Most of us probably grew up playing video games, some of them we forgot or our gaming system ain’t what it used to be. What games bring you back to the good ol’ days when you didn’t know what politics were and couldn’t be bothered to watch the news bc the new ep of Spongebob is on? For me I have to say the Simpsons Game (PS2), the Billy & Mandy Fighting Game (PS2) DK Country (SNES) and NBA 2k14 (PS3, please whatever Deity is out there bring me back to 2013 so I can cheat in 2k again and make my MyPlayer basically just Michael Jordan 😭) and probably Infamous for PS3, I probably played the first game like 18 times fr. What are your faves?
Definitely minecraft. It is still my favorite game after a decade of playing it. But aside from that, Spirit Tracks/Phantom Hourglass, Kirby Superstar Ultra and Jak and Daxter.
I’m showing my age here, but:
- Scorched Earth
- Commander Keen
- Zoombinis
- Encarta maze game
- Old Windows hovercraft game
- Doom II (got a copy from a friend on floppy disk)
Oh man, fogot about Commander Keen, that game was so much fun :)
Especially Keen Dreams, so fucking trippy
a classic :)
Old Windows hovercraft game
Which one’s that?
Thanks! Apparently I was thinking of a different game
Halo Combat Evolved
Wort wort wort
Aaaawubadugh
I religiously played back in the day Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland on my ps2 for hours. I’d also play Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and AoE II.
For me it would have to be a whole list of nostalgic games:
Heroes of Might and Magic 2&3 (1996/1999), Might and Magic 6, 7&8 (1998/1999/2000), Day of the Tentacle (1993), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992), Age of Empires 1&2 (1997/1999), Master of Orion 1 (1993), Warcraft 2 (1995), StarCraft 1 (1998), Anno 1602 (1998), Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 (2000), Empire Earth (2001), Gothic 1&2 (2001/2002), Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999), Little Big Adventure 2 (1997), Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999), Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus (1998), Fantasy General (1996), Age of Wonders 1 (1999), Incubation: Battle Isle (1997), The Incredible Machine (1993)
I would be very surprised if there is anyone here who knows/has played all of them, some are fairly obscure, others not so much. Some of these are still among my favorite games to this day, others i have not even touched in a very long time. There are plenty of later games that i like more than some on this list but they just don’t trigger the same nostalgia. I’m also not including games from this time period that i like but only discovered later such as Baldur’s Gate.
But if i had to pick just one i would say it has to be HoMM2. The MIDI soundtrack in that one is my favorite game soundtrack of all time.
Oh man Infernal Machine was my first Indy game as a tiny sprout, picked it up on sake a couple years ago and it still holds up. This was the game that first instilled in me a lust for comically large gems
In hindsight it’s obviously very inspired by early Tomb Raider games, but at the time i had not played any of those so it was a very fresh and new experience for me.
Master of Orion 1, still have that one more turn effect, 27 years later.
I still play it occasionally to this day. MoO2 is probably the better (certainly more complex) game but for some reason doesn’t have the same charm as the first. The first one really sparked my imagination in a way that almost no other space scifi game has since…
The only one that gave me a similar feeling, albeit decades later, was Mass Effect. Though of course it’s a completely different type of game but it triggered some of the same kinds of emotions for me, something i can only describe as “space wonder”.
something i can only describe as “space wonder”.
Same, it’s the thing i search for in space games, i call it “whoa, space!” effect. Mass Effect had it too. Except those, Stellaris have it in spades, same as Homeworld series, KotOR 1 had it too. Old Ascendancy game is also worth mentioning. Distant Worlds series. Endless Space 2 fallen a tiny little bit too short, having good graphics and amazing music, but the shitty immersion breaking sterile interface.
flashgames mostly, idk if the ones i played on miniclip are even still playable.
On PC, Lego star wars, Simpson’s hit and run, NFS Underground.
My cousin had a SNES and N64 and we used to play smash bros 64, mariokart 64, and take turns on Super Mario World.
I completely forgot about flash games. I tried to revisit coolmath games recently, but all of the originals on the site are unaccessible I think, which is very saddening.
There’s a website where most Flashgames are archived (forget name but if you look it up can definitely be found) and it’s possible to still run them using specific programs. Should still be playable
Oooh, I should try that soon to revisit them.
Ghosts’N Goblins 🤘
That music always gives me goosebumps.
I bet every comment is going to be so different, and will date each user haha. For me…
- Mortal Kombat II in the arcade, insanely difficult, I can almost taste the strawberry milkshake I’d always be drinking there
- Zelda - A Link To The Past on Gameboy
- an odd one, but the free demo that you got with the original PS, I remember my stepbro and I marvelling at the 3D t-rex / mantaray that we could spin around and zoom in / out of at will. How far we’ve come
- also for PS, the very first Tekken, and Tekken 2
- going way back, Horace Goes Skiing on my trusty ZX Spectrum. My first console and first game. You had to load it via a tape, and it sounded like an old modem!
MK2 on Arcade is one of the best games ever. Kinda crazy to think of how many secrets and Easter Eggs are hidden throughout such a basic seeming game
The only secret I knew about was hitting a combo of buttons after knocking someone into the acid creating a ‘TOASTIE’, which iirc unlocked Smoke… what did I miss?
Idk actually, was Noob Saibot in the arcade version of MK2? Or was that just in remasters? To clarify I mean tht you fight Noob Saibot bc you can’t play as him.
Still really need to play a Link to the Past. I haven’t yet but have been meaning to get a copy at some point. Haven’t been playing many games at all lately, let alone many GB games but still is on my list
ARK: Survival Evolved
Mario Kart DS. In terms of nostalgia, nothing comes close
Good question. I’m a sucker for games from my younger days anyway, so picking just one is hard. Perhaps something like Dangerous Dave
Quake, C&C, SimCity, and Civilization for me
Quake, Civ 3 and Serious Sam for me. So glad I grew up on PC games
same :)
First ones for each, right?
yup
Glorious! Quake and Civ especially. I remember being so impressed with Civ after seeing it at a neighbor’s, that I’ve started making unit tiles to play at home
Yeah, Civ really sucked me in as a kid, I spent countless hours on it. And Quake was amazing at lan parties, still one of the best FPS games to date in my opinion. It’s way more fun than vast majority of FPS that come out today.
I never played a Civ game until 5 but I understand what people said about one more turn. For a long time I would say it was the most immersive and pulling-in game I had ever played
oh yeah, civ game mechanic is just so good at keeping your engaged
Yeah, every game I’ve played of them has been great
Quake was weird for me to comprehend as a kid, I thought it was Doom and no amount of arguing would tell me otherwise, I was like “it’s not a different game it’s a different level of Doom smh”
We did a lot of lan parties with friends when I was a kid, and we tended to rotate C&C and either Duke 3D or Doom 2. I sucked at both Duke and Doom cause I wasn’t as good at strafing while turning. Then Quake came out and I was the first one to realize you could play with the mouse, and it was a game changer. Cause all of a sudden aiming became so much easier. 😄
Roller Coaster Tycoon
I would design crazy coasters only to be told that it will cause 8000 gigatons of G-force on riders and turn them into pudding
I loved playing the old Roller Coaster and Zoo Tycoon games from the early 2000s
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Super Mario RPG (SNES) loved it so much. My buddy and I left our Earth Science final early just to finish the game (still passed with a 79 and 80 respectively).
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Street Fighter II World Warriors (Arcade) can still taste the pizza I ate right before I played. My grandpa would take me out to pizza every Friday and gave me 2 quarters to play.
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The original TMNT (NES) I still get anxiety just from hearing the music from the swimming level. But then again I get a great burst of joy from hearing the overworld music. Such an emotionally taxing game.
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