Commander Keen - Goodbye galaxy. Completely different but it’s right up there with Zelda for SNES.
Museum Madness - insanely creative and supremely educational game with an abssssurd amount of content for the time that must have taken ages to build. It’s the basics of major educational subjects so most would (hopefully) be review but it’s well done and the path to learn each piece and sub-ppieces requires constantly rejiggering your mind. Also a great way to teach modern kids how damn persistent you had to be to figure something out.
Oregon Trail
Where in the ______ is Carmen San Diego
Scorched Earth
SNES- super Street fighter 2 turbo, NBA jam TE, Ken Gruffy baseball, Zelda link to the past, supermarioworld, Earthworm Jim
N64- Mario kart 64, Mario golf, Goldeneye, 1080 snowboarding, blitz NFL, Gretsky 3d hockey, DK Country
GTA2 - top down view and sound effects were fantastic.
Worms Armageddon. Like comparing Doom to Pong, this for me was the ultimate level of what started with Pong/cannon fodder/scorched earth. It took all that and made it hilarious and graphic and incredibly memorable. Easy to learn, difficult to master, top 5 party game ever.
Warcraft 2 is hard to go back to because of some of the QOL improvements war3 introduced but the sound board from war 2 may never be outdone.
Tribes online was one of the first mostly open world team based team fps I played. Some of the vehicle mechanics were clunky but many games never even bothered to try to implement such features before or since.
Diablo II - years of my life. Obligatory fuck Duriel
Unreal Tournament 2004 - weapon selection, play style and map variety options with bots that weren’t great but much better than what had preceded them. Graphics were incredible at the time and for me still look good on some levels.
Max Payne - the time slowing feature, consistent and well done noir theme and feel and an enjoyable narrative make it one that even though I only played through twice I remember 20 years later.
DOS
SNES- super Street fighter 2 turbo, NBA jam TE, Ken Gruffy baseball, Zelda link to the past, supermarioworld, Earthworm Jim
N64- Mario kart 64, Mario golf, Goldeneye, 1080 snowboarding, blitz NFL, Gretsky 3d hockey, DK Country GTA2 - top down view and sound effects were fantastic.
Worms Armageddon. Like comparing Doom to Pong, this for me was the ultimate level of what started with Pong/cannon fodder/scorched earth. It took all that and made it hilarious and graphic and incredibly memorable. Easy to learn, difficult to master, top 5 party game ever.
Warcraft 2 is hard to go back to because of some of the QOL improvements war3 introduced but the sound board from war 2 may never be outdone.
Tribes online was one of the first mostly open world team based team fps I played. Some of the vehicle mechanics were clunky but many games never even bothered to try to implement such features before or since.
Diablo II - years of my life. Obligatory fuck Duriel
Unreal Tournament 2004 - weapon selection, play style and map variety options with bots that weren’t great but much better than what had preceded them. Graphics were incredible at the time and for me still look good on some levels.
Max Payne - the time slowing feature, consistent and well done noir theme and feel and an enjoyable narrative make it one that even though I only played through twice I remember 20 years later.