What's Your Golden Age of Gaming?

[skywolfblue]

2008 - now

These last two to three years have seen a real wealth of excellent games.

Mass Effect Series
Dead Space Series
Portal Series

Just to give some top examples.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

This is a bit difficult to answer. I've been a PC gamer forever, and consoles from NES all the way until PS2.
It is tempting to say that the golden age of gaming was during the 90s and early 2000s(1990-2003ish), when it felt like every new game that came out was able to blow my mind. Nowadays, I am just so much harder to impress and it feels like every single thing that comes out has been done before and better.
I absolutely loved my SNES/N64 days and gaming on the PC in the 90s was as good as it gets. Of course, it impossible for me not to not be blinded by nostalgia. Nonetheless, whenever I play games from back then, even ones I missed and only first played more recently, I am always blown away.
I can't remember the last time I was blown away in the last 5-6 years.

 

[Daget Sparrow]

2010; The release of Halo: Reach. CoD Black Ops soon after. Immediately between finishing our final school exams and our first day of university. Four months of online multiplayer with the best friends I've ever had. Those were the days.

...

...what, not the answer you were looking for?

 

[Unsung]

For me, Golden Age is ~ 1995-2005, though sometimes hard not to add 1991+ to it.

Here go some my favs

Anachronox - 2001
Enclave - 2002
Deus Ex - 2000
Omikron - The Nomad Soul - 1999
Outcast - 1999
Evil Islands - 2000
Psychonauts - 2005
Populous: The Beginning - 1998
Silent Hill - 1999
Chrono Trigger - 1995
Giants: Citizen Kabuto - 2000
Parasite Eve 1 - 1997
Hellnight - 1998
Persona 2 Eternal Punishment - 2000
Killer 7 - 2005
Illbleed - 2001


and hey, i.ve played Deus Ex1 first time in 2008 and was blown away, as Chrono Trigger defeated me in 2010

It's funny, because this is the precise collection of games that turn me off, with the exception of Psychonauts, Deus Ex, and Chrono Trigger, of course. Those years were my personal dark age, to be blunt, with a few gems amidst a dearth of impenetrable gameplay.

 

[InfernalGrape]

Different people search for different things
I've never been a gameplay gamer (except for Populous TB), but have always loved interesting plots, strange settings, romantic moods and so on

 

[Rock-nerd]

2007-2009. Thats the time i really started to become a gamer.

 

[AyreonMaiden]

Probably the PS2 Era.

It felt like that sweet spot where games didn't take a small army to be quality and the graphical power was 'good enough'.

You echoed my sentiments exactly. Last gen was the sweetest time. A time when graphics looked amazing while retaining gameplay depth, without costing the stupid amounts of money that today's AAA games demand. Games felt like they shipped complete, without online passes or anything that resembles a "service."

I include the Wii in that generation, because its core games carry that spirit of affordability, experimentation and completeness. The 3DS isn't as sharp as the Vita, and the Wii wasn't as sharp as the PS3/360. Personally I hope it stays that way. It would be an incredible outlet for mid-level devs to experiment without going broke.

 

[Sean951]

Started 1998 or so and it's still going. That was the time that I got an N64 with Rogue Squadron, Mario 64, and Ocarina of Time. Since then, I've owned every Nintendo console, played tons of PC games, and every single year has come out with at least 5 new games that I want on some platform or another, and they keep getting better. Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai expansion are amazing, Skyward Sword consumed me for a week and it would still if the Wii had a better method for memory cards, and then Skyrim, D3, and Xenoblade Chronicles are all on my "must have" list and the summer has only just started.

 

[Signa]

1997-2003 is where the vast majority of my favourite games have come from.

You've got everything (roughly in chronological order)... Fallout 1 and 2, Thief 1 and 2, System Shock 2, Starcraft, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Homeworld, Freespace 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Arcanum, Operation Flashpoint, Silent Hill 1 and 2, GTA: Vice City, Hitman 2, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, and Morrowind. And probably some that I forgot.

I could just replay those games again and again and be pretty satisfied on the gaming front for the rest of my life.

STOP READING MY MIND!!!!!

Seriously, I don't think there are many you missed. I suppose I'd throw Total Annihilation in there, and a few other favorites like Jedi Knight, and Half-Life. Also the N64/Gamecube had some amazing titles in that time frame too.

 

[MrWickstar]

Mids 90's. I was in my early teens at the time and my Grandpa and his buddies had gotten really into flight sims. As a result he had a top-of-the-line PC and subscriptions to gaming and software magazines that came with demo discs. I would sit in his basement for hours playing games like Warcraft 2, Daggerfall, Falcon 3.0, Wing Commander IV, and so many others. I went from a SNES with a handful of games to a PC with access to more than I even knew existed.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

It?s mostly both around the release dates of the games I have the most nostalgia for and the time period that I grew up in. So, 1990?2006.

It almost makes me cry how good those cherished days were, as a youngster without any responsibilities or worries in the world. But unfortunately, I?ll never be able to recapture them. Not entirely, anyway.

And yet, there are so many games that I haven?t played, when I would?ve been the perfect age to play them. For some reason, I just don?t have the appetite for gaming that I once did. Shit in my life got in the way.

 

[RaikuFA]

For me it would have to be the SNES era. such fun stuff in that era.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

What exactly is a Golden Age?

Ever since I first played Pokemon Blue on a Gameboy Pocket in 1997/8 and Tomb Raider III in the christmas of that same year there has never been a year when I have not been massively into at least one game. However that doesn't mean that my Golden Age is always the current one. The only games I brought with me to Belfast originally were Final Fantasy IX and VIII, because I knew I would still really like playing them, and I did.

For me, every single year since '97 has been a golden age.

 

[pilouuuu]

2004-2004

 

[everythingbeeps]

Probably 1997-2000, PS1/N64. I was in college, had a fuck ton of time for gaming, and there were a ton of great games.