Nostalgia: mid 90s best-game list, how many have you played?

[AD-Stu]

Thought people might find some interest in this - I was cleaning up the house today and found some old Australian gaming magazines in a box, which had some "best games of all time" lists in them. For anyone who's interested, here's what the February 1995 edition of Hyper magazine had on its list (spoilered to avoid crazy long OP):

Spoiler: Hyper magazine Top 100 video games of all time list, February 1995

These were listed unranked, in no particular order:

Pacman
Streetfighter 2 series
Asteroids
Space Invaders
Comanche Maximum Overkill
Virtua Fighter 1&2
Afterburner series
Thunderhawk
Wonderboy series
Super Mario series
Donkey Kong Country
Double Dragon
Donkey Kong series
EA Hockey series
Shock Wave
Daytona
Outrun series
Sonic series
Pitfall series
Doom 1&2
Operation Wolf
Aces of the Pacific - Over Europe
X-Wing / Tie Fighter
Lemmings 1&2
Alone in the Dark 1&2
Syndicate
John Madden series
Super Star Wars series
Microprose Grand Prix
Shinobi series
Civilisation
FIFA International Soccer
Falcon 3.0
Marble Madness
Bomberman series
Virtua Racing
Mortal Kombat 2
Wing Commander series
Desert Strike series
Ecco the Dolphin
Ghosts 'n Goblins / Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Adventure
Flashback
Tetris
Ultima series
Probotector series
Road Rash series
Myst
Combat
Prince of Persia 1&2
Zork series
NBA Jam
Phantasy Star series
Castlevania series
Super Mario Kart
Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis
Metroid series
Lode Runner
Californian Games
Hang On series
Dune 2
Impossible Mission
Stunt Race FX
Zaxxon
Elite 1&2
Sam and Max Hit the Road
UFO - Enemy Unknown
Pong
Choplifter series
Speedball 2
Aladdin
Secret of Mana
Zelda series
Sensible Soccer
Sim City
Cannon Fodder
Way of the Exploding Fist
Super Monaco GP
Defender
Starwing
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Lethal Enforcers
R-Type
Samurai Showdown
Boulderdash
The Hobbit
Gauntlet
Relentless
Moon Patrol
Final Fight 1&2
Wolfenstein 3D
Streets of Rage 2
Theme Park
Monkey Island 1&2
Pinball Fantasies
Links 386 Pro
Earthworm Jim
Breakout
Megaman series

It was intended to be a best-of list of the first 25ish years of gaming, and I just found it interesting how few of those games would be featured on any best of all time lists that were written now.

Personally I've played 34 of them, and I remember liking only 13 of them at the time - I suspect many of them wouldn't hold up to that scrutiny today. There are obviously some classics on the list, some titles that still get mentioned on best of all time lists to this day (Wolf 3D, Doom, Streetfighter, Mario, Mario Kart, Civilization, etc) but most of the titles are mere footnotes in the history of gaming at best.

So - how many have you played? How many did you actually like at the time? How about now? Which ones still deserve to be mentioned among the best games of all time? Are the responses to this thread going to make me feel really old?

 

[Seaf The Troll]

I have about 50 of them on my nes snes master system and mega drive in the loft. but i have played 75 of them. I had a indoor life when I was younger. Now I have to work so my girlfriend can stay indoors to play all the new games.

The one that stuck to my memory the most is

Lemmings 1&2

Alone in the Dark 1&2

Syndicate

and flashback (but flashback 2 was really horrid!)

plus cannon fodder.. "war never been so much fun, WAR never been so much fun" what a cool game lol

 

[Bostur]

About 34 games on the list are games that I played enough to get an impression of them. I played some of the others very briefly. Many of the games were innovative but not very good compared to games that refined the gameplay later. Thats often the case with the first ones, they invent gameplay and subsequent games refine it. Still I count about 22 games that I considered to be good at the time.

I'll list some of the ones I remember playing. Topics like this makes me go into geek mode so I'll spoiler it.

Spoiler

Pacman - Classic arcade game from the early 80s, not very good in my opinion. This game would only get my coins if there were no other cabinets nearby.

Space Invaders - Early shoot'em'up arcade game, good for it's time but later variations like Galaga/Galaxians were far better.

Outrun - Another arcade game. Streamlined, easy accessible racing game. I thought it was a bit dull and lacked proper physics.

Doom 1&2 - I wasn't much into shooters myself, but the exploration and dungeon creeping styles of these early shooters was good. I thought the Hexen/Heretic games were better.

Lemmings 1&2 - I played the first on the Amiga, great idea and lots of fun.

Alone in the Dark 1&2 - Alone in the dark was one of the first game to attempt some kind of 3D adventure gameplay. As an experimental game it did pretty well. Not as good as the 2D games of the time, but that's usually the case when games experiment.

Syndicate - Actiony squad based game. I loved the setting and the feel of the meta-campaign but thought the gameplay was shallow. I prefered X-Com.

Microprose Grand Prix - This is one classic series. It really started with a fully 3D racing game for 8-bit computers called "Revs". This series was the best of realistic, deep racing games, but also very hard to get into. You don't just do a race, you practice tracks for hours before being able to do them well. I loved the series.

Civilization - Probably the game I have played the most. I still play Civilization 4, the early ones are of course a bit outdated because of sequels and other 4x games. Basically the best game concept ever.

Falcon 3.0 - Pretty graphics, boring sim. It was too complex to feel gamey and physics were too simple to feel simmy.

Wing Commander series - The very first cinematic game, and a great space shooter. I probably wouldn't play it now because there are better games of the genre, but I loved it.

Ghosts 'n Goblins - Another '80s arcade game from a time when they really started to shine. It was generally considered one of the hardest coin ups available, with great platforming gameplay.

Adventure - Now we are back to the '70s. The very first adventure game. Also known as Colossal Cave Adventure. The games that create genres usually aren't very good compared to their predecessors. I never got into this but immensely enjoyed later text adventures.

Tetris - The first version was from the '80s created for some obscure Russian hardware. The first accessible port was for the C64. I remember playing it when I got stuck in Maniac Mansion. Very catchy and hard to let go.

Ultima series - I only played Ultima V extensively. Huge world and a great setting but also rather grindy and monotonous. RPGs were plentiful at the time and I think there were better alternatives. Wasteland, Wizardry series and Gold Box series for instance.

Myst - Not my kind of thing, but I did play Myst and Riven 'co-op' with a friend a few years ago. Great for people into it.

Prince of Persia - Lousy platformer with horrible death mechanics and great animations. I hated it. ;-)

Zork series - Much better than Colossal Cave Adventure. Infocom made text adventures shine. I didn't complete any of the games in the original trilogy, prefering Infocom games like Enchanter and Spellweaver.

Dune 2 - I played this a lot on PC and Amiga. First RTS ever but with a horrible clicky interface. Basically Command & Conquer without control groups.

Impossible Mission - "Stay awhile, staaaaay forever". Very classic game with some unique gameplay elements. I think quite a lot of games were inspired by this. Epyx did a lot of innovation at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5eC_BDSfiQ

Zaxxon - A somewhat unique shoot'em'up for arcades, decent gameplay, nothing special.

Elite 1&2 - Elite was the first space exploration game. And one of the first examples of 3D graphics on 8-bit machines. The sequel was the perfect example of why realistic space physics is a bad idea in games. ;-)

Sam and Max Hit the Road - I prefered Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle.

UFO - Enemy Unknown - The best squad based tactical game ever. Only Jagged Alliance 2 can compete and none of the sequels were as good. I still play it.

Pong - Probably the first home console game I tried, so a bit of a novelty. It was a game, thats probably the only positive thing to say about it.

Sim City - Simmy game, kind of lacked depth but was responsible for a ton of off-springs.

Way of the Exploding Fist - Nowadays it would probably be called a Fighting-RPG. Fighting game with some story elements. The only comparable game I can think of would be Jade Empire. I wasn't into fighting games myself, but I did play this a fair bit.

Defender - The arcade game with 7 buttons! (That is if you counted the buttons for selecting 1 or 2-player mode). Great game with a novel concept, although with a rather weird control scheme.

Boulderdash - This one was the rage on the C64. I don't know how many versions were made including fan versions. Probably one of the first franchises to experience heavy modding. Very innovative and incredibly fun.

The Hobbit - I know Spectrum owners played this a lot, but I prefered adventure games from Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls.

Gauntlet - Great co-op arcade game. Not so great outside the arcades.

Monkey Island 1&2 - This was the point where point-and-click adventures grew up. Good games, I personally prefered Day of the Tentacle. But I completed both.

Pinball Fantasies - The only good port of Pinball games to home computers. As such worthy of glory. Smooth scrolling, fast and furious gameplay. Excellent game.

Breakout - Kind of a ripoff of Arkanoid, but I though Breakout was better. Somehow putting the bat on the sides worked better, and maybe it was better due to level design.

 

[KingofMadCows]

Shame that issue was right before Command and Conquer and Heroes of Might and Magic.

Although, I am surprised that Might and Magic: World of Xeen isn't on the list.

 

[1-up]

62, more or less. Some of the titles sounded familiar but I couldn't be sure on so didn't count, but I also counted the "series" as one entity.

Lots of good stuff on there. I think it's important to note that a lot of those games were pioneers in a gameplay mechanic/style. Dune 2 comes to mind as one of the *really* early RTS games.

Couldn't help but smile when I saw Lemmings and Sam and Max Hit the Road on the list. Good memories wrapped up in those games.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Spoiler: Hyper magazine Top 100 video games of all time list, February 1995 (and the ones I have actually played)

*Pacman
*Streetfighter 2 series
*Asteroids
*Space Invaders
*Virtua Fighter 1&2
*Afterburner series
*Super Mario series
*Donkey Kong Country
*Donkey Kong series
*Daytona
*Sonic series
*Pitfall series
*Doom 1&2
*Lemmings 1&2
*Super Star Wars series
*Marble Madness
*Mortal Kombat 2
*Ghosts 'n Goblins / Ghouls 'n Ghosts
*Tetris
*Road Rash series
*Castlevania series
*Super Mario Kart
*Metroid series
*Pong
*Aladdin
*Zelda series
*Sim City
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
*Lethal Enforcers
*R-Type
*Samurai Showdown
*Gauntlet
*Wolfenstein 3D
*Earthworm Jim
*Breakout

I have them with asterisks mainly to mark out which ones from the list and am just going to leave them there out of laziness. Some I played at friend's houses and others I played in Arcades. I don't know how many I've beaten (since some can't be beaten, like Breakout and Donkey Kong Arcade). As for the ones I've beaten...let's see, 1995...

Aladdin
Donkey Kong Country
Legend of Zelda
Link to the Past
Metroid
Super Mario World (it was out then, right?)
Super Star Wars
Zelda 2: Link's Adventure

These are the games I've actually beaten or rather, made it to the end of the game and watched the ending credits. The other games I've made it to various levels but I never really high-scored many of them at the arcades.