Old Game Classics Recommendations

[Yora]

I guess the main reason I am interested in classic games from the 90s is because that was the time when I first started playing videogames. And "the golden age of science-fiction is 12". Same for videogames and any form of entertainment. But the mid to late 90s are also the time when the old arcade style games begin to evolve into the form that we are still playing today. Which I think is the reason they are still really playable even today.

I first played Metal Gear Solid in 2009, Starcraft some years after that, and got past the second level of Thief and then actually to the end four years ago. All games from 1998 and I loved them. Last year I played Super Metroid for the first time because some people still praise it to high heavens, and I found it to be indeed amazing. Right now I am trying to get Command & Conquer to work on my computer because I actually only played the first two or three levels of it back in the day.

What old games do you have to recommend, which you think would still be fun to play for the first time today?

My main ones would be of course those I already mentioned, and that don't need any introduction:
Metal Gear Solid (PS1, 1998)
Thief: The Dark Project (PC, 1998)
Starcraft (PC, 1998)

I also want to recommend Gothic (PC, 2001). Every time I play an RPG today that uses open world environments, I am still finding myself thinking "Why is everyone excited about these features? Gothic did those things almost 20 years ago, but better".

[Togath]

Not all the way through yet, but I've really been enjoying Breath of Fire(the first one). It's a turn based jrpg, but with really good art for the era(1993) and a lot of surprisingly modern mechanics(including a day/night cycle based on a timer, that affects stuff like the npcs in towns) and a hunting minigame on the overworld.

[Winthur]

Might and Magic 3 // World of Xeen: If you want to get into the first-person turn-based dungeon crawler genre with a strong title that is fairly easy to get the grasp of, this is a good title. It's weirdly addicting. Good primer for something like Etrian Odyssey.

Aside from that I still derive quite a bit of fun from self-explanatory games like Diablo, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion, Thief and what-not.

[Alhallor]

If you can get it I recommend Extreme Assault.

It's a kinda open-world helicopter Shooting Simulator with Aliens.

I played Gothic 1, 2 and 3 though I never finished 3 because everytime I played it I had problems with my Computer... Unfortunate. But they are definitely all good.

I also found Gorky 17 recently what I enjoyed way too much, it's a mix of Jagged Alliance and Final Fantasy tactics.

[Wraith]

From the Metal Gear Solid era, I'd recommend a number of PS1 games.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Medieval 2 were early ancestors of games like Devil May Cry and God of War - at the time they were considered excellent action-adventure games and still have a cult following today (why Razael hasn't yet appeared in something like Soul Calibre or Smash Brothers, I'll never know).

Half-life should almost certainly be on your list, if you have any interest at all in FPS games that aren't just mindless splatter. There's a place for those games - I like Doom and remember Duke Nukem as fondly as anyone - but Half-life was probably the first "serious" game of that type that wasn't just about explosions in grey-brown castles and heavy metal music.

Alundra was Playstation's answer to Legend of Zelda, or at least the older top-down SNES-style versions. It was never my thing, but it was the game that everyone else raved about and consistently scored highly in "best of the year", if not also "decade" lists.

One of my personal favourites that no one else in the world has ever heard of is Vagrant Story. It's a rather strange cross between Tomb Raider and X-Com, but at the time it was one of the most visually stunning games I had seen with a very impressive plot, provided you weren't against the occasional block-pushing puzzle.

[Drasius]

Diablo, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion, Thief and what-not.

This, plus Baldurs Gate and BG2/ToB, Diablo 2/LoD, Mechwarrior 2 (and MW2: Mercs) and MW3/Pirates Moon, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, any of the old Jedi Knight series, KotOR, Titan Quest, Jade Empire (though this might be a bit "recent, IIRC, it was about 2004), Total Annihilation, X-COM UFO Defence, Dawn of War (again, IIRC, this was around 2004). Man, so many good choices.

I'd say Civ III, but then, there's not much difference between civ then and civ now, plus SMAC was better anyway.

Any of the Final Fantasy series will hold your interest if that's your jam, though some *cough* VII *cough* looked especially dated 10 years ago, but if you can handle that, they're still fun and have a good story.

[Cheesegear]

Excluding Interplay/Bioware RPGs that everyone has heard of...

Theme Hospital: In good news, two of the lead developers at Bullfrog recently spiritually re-made the game as Two Point Hospital earlier this year.

Quest for Glory series: Sierra's better point-and-click adventure series (except for II, which was awful) which featured a lot less moon logic than its other one...

Space Quest (Roger Wilco) series: Point-and-click adventure game full of moon logic that made no sense at all.

Commander Keen series: Four games in two years was pretty next level. Fantastic platformers...

You know what? **** it. All games by Apogee Software and most of the ones from 3D Realms.

[X] Tycoon: Just build.

Sim[X]: Obviously SimCity takes the cake with several rip-offs and spiritual successors even to this day.

Jagged Alliance
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Dark Reign: Possibly the only successful Command & Conquer ripoff that actually went anywhere. Dark Reign II sucked, though.

MechWarrior series: My bois.
...Activision would later lose the rights to Battletech and instead acquire the rights to Heavy Gear - the game in which I created my Username that I still use to this day.

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate: Turn-based tactics game based off of the WH40K licence and one of the very, very few 40K games that was almost faithful to the tabletop game (2nd Ed., that is)...Almost. To this day, however, it remains unplayable on most modern PCs due to some extremely bass-ackwards .ini files and a few unfixable graphic issues that crash the game - most people seem to point to DirectX for the cause of the crashes.

Dungeon Keeper: A classic.

Daytona USA
Gauntlet
The House of the Dead
Street Fighter 2
Mortal Kombat
Killer Instinct
Virtua Cop
Resident Evil


...Am I done?

[Drasius]

...Am I done?

No, 'cause both of us forgot Homeworld (and Homeworld 2).

[Cheesegear]

No, 'cause both of us forgot Homeworld (and Homeworld 2).

I think you'll actually find that both of us skipped Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

[Wraith]

And we all forgot Goldeneye 007.

And Silent Hill 2.

And Siphon Filter.

And Beyond Good & Evil.

...We're really bad at this.

[GloatingSwine]

[X] Tycoon: Just build.

Let's have an honourable mention here for Transport Tycoon, which you can obtain for the majestic price of free in the form of OpenTTD.

[Wraith]

the majestic price of free

Someone is a Spiffing Brit fan?

[factotum]

If you've played Thief: The Dark Project then you desperately need to be playing Thief 2: The Metal Age. It's one of those rare things, a sequel which is in every way better than its predecessor. In a similar vein, I would also recommend Fallout 2, because it's simply better than the original Fallout while having the same style and character--you, too, can find out what all us old Fallout fans are blathering on about when we say Fallout 4 isn't a proper Fallout game!

I mean, I could probably fill a page with game recommendations, but to keep this short, in addition to the above: Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Might and Magic 6, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (the original, not the "remastered" one because that's missing a lot of content even if it does look prettier), Diablo 2, TES 3: Morrowind, System Shock, System Shock 2, Ultima 7: The Black Forge and Ultima 7: Serpent Isle, TIE Fighter, Freespace 2 (and definitely do the "special ops" missions you get given the choice to do partway through because they have one of the best moments in the game)...I'm sure I could continue!

[GloatingSwine]

Someone is a Spiffing Brit fan?

And a Yorkshire Tea fan.

[Cheesegear]

Oh ****.
*headdesk*

Grim Fandango
Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Monkey Island

Pitfall and Prince of Persia

[Sean Mirrsen]

Total Annihilation is still one of the best true RTS games. Especially once you get some modding going, with updated models, new factions, entire new mechanics via the unofficial patches, etc.

Space Rangers isn't that old if you consider the constant updates and re-releases of its 2005 sequel, but the original game launched in 2002 and is still great.

And the 2001-released Severance: Blade of Darkness is a great hack&slash/adventure game that may or may not have inspired Dark Souls.

[Vinyadan]

Doom, Half Life, Fallout, Fallout II, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires I&II (but II is simply more and better; if you have it, you have little reason to go for I), Alien vs Predator (1999), Rogue Squadron, the Metal Slug series, the The Last Blade series, the Street Fighter series, the Samurai Shodown series, the Mortal Kombat series, the Pokemon series.

[Eldan]

Speaking of strategy games, I also have a certain love of Ground Control. Probably the best application of fog of war to 3D terrain I can think of. And (probably?) one of the first strategy games with a freely moveable 3D camera. And it included high ground, different armour values for different sides of tanks, suppressive fire, different kinds of stealth in different kinds of terrain...

Edit: also, freeware now.

[Yora]

I absolutely have to get around to play Commandos! It's one of the games that I played a lot back when it came out and I tried to come back to many times, but I just wasn't good enough with games yet to get past the first three levels or so.

I have felt for many years that Half-Life aged a lot better than Half-Life 2. It's still a great game for what it is, while HL2 has something in the way of Uncanny Valley going on with it's gameplay and level design. It's huge leaps forward on the technical level, but while Half-Life feels like a great retro game, HL2 feels like a quite poor modern game to me.

I think we can include PS2 and X-Box games as classic and retro now. And in that case Knights of the Old Republic has to be mentioned. Last time I played it two years ago I found it to be greatly overrated and only modestly well aged. But even then it's still a great experience. Maybe even more so for Star Wars fans who have not played it yet.
I also just saw the news that Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are getting ported to PS4 and Switch very soon. Great opportunity to play them now if the port turns out decent. (Not really games I would like to play on the little notebook I have now. It's good enough for Thief or Morrowind, but not for three dimensional lightsaber battles.) Oh, and speaking of Morrowind...

If you've played Thief: The Dark Project then you desperately need to be playing Thief 2: The Metal Age. It's one of those rare things, a sequel which is in every way better than its predecessor.

Every way, except setting. Thief 1 is Sword & Sorcery, Thief 2 is Steampunk. Somehow that made me feel the game was missing something vital and didn't really do it for me. In every other way, it really is more refined, though.

[danzibr]

SaGa Frontier.
Star Control 2.
Phantasy Star IV.
Landstalker.
Breath of Fire III (I see the original was already mentioned).
Legend of Legaia.

Crikey I’m forgetting so many.

Honorable mention for Hollow Knight, which came out recently but could totally be an SNES game, and is far and away my favorite platformer of all time.

[Iruka]

I also just saw the news that Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are getting ported to PS4 and Switch very soon. Great opportunity to play them now if the port turns out decent. (Not really games I would like to play on the little notebook I have now. It's good enough for Thief or Morrowind, but not for three dimensional lightsaber battles.) Oh, and speaking of Morrowind...

I recently started playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and it is a delightfully oldschool experience. The hammy live action videos, the levels that manage to be linear and disorienting at the same time, the obsession with hidden rooms and items. Very different from modern FPS games.

Most classic games I played in my youth have already been named. Simon the Sorcerer deserves a mention as an adventure similar to Monkey Island. Earth 2150 is to this day one of my favourite RTS games. Cool setting, custom build units and a pretty good mission design.

[Winthur]

Quest for Glory series: Sierra's better point-and-click adventure series (except for II, which was awful) which featured a lot less moon logic than its other one...

Did you play the recently-released spiritual successor Heroine's Quest? I'm mentioning it because it's really good and completely free to play on Steam.

[Varen_Tai]

Someone mentioned Baldur's Gate, but no one so far has mentioned one of the greatest games (not just greatest RPGs) of all time:

Planescape: Torment.

Those of us who love this game could go on and on about how amazing it is for reasons that are almost opposite of many of its peers (like even Baldur's Gate, made by the same company with the same game engine).

It's brilliant, philosophical, profound, and incredibly fun.

[Eldan]

I recently started playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and it is a delightfully oldschool experience. The hammy live action videos, the levels that manage to be linear and disorienting at the same time, the obsession with hidden rooms and items. Very different from modern FPS games.

Most classic games I played in my youth have already been named. Simon the Sorcerer deserves a mention as an adventure similar to Monkey Island. Earth 2150 is to this day one of my favourite RTS games. Cool setting, custom build units and a pretty good mission design.

Earth 2150 is excellent, but I Remember massively getting stuck in the campaign at some point.

[Winthur]

(like even Baldur's Gate, made by the same company with the same game engine).

Baldur's Gate is a BioWare brainchild, Planescape: Torment is from Black Isle. Your direct comparison you're looking for is Icewind Dale.
Black Isle's role in development of Baldur's Gate was publishing and, apparently, directing the voice work and helping out with graphical assets. BioWare developed everything else, including the Infinity Engine itself.

[Varen_Tai]

Baldur's Gate is a BioWare brainchild, Planescape: Torment is from Black Isle. Your direct comparison you're looking for is Icewind Dale.
Black Isle's role in development of Baldur's Gate was publishing and, apparently, directing the voice work and helping out with graphical assets. BioWare developed everything else, including the Infinity Engine itself.

Right, right. I stand corrected.

[Aeson]

Roller Coaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon 2, Caesar III, Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator 2, Galactic Civilizations (though I prefer 2), SimAnt, Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, LEGO Rock Raiders, LEGO Island and LEGO Island 2, Civilization II, Alpha Centauri.

[Morty]

I also want to recommend Gothic (PC, 2001). Every time I play an RPG today that uses open world environments, I am still finding myself thinking "Why is everyone excited about these features? Gothic did those things almost 20 years ago, but better".

Janky and clunky as it is, Gothic is definitely a special kind of open world game. For one thing, the world is actually pretty small, but cleverly pretends to be bigger. And it builds the illusion of a living world much better than many newer and more technically-refined games. It's a shame that it kind of shows you its best side in the first chapter, though. Later on it becomes much more generic. But its method of having NPCs say out-of-context sentences as you pass them by somehow works much better than other games' endless repeats of the same conversations. Or, *snort*, Oblivion's Radiant dialogue.

[Spore]

If you are fond of RTS (as evidence by your love of Starcraft, I would recommend Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 (I do not enjoy the RA 1 nor C&C 1) or Tiberan Sun.

If you enjoy story over gameplay (because its gameplay is VERY generic adventure puzzling ala Zelda) I heavily recommend Soul Reaver 1, 2 and Legacy of Kain: Defiance as a series. Soul Reaver 1 is very barebones, Soul Reaver 2 heavily improves the gameplay and Defiance is simply a masterpiece. Its story has a very Shakespearian feel to it for me.

[Yora]

Tiberium Sun I actually played halfway through, I am strongly considering to play all three games.

The Legacy of Kain games are a fantastic marvel. Though I personally wouldn't recommend them to anyone who isn't already a fan or wants to play them. Characters and story are fantastic, but gameplay was never really good and now feels particularly tedious. You can endure it for the love for the series, but I doubt most newcomers would enjoy them.

Janky and clunky as it is, Gothic is definitely a special kind of open world game. For one thing, the world is actually pretty small, but cleverly pretends to be bigger. And it builds the illusion of a living world much better than many newer and more technically-refined games. It's a shame that it kind of shows you its best side in the first chapter, though. Later on it becomes much more generic. But its method of having NPCs say out-of-context sentences as you pass them by somehow works much better than other games' endless repeats of the same conversations. Or, *snort*, Oblivion's Radiant dialogue.

Gothic works because it's so small. The size allows the developers to make the world pretty much all story content and no padding. Most open world games that came after it seem to have aimed for large size first and then struggled to actually fill it with stuff relevant to the main story. And with fewer NPCs you can actually give them a large variety of things they do during their day before you run out of ideas and time and script it and create dialogs.