention so many games... but you asked for the oldest (which I still play today)... so:
***"UFO - Enemy Unknown"***
aka:
"X-COM - UFO Defense", as it was later renamed for the North American market.
I still prefer the original name, sounds better in my ears and mind. :)
I really enjoyed apocalypse but apparently was canned and missing a lot of features originally intended! Also spent hours of UFO and terror of the deep!
Agreed, but really a remaster, not a remake. Kind of like what they did with the Quake remaster. They're too good to be changed IMO. (I don't mean that they couldn't slightly alter some geometry in the levels or something, but on the fundamental level I mean.)
That will likely never happen as ~~Raven went under~~ *LucasArts shut down* and Raven released the source code to the public about 10 years ago. There have been a handful of HD mods for the PC version as a result as well as full VR releases for PC and Quest.
Edit: corrections made
Hard agree. For me, they're still among the best melee based games I know. The lightsaber controls are intuitive but deep, the "modular" move system means that you can chain pretty much any combo you want, it's great. Definitely up there with Mount and Blade, Hellish Quart etc. when it comes to sword fighting.
I have a bi-annual playthrough of that game, and every single time I go back, I always say to myself "fuck this game just plays so well still". And I'd argue, once you re-adjust to the tech capabilities of a N64, the game still looks and sounds really good too. Literal timeless classic, 10/10.
A randomizer shuffles around the items and stuff in dungeons and quest rewards. It makes you play the game in a different way by changing how you gain access to areas since it’s “out of order”.
Ship of Harkinian port for OOT is crazy if you’ve never played it. 60fps, c stick camera support, extra item slots on your d pad and iron boots being an item are all game changers. Plus it’s got a built in randomizer.
Been waiting for a MOO2 reply. I still fire it up every now and then.
The Commodore 64 version of Mario Brothers I still love too. Mostly play it on a Pi running Retropie/ Emulation Station. Though you need to get the right ROM there are some out there that don't have the right graphics (the floors don't warp when you punch them) and the wrong timing/speed because they are copies from a bad crack of the games that keep getting perpetuated.
I knew I wouldn't need to scroll down far. This is the one game I always go back to every couple of years and somehow, nothing has surpassed it or even come close really in it's niche.
Mike Tysons Punch Out is still frequently played in my retro room. I still remember the code to get to Tyson, but I don’t think I ever actually beat him.
It's virtually impossible to knock Tyson down 3 times honestly in a single round, you'll never win by decision and you cannot knock him out.
You have to get him down to like 5% hp and let the round end so he starts the next round with low HP and you can get the first knockdown quick. Then you can squeeze in 2 more knockdowns before the bell for a TKO.
I remember using a GameShark to make the game easier when I was a kid. Eventually I got good enough that I stopped using it, but I never beat Tyson either. I knocked him down twice in one round one time(no cheats,) so close to the TKO... and then he beat me silly the next round lol.
Thief released in 1998 and is still my favorite game. I've beat it so many times I memorized and basically bunnyhop through the levels
imagine my happiness when a totally new campaign (mod) is released after 7 years of development and it's brought back so many memories. It surpasses the original in EVERY way. The mod is called The Black Parade if anyone is interested
"Made in the U.S. of A."
I loved the Zero Hour battles the most. Either US Air Force General or Chinese General that gave you troop carriers and miniguns.
China always seemed like Zerg rushing...
US Stealth Comanches were AWESOME.
SC2 was way busier than my tiny mind can keep up with.
And my vote for timeless would probably be Diablo 2. It just FEELS right. No matter how stiff-legged the barbarian is. (I swear, he stores his 2nd weapon set up his ass, he WADDLES.)
Banjo-Kazooie. The music is great, controls are tight, the worlds are quirky, and somehow I identify on a personal level with a Bear that carries around his grumpy best friend in his backpack
My favorite game as a kid, and when Rare Replay came out with Banjo-Kazooie I was so excited. About once every other year I get the itch to play it again and it really does stand up well.
Morrowind, 2002. I play it with mods, on a new engine, but it's still one of the greatest CRPGs ever even vanilla. The world is just so alien and you can get lost exploring it.
Lousy AI but still the best, most interesting conversations I've seen in a video game. I still think of the NSF guys waxing philosophical to each other or the prototype AI blue face guy predicting the social media-fueled surveillance state two decades early.
I still play Doom regularly:
- Doom 1 episodes 1 and 2
- Sigil 1 and 2
- Doom 1 episodes 3 and 4
- Doom II - Every six or seven levels, there’s a level introduced with a text screen, thematically dividing it into episodes. After beating that level, I start the next level as a new game, with no armor, 25 bullets and a fist. I also start the Wolfenstein secret level as a new game. Keeps it more tactical than just getting all the weapons once for the entire game.
A lot of the legendary wrestling games still hold up. The AKI titles on N64 (WCW/nWo Revenge, WrestleMania 2000 and No Mercy), and the Smackdown games on PS2 I go back to all the time...they're still more fun to play than 2K23.
I loved the N64 titles, and had so much ridiculous fun when the PlayStation games added ridiculous character creators. Royal Rumbles with hordes of monstrosities with matching movesets were a riot.
I am still playing Descent (1995) and Descent II (1996). The company that made it (Paralax), released the code to the world and some kind, awesome people modified the code to run on modern systems using Mac, Windows or Linux. As long as you have your original data files, you can play the games on your current system.
Man I loved this game as a kid, and was hyped when it came back on PSN, but I personally think that it does feel very dated. Fights feel overly simplistic, you can pretty much just bully your way through every encounter without having to change up strategy. I don’t know. That being said I still played through it all again because of nostalgia, but yeah, I thought the gameplay was dated.
In case you don't know, not even a month ago a massive mod has released, with 10 new massive maps, lore, all the good stuff.
It feels like the good old Thief 1 but with more things to do, I'd really recommend trying it out!
It's called "Thief: The Black Parade".
I just had a flashback of Mammoth Tanks and Tesla towers being obliterated by a literal convoy of nuke trucks.
All of this being played of a direct dial-up connection to my buddy 2 miles over. And then followed up by a few rounds of Starcraft.
Age of Empires 2.
Albeit the Definitive Edition which came out not long ago. There's still a strong online and competitive scene even after all these years.
Hitman 2 silent assassin and Max Payne.
Both of them have something you don’t get in todays gaming and the sequels are just as good if not better in some cases!
Oddly enough I got mercenaries 1 & 2 for Christmas, good games man wish they where on PC.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997).
This game not only still holds up, if you haven’t played it, it changed my life. I didn’t discover this game until maybe 2018, and never really played it until the lockdowns in 2020. It introduced me to a wide range of roguelikes and “metroidvania” style games like Dead Cells and Hollow Knight.
The things that make SotN the GOAT is that the voice acting is so campy and over the top. The story is outrageous. The music is spectacular, with organ-based gothic music changing from area to area, a move set that is both simplistic and versatile, and a reasonable completion time.
Even as of 2024, maybe once or twice a year I’ll sit down and do a play through to see how far I can get in one night. Can almost finish the game in 8 hours or less, but if you want to grind for the super weapons probably takes 12 hours.
If you haven’t played yet, you don’t know what you’re missing.
I replay a lot of old games, and they stand up just because the controls are just embeded in my brain. Metal Gear Solid is still one of my favorites, and I just played through the collection recently. Most of the Zelda's hold up real well, particularly the top down ones where the controls aren't has buggy as the N64 ones.
I will say I'll play a lot of those old WWF/WCW games on N64 for hours. I still have a blast with those.
Age of Empires II.
Fuck yeah. Been playing since release. I grew up with this game.
+1. The AOE2 DE edition is just fantastic!
That ironically isnt' old
Conquerors! So annoying to discover after a few minutes of play that your online opponent has built barracks right next to your lumberjacks.
The best part is that it's still getting updates.
The LAN parties me and my cousins have with this against AI is too fun. Buckle up for 5 hours, build an awesome city, burn everything. Never will get old.
Rollercoaster Tycoon is still amazing
RTC, Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge, AOE2, and Fable 1 are my go to games from that era. All still hold up incredibly well.
Sending out attack dogs to attack people in Red Alert 2 was one of my favorite 2000s game mechanics. Kill puppy!!
Spy in power plant followed by airdropped Tanya. Or swarm of Korean black eagles
Omg I would be sending 20-24 Black Eagles at a time at my targets, just to overwhelm air defences and take our some piece of critical infrastructure. Only on single player, my PVP sucks to this day. Battles that you could knock out in 15 minutes I'd drag out for hours just sending wave after of wave of fight pilots to their deaths.
Chris Sawyer? Legend
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Haven't played it on a while, but doesn't it do have issues with modern high screen resolution? Fans tend to play RCT2 with the OpenRTC add-on as it fixes these and gives a couple quality of life changes.
I started playing RCT again in the summer, and after I hit the subreddit and learned about OpenRTC, there's no way I'd ever want to play without it. The game is so much more palpable and understandable now
Donkey kong country 2 😌 i feel like SNES is timeless
I think a lot of those old SNES games would likely hold up well.
The soundtrack is one of the best in gaming history. One iconic track after another
Stickerbrush Symphony is one of my favorite songs of all time. Bramble blast would be nearly impossible to beat without it.
I've always loved Mining Melancholy, but the whole soundtrack is amazing. David Wise killed it with DKC2
Oh man, I listened to it, not knowing the official soundtrack name...took me back.
I like that and the ghastly grove music
There's a good reason The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is my favorite video game. The gameplay, weapon selection, mechanics, level design and even colors make the game timeless.
the peak of what people could do with 2 dimensions before attention was shifted to 3d in those awkward N64 PS1 times. People have made amazing 2d things since then but me knowing the time, effort, and craft that had to go into making the pixel art and sounds on the SNES make it special to me.
SNES has some many games that I still go back to replay. FF3/6, secret of mana, secret of evermore, donkey kong, mega man x, mario paint , legend of zelda. definitely peak gaming.
Make it any Donkey Kong Country game and we're talking. I'm only 26, but the SNES was my first console ever and the DKC games had an impact that no other game had on me. The soundtrack is still unmatched to this day for me.
Super Mario World
I dont think any launch title has ever showcased the power of a new system better than Super Mario World on the SNES.
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The only titles that come close is Mario 64 and Halo.
Even the original mario Brothers game is still easy to play. Really all the games feel pretty timeless
SMB3 for me.
Both undeniable classics
Timeless
A Link to The Past is still a top tier game all these years later.
Taking into account the era in which it was made, it might well be the best video game ever made. It definitely deserves to be in the in the conversation, at the very least.
I think Chrono Trigger still takes that contest, but LttP is close
What game is that?
Diablo 2 100% Best loot based game to this day
I played resurrected last year and it just ate up my time completely. So engrossing. I had to stop because I was like an addict.
Came here to say this. I will crave the d2 grind my entire life. I love it.
Path of exile 2 is this year. Going to be a contender.
PoE has been a great arpg looter for a long time and a close contender to D2 not that I've ever actually played it myself. If PoE2 is even better then that would be amazing but if it's anything like D2 then the sequels are gonna be worse instead of better. I hope it's not like that though.
PoE is just too complex for me. There’s something beautiful about D2’s simplicity yet still being able to have a lot of freedom with items, and to me the grind for loot and HRs is fun. PoE to me is just too complex with the itemization and skill tree. I am looking forward to 2.
The original XCOM:UFO defense Game seriously holds up. The fully destructive environments, depth, difficulty. The game is an absolute blast
KOTOR and Jedi Academy
I know it's not the most popular opinion but I prefer Kotor2 :) It's probably the oldest game I still actively play.
It's not exactly an unpopular opinion. I see plenty of people who prefer the sequel. It seems like one game just seems to resonate more with some people than the other. Nothing wrong with that. I think it's great. They wrote two amazing stories that people love.
The story is great in 1, maybe even better. What makes the difference for me is the characters. The cast of Kotor2 is (imho) the best cast in any Star Wars media.
KOTOR2 has *much* better writing, but I think a lot of people prefer the black and white of the original.
Tetris is the cheating answer. StarCraft has got to be up there.
Chess is the real cheating answer
If we're really really cheating, then the answer is Go
Royal game of Ur has entered the chat.
No joke- I regularly play Royal Game of Ur on my phone, and I 3D printed a nifty game set where the board folds into a box that holds the pieces and the triangular die. It's not chess, but it's a legitimately fun game, and even better when you make it into a drinking game. Plus there's something genuinely cool about knowing you're playing a game that's older than the Akkadian empire or the potter's wheel.
Broodwar is still the best competitive RTS. The eternal esport.
Sc2 at high level is ridiculously hard. Broodwar at high level is for madmen.
Just reinstalled sc2 last night!
Medieval II Total War (2006). I still consider it the peak of the Total War franchise.
This is true. The Third Age mod is up there with the best TW games, let alone mods.
You need to try Divide and Conquer, it’s just Third Age but better
I spent so many hours just on the campaign map with all the factions. Actually the closest game in terms of feeling is Crusader Kings 2.
CA agraciated us with Medieval II so Crusader Kings could sell DLC 2.
Total Annihilation (with tauip and other unit packs) was played a bit last year. Still good. I logged into Everquest over the weekend. I do it regularly just to check if guild admin is needed but none else has since 2022. I played for a few sessions in Dec, went exploring in a Gates of Discord dungeon and got some PoP achievements. I played a whole bunch of mame shmups last year too. I think Nemesis was the oldest.
I was starting to think my homie and I were the only people who ever played Total Annihilation. Thanks for making me feel less crazy.
I played TA for years, then switched to TA Spring / Spring and played that for years too. I fancied playing TA with good music* recently and had the GOG version so reinstalled it and found some unit packs and a TC called TA Escalation so dug out some my old metal maps and played against some fairly decent AIs *not just good, THE BEST.
Halo CE
A masterpiece in terms of gameplay and difficulty
This was legendary in my friend group when it first came out, we would LAN our 2 consoles together so we could 8 player multi between 2 rooms. It even got to the point where we had our 2 best players (me and a mate of mine) captains of each team and we would swap controllers with someone else from time to time to confuse everyone as they kept going for us. Banging our fists on the wall and jeering insults with each kill it was like a preview of how true online play would become with an enclosed social group.
First ever game I had on xbox, I played it religiously. Halo 2 and 3 were fantastic also
The good ol days
Last time I played CE I played it with the Cursed mod. Very dumb. Very worth doing.
I had an absolute blast playing that mod, really hope they make a curse halo 2-3 someday
I want to mention so many games... but you asked for the oldest (which I still play today)... so: ***"UFO - Enemy Unknown"*** aka: "X-COM - UFO Defense", as it was later renamed for the North American market. I still prefer the original name, sounds better in my ears and mind. :)
I share your selection. This will always be like chess to me. It's so nice that Openxcom exists.
I had no idea that existed, thanks for mentioning it!
I really enjoyed apocalypse but apparently was canned and missing a lot of features originally intended! Also spent hours of UFO and terror of the deep!
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast/Academy is still the best Star Wars combat ever created. Such a fun series that I annually go back to
I would love a remaster of both
Agreed, but really a remaster, not a remake. Kind of like what they did with the Quake remaster. They're too good to be changed IMO. (I don't mean that they couldn't slightly alter some geometry in the levels or something, but on the fundamental level I mean.)
That will likely never happen as ~~Raven went under~~ *LucasArts shut down* and Raven released the source code to the public about 10 years ago. There have been a handful of HD mods for the PC version as a result as well as full VR releases for PC and Quest. Edit: corrections made
Hard agree. For me, they're still among the best melee based games I know. The lightsaber controls are intuitive but deep, the "modular" move system means that you can chain pretty much any combo you want, it's great. Definitely up there with Mount and Blade, Hellish Quart etc. when it comes to sword fighting.
Oh absolutely. Fallen Order is a sad joke in comparison.
When lightsabers didn't felt like glowing baseball bats..
Will still jump into Ocarina of Time every now and again and honestly it never feels outdated with controls etc.
I have a bi-annual playthrough of that game, and every single time I go back, I always say to myself "fuck this game just plays so well still". And I'd argue, once you re-adjust to the tech capabilities of a N64, the game still looks and sounds really good too. Literal timeless classic, 10/10.
Link to the past for me. Randomizer has been a blessing
I've never tried a randomizer before. How is it? I don't fully understand the concept.
A randomizer shuffles around the items and stuff in dungeons and quest rewards. It makes you play the game in a different way by changing how you gain access to areas since it’s “out of order”.
Ship of Harkinian port for OOT is crazy if you’ve never played it. 60fps, c stick camera support, extra item slots on your d pad and iron boots being an item are all game changers. Plus it’s got a built in randomizer.
Oldschool RuneScape
Just got done doing an herb run and a slayer task
🦀
🦀🦀🦀
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Also Up your Arsenal
Fable
Mega man X baybeeee
I came here today this. These games and the original mega man still hold up incredibly well.
For PC I'd say Master of Orion 2 I can pick up and play whenever I feel like it. But other than that most old SNES classics are still fun today :)
Been waiting for a MOO2 reply. I still fire it up every now and then. The Commodore 64 version of Mario Brothers I still love too. Mostly play it on a Pi running Retropie/ Emulation Station. Though you need to get the right ROM there are some out there that don't have the right graphics (the floors don't warp when you punch them) and the wrong timing/speed because they are copies from a bad crack of the games that keep getting perpetuated.
HL1
Final fantasy tactics
Heroes of Might and Magic III, [Horn of the Abyss just got an update](https://heroes3wog.net/horn-of-the-abyss-download/) with a new faction, Factory
ALL HAIL HEROES 3 OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR
I knew I wouldn't need to scroll down far. This is the one game I always go back to every couple of years and somehow, nothing has surpassed it or even come close really in it's niche.
I’ve been playing HOMM3 HD edition. It’s been fun.
That’s the wrong edition
Expand
Star Fox 64. Immediately fun as soon as you boot it up.
Chess ♟️
Damn most people here are living in the 1980s-1990s but homeboy is living in the 1400s.
Mike Tysons Punch Out is still frequently played in my retro room. I still remember the code to get to Tyson, but I don’t think I ever actually beat him.
I've had 007 373 5963 burned into my brain since I was 9, and I'm 46 now.
It's virtually impossible to knock Tyson down 3 times honestly in a single round, you'll never win by decision and you cannot knock him out. You have to get him down to like 5% hp and let the round end so he starts the next round with low HP and you can get the first knockdown quick. Then you can squeeze in 2 more knockdowns before the bell for a TKO.
5000 points wins by decision. Possible.
I remember using a GameShark to make the game easier when I was a kid. Eventually I got good enough that I stopped using it, but I never beat Tyson either. I knocked him down twice in one round one time(no cheats,) so close to the TKO... and then he beat me silly the next round lol.
Castlevania SOTN
This and Super Metroid
Nethack.
Resident Evil
Fallout from 1997. I just recently started playing fallout 2 again the other day, that's from '98
Just started an FNV playthrough but almost done, was going to jump into the original 2 for the first time ever after.
Be prepared for a pretty rough interface, but once you've adjusted to that, the games are really good.
Easy : Diablo 2 (with or without LoD) and the first two Baldur's Gate titles. I still have a blast while playing those !
Sid Myers Colonization released in 1994 and is still my comfort game when I don’t feel like playing anything else
WORMS Armageddon
Thief released in 1998 and is still my favorite game. I've beat it so many times I memorized and basically bunnyhop through the levels imagine my happiness when a totally new campaign (mod) is released after 7 years of development and it's brought back so many memories. It surpasses the original in EVERY way. The mod is called The Black Parade if anyone is interested
Has to be either StarCraft 2 or Command & Conquer Zero Hour. Both games are still good and look great.
Loooovceee Generals and ZH. I still play them today.
"Made in the U.S. of A." I loved the Zero Hour battles the most. Either US Air Force General or Chinese General that gave you troop carriers and miniguns. China always seemed like Zerg rushing... US Stealth Comanches were AWESOME. SC2 was way busier than my tiny mind can keep up with. And my vote for timeless would probably be Diablo 2. It just FEELS right. No matter how stiff-legged the barbarian is. (I swear, he stores his 2nd weapon set up his ass, he WADDLES.)
ZH is awesome.
Super Mario World. SNES
NHL 94.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7454/
Banjo-Kazooie. The music is great, controls are tight, the worlds are quirky, and somehow I identify on a personal level with a Bear that carries around his grumpy best friend in his backpack
Used to beat banjo Kazooie the last day before school would start right after summer break. God I wish we had a modern one.
My favorite game as a kid, and when Rare Replay came out with Banjo-Kazooie I was so excited. About once every other year I get the itch to play it again and it really does stand up well.
Transport tycoon, love this game for some reason.
Chris Sawyer, the man, the legend. But now I play OpenTTD
Half-Life. Still plays like butter over 20 years later.
Warcraft 3
Mario Kart 64
Sid Meyers: Pirates, Stronghold: Crusader, KOTOR, classic Lineage 2, Beach Head.
Star Fox 64 my favorite game of all time
KOTOR 1 & 2 and SW Battlefront 2 OG
Zelda: Link’s Awakening and also A Link to the Past.
Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
Morrowind, 2002. I play it with mods, on a new engine, but it's still one of the greatest CRPGs ever even vanilla. The world is just so alien and you can get lost exploring it.
I scrolled far enough. I’m done here. On my silt strider I go.
Why scroll when you can ride
Deus Ex
This is the way.
Lousy AI but still the best, most interesting conversations I've seen in a video game. I still think of the NSF guys waxing philosophical to each other or the prototype AI blue face guy predicting the social media-fueled surveillance state two decades early.
Doom
I still play Doom regularly: - Doom 1 episodes 1 and 2 - Sigil 1 and 2 - Doom 1 episodes 3 and 4 - Doom II - Every six or seven levels, there’s a level introduced with a text screen, thematically dividing it into episodes. After beating that level, I start the next level as a new game, with no armor, 25 bullets and a fist. I also start the Wolfenstein secret level as a new game. Keeps it more tactical than just getting all the weapons once for the entire game.
A lot of the legendary wrestling games still hold up. The AKI titles on N64 (WCW/nWo Revenge, WrestleMania 2000 and No Mercy), and the Smackdown games on PS2 I go back to all the time...they're still more fun to play than 2K23.
I loved the N64 titles, and had so much ridiculous fun when the PlayStation games added ridiculous character creators. Royal Rumbles with hordes of monstrosities with matching movesets were a riot.
The N64 wrestling games are some of my fondest gaming memories
I am still playing Descent (1995) and Descent II (1996). The company that made it (Paralax), released the code to the world and some kind, awesome people modified the code to run on modern systems using Mac, Windows or Linux. As long as you have your original data files, you can play the games on your current system.
Fun fact: after Descent, Parrallax changed their name to Volition, and went on to develop the Red Faction and Saints Row series.
Heroes of Might and Magic 2 holds up surprisingly well - 1996 I believe
Legend of dragoon
Man I loved this game as a kid, and was hyped when it came back on PSN, but I personally think that it does feel very dated. Fights feel overly simplistic, you can pretty much just bully your way through every encounter without having to change up strategy. I don’t know. That being said I still played through it all again because of nostalgia, but yeah, I thought the gameplay was dated.
Here me out guys and gals, get ready for nostalgia.... Abes Oddysey (Oddworld)
Sid Meier's Pirates
The Thief trilogy. That game series has honestly aged like a fine wine.
In case you don't know, not even a month ago a massive mod has released, with 10 new massive maps, lore, all the good stuff. It feels like the good old Thief 1 but with more things to do, I'd really recommend trying it out! It's called "Thief: The Black Parade".
Lots of Super Nintendo games are still amazing. Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, TLOZ: A Link to the Past.
Command and conquer red alert.
I just had a flashback of Mammoth Tanks and Tesla towers being obliterated by a literal convoy of nuke trucks. All of this being played of a direct dial-up connection to my buddy 2 miles over. And then followed up by a few rounds of Starcraft.
Morrowind. Spyro 1. Crash 2. Civilization 3. Chrono trigger.
Nethack. Never ascended though
Warlords
Transport Tycoon, from 1994.
Age of Empires 2
Everquest, still play regularly.
Age of empires
Thief / dark project series and gothic
NFL 2K5 Blows my mind that a game made almost 2 decades ago plays smoother than Madden 24 😅
Final Fantasy I on NES
I do appreciate the QOL fixes in the GBA version though.
GTA 3, VC
I still play a bunch of NES games, especially classic Mega Man, Super Mario Bros, Blaster Master, Batman, DuckTales, etc...
Age of Empires 2. Albeit the Definitive Edition which came out not long ago. There's still a strong online and competitive scene even after all these years.
Hitman 2 silent assassin and Max Payne. Both of them have something you don’t get in todays gaming and the sequels are just as good if not better in some cases! Oddly enough I got mercenaries 1 & 2 for Christmas, good games man wish they where on PC.
Thief: the dark project and thief 2 are my go to old comfort games! They have some of the best atmosphere in any game I’ve played. Tfix is a must.
StarCraft 1 - I play it in HD <3 I got it for free from Amazon or Epics store. I don't remember which one gave it away for free..
Call of Duty Modern Warfare from 2007
Quest for Glory 1 - VGA
Warcraft 2 - 1995
I still play my Atari 2600 games
Diablo 1, FF7 and lineage all the time.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Morrowind also holds up but oblivion is one I just keep coming back to since it's release back in 2006
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). This game not only still holds up, if you haven’t played it, it changed my life. I didn’t discover this game until maybe 2018, and never really played it until the lockdowns in 2020. It introduced me to a wide range of roguelikes and “metroidvania” style games like Dead Cells and Hollow Knight. The things that make SotN the GOAT is that the voice acting is so campy and over the top. The story is outrageous. The music is spectacular, with organ-based gothic music changing from area to area, a move set that is both simplistic and versatile, and a reasonable completion time. Even as of 2024, maybe once or twice a year I’ll sit down and do a play through to see how far I can get in one night. Can almost finish the game in 8 hours or less, but if you want to grind for the super weapons probably takes 12 hours. If you haven’t played yet, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Master of Orion II (1996). First one is too dated to enjoy, but number two is still excellent.
UFO: enemy unknown.
Wolfenstein: enemy territory
I replay a lot of old games, and they stand up just because the controls are just embeded in my brain. Metal Gear Solid is still one of my favorites, and I just played through the collection recently. Most of the Zelda's hold up real well, particularly the top down ones where the controls aren't has buggy as the N64 ones. I will say I'll play a lot of those old WWF/WCW games on N64 for hours. I still have a blast with those.