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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Oh man that must’ve been a great time. Very jealous you got to experience that being brand new!
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!
The Greatest Era of gaming was when I was between 12 and 22. And this is true for everyone no matter what their age is now. Between 12 and 22 I had enough time and energy to game all night and still go to school and none of life’s problems were stopping me
this has gotta be the correct answer
You know what, that’s a great answer. I think you probably hit the nail on the head
The era of SCUMM. Point and click adventures were awesome. Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest for Glory series, Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis.
How is Monkey Island missing from the list? Those games were the peak of SCUMM.
I know, I did try playing them with dosbox years later but I didn’t know anyone that had them to borrow the discs so I hadn’t played them back in the day like all the ones I named.
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The Scumm Bar®
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
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
I loved the PS2 era of gaming a lot. This may be a controversial take, but the PS2 era did not last long enough.
Everything about the aesthetics of the games that the PS2 produced were excellent. In my opinion, this is the point when low fidelity and high quality assets overlapped just enough to make games more comprehensible to their players. That enabled a lot of innovation that the PS3/360 era handled entirely differently. Forget an era, the PS2 is the last part of an entire age of gaming that delineates what I’m referring to.
The PS2 was a huge turning point in what games were and could be in 3D. Prior to this, many games were abstract and the characters were a lump of polygons. With the PS2, this began to change. So we began to get games that our minds had to do a lot of interpreting but could see reality through. Nowadays, I’d argue that your mind does less interpreting and so the resulting picture has glaring inaccuracies.
It also helped that ps2 was primarily played on CRTs or at least plasma which helped the picture look better in plenty of scenes than a PS3. Not to mention the color palette of games after the PS2 turned to muck.
PS2 coincided with a lot of good handhelds too. Nintendo DS is a strong contender for best handheld ever, IMO.
Oh absolutely, I was going to reference the Gameboy Advance that I grew up on as a part of this phase. Unfortunately, I don’t think those handhelds even got their time in the light that they could’ve had. It seems like they’ve had a long legacy but the DS and GameBoy came and went in but two generations of consoles.
I mean imagine what we could do with a gameboy today. Or imagine how we could easily transform a modern phone into a DS form factor. We’re talking now about running a modern resident evil game in the palm of your hand. Insane power really.
All this is largely due to the mobile play stores having no competition or curation. Our mobile games absolutely suck now. There are gems, sure, but otherwise I hate phone gaming despite my phone being my most used device.
I think you’re absolutely correct though, the DS is the best handheld. Slim, powerful enough, very interactive, and a great game library. I highly recommend buying one and modding it, you won’t regret it.
My first console was an original GameBoy and I probably got the most hours of use out of it compared to any other console. Despite the horrific backlight (lack thereof) and small screen. I love handheld gaming in general. Still play my 3DS all the time.
I realize I’m biased having experienced this era at my most influential (as another user easily defined it as ages 12 - 22), but this was definitely it for me. I only had a Gameboy before I finally had a PS2. The big mascot character games of this console were formative for me. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper. Kingdom Hearts and Shadow of the Colossus were everything to me. Tons of other huge titles made this generation.
But it’s the weird little games that I think about fondly. Katamari became a franchise, but it was just a funny novel idea when it dropped on the PS2. Kya: Dark Lineage, an adventure/fighting game absolutely packed with fun ideas from a studio that just made racing games prior. Magic Pengel - basically DIY Pokemon - was pretty much everything I wanted in a game. Even Eye Toy, which completely sucked and barely worked, offered a new way to play games.
Things were just different then. I think it was maybe the last time we thought of games by their budgets. Most titles were what we would maybe call AA these days, something that almost doesn’t exist anymore. Where indie games didn’t exist yet, but small studios were prolific. For me, any game that let you run around as a fairly detailed 3D character in a cool setting was magic to me in a way the flat, pixelated worlds on my GBC never were. The worlds in my PS2 were believable.
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.
It’s still there but with family instead friends now. My kids won’t get the same experience though which is sad.
That must’ve been a great time for sure. I’m jealous I didn’t get to be a teenager through it! That would’ve been a blast
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
for me there was a peak in the late 90s. Ocarina of Time and Half Life in 1998 alone.
Honestly, I really liked Zork. (I was the right age when it came out.). Never been as captivated by a game. More in the imagination than in the graphics.
I’ll put Civilization V (and sometimes IV) in second place. Homeworld was great too.
2004-2014. That captures the great tail end of the sixth generation of consoles and the golden days of the seventh
You make a great argument. That’s basically my choice just with a couple extra years of great games so yeah, definitely. Hard to disagree
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?
Okay, below the “=” is my previous answer but I admit it was against the spirit of the post so let me think. I choose the years from the launch of EverQuest to Shadows of Luclin. I consider EverQuest to be the greatest MMO ever made. So my answer is 1999-2002.
To this day I STILL play servers locked at the 2002 version of EverQuest. It’s very populated. That should tell you something.
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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.
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 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
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!
I’ll break from the mould and say early 80s to early 90s, where we got:
- Atari
- Commodore 64
- NES
- DOS & Windows
- Apple II (esp. Oregon Trail)
- iconic
That era really defined what video games are, and built the framework for how we talk about games today.
1980s 2D had the same “every machine sucks uniquely” vibe as 1990s 3D. If the same game on two platforms looked remotely similar then someone busted their hump getting it right. By default, you were getting a game that looked and sounded as good as this system could manage, rather than being a smoothed-over downgrade of some canonical example.
Ironically it wasn’t always a great era for pick-up-and-play-ability. Late-70s games were so limited that arcade sensibilities were nearly the only thing possible, and even text-centric computer games lacked the memory to bore you with backstory. By the late 80s they could push the early inklings of an unskippable cutscene and a tutorial level. Dunno if that’s better than ZX Spectrum games getting mercilessly sink-or-swim.
Coincidentally that arcade vibe also matches the late 90s: it’s how most Dreamcast games feel.
One of the things I really miss from that era was the game manual. Since they couldn’t put all of the backstory and tutorial stuff into the game itself, you’d get a companion booklet to read (e.g. this one for The Legend of Zelda). Some games took that too far and you essentially had to buy a separate guide. A lot of people think games from the era were obtuse, but they’re really just missing the documentation.
I honestly really liked that experience and would read the guides when I wasn’t able to play.
Arcades obviously didn’t have that luxury, so they had to be games you could quickly pick up without any introduction. So you got a natural divide between games for home and games for arcades (with some overlap of course).
And yeah, the gaming experience varied quite a bit by platform for the same game because things like audio and graphics drivers needed to be built into the game itself, and that varied by system. But that’s also part of the charm. There wasn’t really an expectation that a game would look the same on two platforms, so they were often judged separately (i.e. arguments about which version is better).
