What counts as retro is something that is often hotly debated, and not only will it vary from person to person, but it will change over the years. There was a time when people would sneer at the idea of the original Halo being considered a retro game, but the stone cold fact is that it’s more than twenty years old now, so I think it does count as retro at this point.
Still, by and large when people think of Retro gaming, they tend to think of the 80s and 90s, when video games first began to grow in popularity, and many titles from that era are still remembered quite fondly by many. But while I was born in the 90s, I have no clear memories of anything before the turn of the millennium, and it wasn’t until the mid 2000s that I really got into video games. And coming from my admittedly very biased perspective, personally I think it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that video games as a medium really became consistently good. That’s not to say that the games that came before were all bad, but the medium was still new, and between the limits of technology and the limited experience of the people making games, most retro games are rather mixed bags.
A good example of what I mean is to contrast the Super Nintendo library with the Game Boy Advance library. Both were systems with similar capabilities, but overall the Game Boy Advance classics have stood the test of time extremely well, while the Super Nintendo classics were usually held back by some of the archaic baggage that persisted from the NES era, and there are only two Super Nintendo games that I would say are truly timeless, namely Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger, as even great games like Super Mario World did have a few archaic quirks like a lives system.
Another example of what I mean is to compare Half Life 1 and Half Life 2. While Half Life 1 was a good game, and it is still fun, it was constrained by the limits of its time. It was still pretty early in the era of 3D gaming, and between the limits of technology and the fact that games of this type were fairly new, it does show its age. But when you play Half Life 1 and 2 back to back, it becomes pretty obvious what a huge leap forward Half Life 2 was in terms of gameplay, graphics, technology, and design, and by extension how gaming was finally maturing as a medium.
Still, I wanted to look over the games from before the turn of the millennium that I do actually like, and compile a list of my top ten favorites, because that’s super original, right? At the very least it would make all the time I’ve spent going through all these games seem worth it.
10. Super Metroid
Not exactly a controversial choice, but it’s fairly low on the list because while it is a great game, and I do like it, I don’t love it. It’s the kind of game I’ll play if I’m feeling bored and want to listen to some podcasts or something, but it’s not something I would go out of my way to play on a regular basis. Still, I do respect it for the influence it’s had on gaming as a whole.
9. Yoshi's Island
While the presence of a lives system and its focus on completionism is a little annoying, everything else about this title is solid. Great gameplay, pleasing music, excellent visuals, tough but fair challenges, it’s a fun little adventure that still holds up pretty well.
8. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
My personal favorite Castlevania game is Aria of Sorrow, as I think it has the best gameplay, the best story, and the best pacing. But Symphony of the Night is definitely the best looking and sounding game in the series, and even two decades later it still holds up rather well. It also helped codify the Metroidvania genre, and despite being a little dated and rough around the edges in some aspects it’s still a ton of fun to play. I recently beat it for the first time. I’d played it before, but always got bored around halfway through the upside down castle. This time, though, I buckled down and played it all the way to the end, and despite the cheesy voice acting the final boss and ending were actually really satisfying. If you haven’t played this game, you really should.
7. Age of Empires II
I’m not really a big fan of RTS games for two reasons. One, you normally play as either a distant commander or an unseen entity that is effectively a god, and as a result you tend to feel a bit disconnected from what’s actually happening in the game. Two, the interface and gameplay tends to be confusing and unintuitive, which makes it even harder to get invested. But while Age of Empires 2 suffers from the first problem, the gameplay and menus are fairly simple, straightforward, and intuitive, and so it’s easy to understand and play. I enjoyed this game more when I was younger, and I don’t like it as much now that I’m older, but it is still good, and I do return to it every now and then.
6. Mario Party 2
I’ve played through the first seven Mario Party games, and with the exceptions of one and seven I’ve had a really good time with all of them. They’re incredibly charming and fun party games, and while they’re best with friends you can still enjoy them by yourself. Mario Party 4 is my personal favorite, but of the N64 games my favorite is Mario Party 2, though I acknowledge that mechanically Mario Party 3 is better.
5. Silent Hill
Despite not playing any of them until 2018 I’ve grown incredibly fond of the Silent Hill games. 2 is obviously the best, but 1, 3, and 4 are also very compelling. The first Silent Hill is a bit rough around the edges, and the story is of course nonsense, but it still succeeds at creating a chilling and unnerving horror atmosphere that I enjoy revisiting every October. If Konami had any sense at all they’d be remaking this one, not Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 is fine as it is, but Silent Hill 1 could benefit from a fresh coat of paint. Plus the story in Silent Hill 1 is really dumb, and so the developers could mess around with it more without risking ruining the experience, something which is not at all true of Silent Hill 2. But of course remaking Silent Hill 1 would require Konami to have an ounce of respect for the series as a whole, when it’s clear that they just see it as a cash cow, and are too incompetent to milk it in a way that would actually make sense and keep everybody happy. Oh well.
4. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Recently I went back and replayed a number of the PS1 games I’d enjoyed, and to be honest most of them I found I enjoyed less, and I have no real desire to play them ever again. But there were a few exceptions, and Abe’s Oddysee was one of them. My only real gripe with the game is that the checkpoints are a bit stingy and far apart, but that was an issue that was easily solved through the use of save states, which let me make my own checkpoints. Other than that, the game is fantastic. A nice, simple, but challenging core gameplay loop, wonderful atmosphere, and a straightforward but compelling narrative. It’s not super long, but I enjoyed it enough that I was willing to play through it several times, mostly to try to increase the number of Mudokuns that I rescued each time. My personal best is 94, but I couldn’t quite manage to rescue all 99.
Some might wonder what I think of the other Oddworld games. Exodus I didn’t really like, for a few reasons. In many ways it felt like second verse same as the first, and I found the story to be much less compelling. Abe’s Oddysee managed to find the right balance of being both grim and goofy, having a sense of humor but not shying away from the darker elements of its setting and narrative. But Exodus’s tone felt off, and ended up being both too grim and too goofy. In the first game the villains are grinding up the wildlife of oddworld to sell as food products with no concern for the long term consequences of their exploitation. It’s a little over the top, but believable. However, in the sequel the villains are grinding up the bones of deceased Mudokuns to sell as energy drinks, which for me is a bit too absurd. I get it, corporations are bad, and more people should recognize this fact, but this just felt like too much. Meanwhile, the humor in the first game could be a little silly at times, but it never took it too far. In Exodus, though, the humor felt much more juvenile and downright childish. Between all of this, I just couldn’t get into Exodus in the same way I could Abe’s Oddysee.
As for the remake, New N Tasty, I haven’t played it, and I don’t plan to, like ever. I’ll leave a link to a video that goes into great detail about how New N Tasty falls short when compared to the original. But the real deal breaker is that New N Tasty, within the game world, has billboards that advertise for real life games. Including ads in a game is almost always a bad idea, especially if the game takes place in a fantasy or sci-fi setting that has no real intersection with our reality. But including ads in a game that has very explicit anti corporate and anti consumer messages is rather tasteless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkhDrngAQZ0
3. Crash Bandicoot Warped
I’ll admit that nostalgia plays a big part for this one. It was one of the first games I ever played, and even now I still have a blast every time I play it. It’s also the only game in the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy that I can shoot for one hundred percent without feeling like I’m pulling teeth, though admittedly I’ll stop before I quite get there, since the racing and flying levels do kind of suck.
I haven’t played the N Sane Trilogy yet, so can’t comment on how it compares. I will probably get around to it at some point, but probably not anytime soon.
2. Half Life
This was the first first person shooter I ever played that I really enjoyed, despite the fact that I didn’t play it until over a decade after its initial release, and I played it after other more modern shooters. The gameplay is a little rough around the edges, and it’s not exactly easy on the eyes, but it was a pioneer of its genre, and I still have fun with it to this day. Plus it gave birth to one of my favorite comedy series of all time, Freeman's Mind.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Yeah, I know, this is a pretty boring and standard game to put at the top of a list like this, but I can’t help it, it’s still one of my favorite games of all time. Is it perfect, no. Does it show its age, yes. But on the whole it remains a well crafted and compelling adventure. If it’s not your thing that’s fair enough, but anyone who tries to claim that it’s a bad game is objectively wrong.
So those were my ten favorite games from before the turn of the millennium. Feel free to let me know what yours are in the comments. Thank you for watching, and I hope to see you in the next one.
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