What are the games you played in your youth that you still play today?
from catty@lemmy.world to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 30 Jun 2025 14:20
https://lemmy.world/post/32271085
from catty@lemmy.world to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 30 Jun 2025 14:20
https://lemmy.world/post/32271085
Are they the ‘epics’ of their time, or some things that are less well known?
threaded - newest
I sunk hours into NetHack, and I still occasionally dive into the dungeons. I also have a NES emulator on my phone, but it’s just not the same. I’ll play Zelda or Metroid for the nostalgia, but it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with friends.
That’s the biggie that the young kids of today just will never experience!
Guild wars 1. I don’t play it often but every once in a while I get the itch. It’s honestly still really compelling.
Wasn’t that all online? How is that still going? Ya, I spent a lot of time in guild wars back in the day. Running people to the next stop.
Because they have ai controlled party members (and have since the beginning), it’s actually completely playable solo to this day.
You might be surprised how many people still play though.
That was a pre-steam purchase. One of the few old games I no longer have. I could see playing it again.
I kept one chacter in the intro area and leveled him way beyond normal by letting the monsters kill me, which I guess leveled them up, so I could get poinst from killing them again. Dood was like level 17 in the intro map.
I remember people doing that! I never did it myself (way too grindy for me), but it’s pretty crazy the game let you do it
Oh yeah. That was grinding for the sake of grinding. No point, other than bending the game. Its not like the extra levels helped all that much. But I was king of the newbs.
17 is impressive. I think the furthest i got was 14.
I had a buddy who got to 20, before there was a title iirc
I was in a phase. A stay home and drink and play video games till I pass out phase. Plus, I like breaking stuff. That motivates me.
Fired it back up recently and went to one of the main hubs. There was a few other people running around, but it was pretty dead.
But yeah, the pre-cataclysm area was gorgeous at the time. The soundtrack is AMAZING. One of my favorite gaming experiences.
I’ll still crack open any one of the Age of Empires series from time to time.
You just reminded me I have the first version of that game around somewhere, I might dig it back out one of these days soon.
The original and Rise of Rome are great. If you don’t have Rise of Rome it’s almost mandatory, it runs a lot better and has a lot of quality of life improvements, like a higher population cap.
The original Legend of Zelda. I still have it on cartridge and every once in a while I’ll just steamroll the entire game and whoop Ganon’s ass. I can usually do it in about 4 hours.
I don’t use any glitches or speedrun optimizations, I just know where everything is and what order to do things in.
I started recently. I’m keen to finish it.
I have been considering a second quest play lately. All these years I have never played the second quest.
I had a small binder full of hand drawn maps of both overworlds and all the dungeons. I wish i still had that. It got pretty ragged from many friends borrowing it. What a great unlocked memory from my childhood.
Here goes:
pc:
megadrive:
Wow Cannon Fodder. I felt so bad for the guys that got wounded and just stayed there suffering.
I actually felt real sadness when I’d been progressing with a name for several levels and then they get blown up by my own doing. When their name appears in the roll of honour!
You can shoot them, and shoot them, and shoot them and their body bounces around!
What’s special about EA hockey 2?
I still find Civil War Generals 2 to be a really fun and challenging game. The visuals are still perfectly readable and charming.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8685ddaf-fb8e-4ac6-bf18-d2cec948c3ed.jpeg">
Every so often I will fire up my copy of Mega Man 2 and run through it.
Mega man is SO hard. I struggle to get anywhere. But, that music. I LOVE it.
Yes the music in the Mega Man games is legendary
uhhh
Star citizen
Major mix of eras and platforms, but here is my list.
AoE2
NFSU2
Halo MCC
Sim City 2000
Streets of Sim City
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Mario Kart 64
Perfect Dark
Goldeneye
Battlefield 3
Super Mario Bros Deluxe
Mario 64
Overwatch
Half Life 2 +eps
Gary’s Mod
Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
Fallout New Vegas
I forgot simcity 2000 - that is one hell of a classic! hl2 is good until you get to the part where you have to set the turrets up and you just die and die and die. I got it when it was free on the steam weekender a few months back but totally forgot about that part. I’ve just given up now as the fun has gone from it.
I bloody loved Harry The Handsome Executive. It was an Ambrosia Software shareware game from the 90s and was surprisingly underrated. Will probably run on Infinite Mac but it never got an OS X port or anything
I have an old iBook which it still runs great on
shareware gave rise to some truly original and awe-inspiring games, some like this: mattyongames.wordpress.com/2008/…/grandad-quest/
Yes! And that’s amazingly similar to Harry (but also completely different) - Harry goes around the various offices on his swivel chair (backwards, because kicking off things is of course easier) and fires staples at malfunctioning robots
I’ve been on a Doom kick for a bit, although it’s modified to retain some more current gen flair. Just finished Going Down Turbo with Project Brutality. Is it faithful to the OG? Not quite, but it’s truly amazing how far the the engine has come despite being heavily modified in its own right.
I have replayed Baldur’s Gate 2 more than any other narrative game, and will probably do another playthrough in the coming years. So it’s most likely that. Oh, and Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven multiplayer on the PS2 whenever I am over at one specific friend’s place. That was our go-to couch game growing up and it’s still nostalgic.
Most of them! Well, not regularly. But I love going back to the games and consoles of my earlier days.
My favourites are the 16-bit and early 32-bit eras
Syndicate Wars. I honestly haven’t seen anyone emulate that gameplay as well as SW did it since then.
Quake. Still hold up, modding community makes tons of maps to play so it stays fresh.
Dungeon Keeper - keeperfx is a modern update of the engine / bug fix that makes it easy to play on a modern system.
Quite a few, but the one that I’ve played the most is Super Metroid. I do like to play through the different Mega Man games too and a few others, but they are almost all well known games.
I have rediscovered other games that I totally overlooked because I thought they were too kiddy or too hard like The NewZealand Story, Gimmick and so many shmups.
Thunder force 4 or lightning force in my youth was a really fun game. Played it to death on the Genesis. It still holds up. I still play it from time to time.
I’m so happy to see this mentioned. It also has an incredible OST.
The fan stuff is excellent as well:
Heavy Instrumental Metal:
Into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnLAC5AJPuM
End: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvCs12UqWvU
Im looking forward to Eartheon !!
HL2 still holds up after 10+ playthroughs.
Last time I played it was when the commentary track was added. Played 80% of the game in one sitting because I was so hooked.
I still play some of my old school Pokemon games from time-to-time such as Red, Silver, Ruby, and Platinum.
Squarez Deluxe
lemmy.world/comment/17807115
Hat-Trick Hockey, World Games etc.
Tales of Maj’Eyal; all the old scumm games, daggerfall, toejam & earl.
Ayyy ToME oldhead gang represent. Been playing since about 2014 myself.
The modding community is what really kept breathing life into that game for me for so long. I’m hoping once we finally see the next (final?) DLC expansion that the modders will pick the game back up again. It’s been very stagnant for a couple of years now, presumably waiting for DG to release his expansion like a sudden kraken as is tradition. But it’s been 2 years now since the last update (which was primarily a scaffolding update for the Lost Lands content to come) and I imagine everyone who would be otherwise interested is now hanging in a limbo of not wanting to start work on a project when DG might drop a major update at literally any time and invalidate a bunch of your work.
Even just the regular base game kept me playing for years and years though. Solid 10/10 freeware game. I used to bounce between ToME and DCSS (also freeware, also recommend, this one actually gets regular updates) pretty regularly and that kept me covered on dungeon crawling roguelikes for the better part of a decade. I still keep coming back to them on occasion though, I’ve played a bit of both of those games within the last 2 weeks.
Super Nintendo:
PC:
There are a lot of great mods for BG2 as well to keep the game feeling fresh. Even moreso if you don’t mind adding some fanfiction material, though I typically don’t.
The music in the SNES Megaman X series is magic.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/03fb30fc-f537-41dd-944d-ae46c16fbb95.jpeg">
Best way to play this these days? I have a disk from the early 2000s, but iirc the last time I tried to use it, it just prompted an update that led to a blizzard launcher… idr if it wanted me to buy a new digital copy or what, but I ultimately decided it was more work than it’s worth and gave up.
…these days I don’t think I even have a CD drive lol.
Apparently the original game and Brood War expansion are free to install through the Battle.Net launcher these days.
If you have the original discs, the later official patches added the ability to copy the “mpq” files from the CD into the game’s directory, so you no longer need the disc in the drive. Of course, you’re still going to need a drive for the initial installation. That should work for single player (it’s been a few years since I last did it) but I don’t know about online multiplayer.
All their games launch through their “Battle.net Launcher” now. It’s not the same as Battle.net was back then. I play on Linux via Lutris (add Battle.net launcher to Lutris).
I think if you have your cdkey on there you can sync up for a digital copy on their website. Same account needed for the launcher. It’s all annoying, but that’s how it works now. Plays flawlessly though.
DOOM.
The old game got way better when they open sourced it and Quake 3d code was backported to make zDOOM. Its one of the largest modding communities that has ever existed. If you want to see what it can do, try Brutal Doom. That same engine is behind a new release called Selaco.
Serious Sam.
The first one. The demo is fine. Start off with a pistol. Its pretty easy to die at first, even if you know the game. I think that’s why I keep opening it, I know it really well, and it still catches me.
I got back into doom in the last few years and there’s a huge number of amazing maps people have made over the years you can play for free. I had no idea about the total conversion wads, where it doesn’t even feel like doom because everything has been changed.
If anyone’s looking for a good place to start you can check out the yearly cacoward winners
doomwiki.org/wiki/Cacowards
My_House.wad has been making the rounds on YouTube semi-recently as an example of the sort of fuckery that has been made possible by the progression of doom modding.
If you’re not familiar with it, do yourself a favor and go in blind for an hour or so and then only look up a video when you’re stuck.
I’ve played a bit but haven’t had enough time to really get into it. Did you see Romero playing it when it first blew up?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIl_TqFJNO8
I just checked for the vid I saw and looks like he’s got another one playing it from a couple months ago as well.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3dUZbJT5k
Look, if you are into it, play My House.
If you dont have days to spend, well I follwed a walkthrough. I’d have never figured any of that shit out.
Fantastic mod.
Cool!
If I could I’d still be playing wow but it’s just not the same without the plentiful free time for it.
Private servers with boosted rates can scratch that itch while severely reducing the grind. Every couple years I’ll poke my head into one, level to endgame in like a week, do some raids, do some PVP, then completely forget it exists. Couple years later, rinse and repeat.
I tried retail again last year in a similar way, they’ve actually built so much mechanics now to catch up. But it still felt like a massive task to catch up to actual active players. Private server is a good shout, I’ll take a look next time I get the itch.
Ascension is the best. Look it up. Free to play and offers a better classic experience with a cool twist
My DnD DM talked about this constantly for like a year straight, so I haven’t played it but I can vouch for it being a good time for old wowheads.
Solitaire.
Half-Life 1 (and expansions)
SimCity 3000, SimCity 4
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Deus Ex
Zoo Tycoon
Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail
Morrowind
Industry Giant 2
Fallout 1/2
Arcanum
SimTower
Great list. I think I will replay about half your list at some point over the coming years. And might first time play Love For Sail as well.
Half-Life 1
One mod specifically (Sven-Coop). Been playing almost daily since 1999.
I still fire up Duke 3d and Quake mods from time to time as well. There are lifetimes of user-made content in some of these older games.
I still play through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at least a couple times a year though it’s usually with the randomizer these days. It is objectively the best video game ever made, which helps.
What do you think of the other Zeldas in the same style, like Link’s Awakening, the Oracle games or Minnish Cap?
All good to great games that build on the foundation set by ALttP. I’d gladly play any of them if you put it in front of me but nostalgia demands that I push the one I played when I was like 9 years old or whatever.
The Pokemon games on all of Nintendo’s handheld consoles emulate really cleanly on a smartphone.
I’m a sucker for the Gen 1 nostalgia every now and then.
I didn’t have video games in my youth, so I’m just catching up now.
I still love all of the 90s FPS games like Doom and Quake.
Same. The rise of the boomer shooter was fun but you can’t beat OG.
Have you tried playing on a lower difficulty level?
I love you.
I’ll let my wife know that someone finally does!
Half-Life 1 was the peak of this genre for me
Quest for Glory series! Betrayal at Krondor
Yeeeeah! I haven’t played these in forever but Hero’s Quest was my first Sierra adventure and holy shit was it magic. And Krondor - Raymond freakin Feist writing games!!
Both absolutely epic! Although in my case we’d be playing fast and loose with the term “youth” this was stuff I played after college but still.
Love to hear it! I read and reread Feist’s whole series as a kid, I remember always being so excited when a new book came out. I cut my teeth learning to read novels on Magician in 3rd grade!
You’ll be interested to learn that Feist didn’t write anything for the game, he just licensed the world and the characters. Neal Hallford wrote the story and dialogue which were brilliant, and Feist later adapted the story into a novel.
I just replayed QfG 1-3 last week on a family vacation and the magic is still strong. Something about these games ignite mythic perspectives in me that nothing else seems to.
If you like QfG, you might be interested in Heroine’s Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok on Steam. It was released for free and I imagine that hasn’t changed. But I still ended up donating because I enjoyed it so much.
I’ve had it for years, since it came out, and only managed to sink a few hours into it. I recently fired it up again, thanks for the recommendation!
Wow. Ok so regarding Feist I was only ever able to get through Magician Apprentice and Master. Reading issues, not important. But I didn’t know he was really not involved. Did be base Serpent War or Rift War saga on the game? Don’t remember what was what this many years later.
I have been thinking of getting my ass in gear and setting up a retro system. I have several units just waiting to be configured it’s just other stuff always taking priority.
So would a Pentium machine let’s say either with DOS/3.11 be good or maybe Win 95. I think maybe I’ll setup one of each since I have a few units available. This way I can play some things that need one and other stuff that is better with the other. I recall Crusader: No Remorse, and Crusader: No Regret won’t run on '95 but it will reboot into DOS mode for it lol. There are quite a few other games I’m eager to play again.
Oddly I’ve found that some stuff is ok under emulation but for whatever reasons - speculatively I’d say access to hardware via real-mode drivers that the abstraction layer in NT and forward prohibits - even the best systems like VMWare and VirtualBox seem to not handle more sophisticated game engines, only the simpler stuff. I imagine maybe it can be made to work better with tweaking and supplementary tools but after all the work that requires to get it to cooperate I think just having a real system with older hardware is probably just easier and more reliable.
I want to play the graphical Zork games again, Return to Zork, Zork: Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor. Those were so much fun. Nemesis was a huge departure from the Zorkverse it was probably a shelved project in need of an easily marketable title? I dunno but Activision et al did an awesome job with it. I tried it not long ago on my Linux laptop and even with tools like PlayOnLinux/WINE, the animation was far too fast and rendered it not controllable.
There’s so much more stuff I would love to dive into again. Lands of Lore, some more of the Sierra titles like King’s Quest, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight, just all their stuff. Between Sierra, Apogee, Activision, Interplay and a few others, the landscape of 1990s gaming is an absolute treasure!
Wow I have really rambled! If you made it all the way here thanks for patiently reading my verbosity.
They’re all well-known: Pac-Man (first game I ever played), Super Mario games, Metroid games. Anything past SNES I feel like I was too old to consider it my “youth.”
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Worms Armageddon
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Worms Armageddon was a classic
HOMM3 is like a warm blanket when you’re sick and tired.
Rogue, Hack, Nethack. Basically nethack, but it built on those before it. Occaisonally Larn. Amiga Larn.
Angband was my jam for a while, and of course that parlayed directly into Dwarf Fortress
Crash Bandicoot 2: Wrath of Cortex. Original hardware, Muscle memory from childhood. Still a banger 27 years after my first time.
Fallout 1 & 2, Final Fantasy 9, Elite
Does chess count?
Probably Sims and SimCity, I go back to them fairly often.
Age of Empires
Age of Mythology too <3
I played lightbike a variation of armagetron (that imo was honestly superior, it had jumping, boosting, maps that took advantage of that, skins back when they were cheap) but I still play armagettron on ocassion, agains the ai for the most part. Loved that ipod game. I wish it was still popular, think they got scared of licensing disputes with disney and a bit greedy with the microtransactions towards the end, started to effect gameplay through boosts.
I wish some of the changes like jumping and maps that were more than just one grid made it over to armagettron or another pc version but those stayed simple sadly.
I would eat up a modern cross platform tron lightbike game with maps like the ipodgame, jumping, boosts, etc. and cosmetics like rocketleague as long as they don’t give you a leg up. It would be all I play.
Master of Orion.
MOO2
Rayman’s saga Especially Rayman 3 and Rayman 2, I am so excited for the upcomming fan-remake Rayman 2: Redreamed
Morrowind, Shenmue, Earthbound, all the the Mega Mans, Starcraft
I’m interested in trying Shenmue after it was (to me rather surprisingly) awarded the “Most Influential Game of All Time” award by BAFTA.
How do you play it there’s days? Physical Dreamcast? Can you play it on PC? Emulator?
I have my Dreamcast still so I could theoretically boot it up any time and get the “authentic” experience. However they released it digitally for playstation and I think Xbox, along with the sequel.
I will say, it might be less accessible if you haven’t played anything like it previously. Game design sensibilities were different back then and it was the first real attempt at an open world game, to say nothing of the awkward English voice acting. But the narrative is still fantastic and I can’t think of many games that have ever been so ambitious in their scope. It’s part Virtua Fighter, part RPG, and part narrative walking simulator. I discovered it by chance at a formative time in my life and those first awkward steps into it with no idea what I was about to experience are still a core memory from my teenage years.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess haha
I wish it was on Steam or GOG. I guess I’ll keep an eye on the Playstation store, I do still have my old PS4.
Final Fantasy 6 but, back in my day, it was called Final Fantasy 3.
I’m midway through Oblivion Remastered and holy shit is inner 20s me ever happy about this raytracing thing
Still playing Call of Duty: United Offensive multiplayer on PC nearly every day
Quite a bunch, but the ones I come more often to my mind (and that are not DS titles, if not it would be Jump Ultimate Stars, Metroid Prime Hunters or Mario Kart DS) are:
Jackie Chan Stutmaster and Toy Story 2, both PS1 games (among other PS1 titles).
Dungeon master and Dungeon master chaos strikes back
• Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Hate it or love it, I still think it’s an amazing game.
• Chuzzle Deluxe. Recently got back into it after purchasing it a few months ago.
• Zuma Deluxe. Same thing applies.
• Sonic Unleashed. Went from playing on PS2 to 360 to now Steam Deck. The 360/PS3 version is absolutely superior, though.
Any others I can think of are all things I started playing closer to when I was a teen, so I’m not counting them.
Every time Final Fantasy Tactics comes out again, I’m all over it.
Every final fantasy game i seem to play over and over again on loop, bunch of different iterations. Played the nes ff1, then the ps1 remake, then the GBA remake, and then the pixel remaster. Currently playing thr pixel remaster of 2. GBA was the only other version I played of that.
Less Pokémon here than I thought there would be, though it does make a showing. I do gen 2 and 3 now and again. Gen 1, I think I’ve wrung out completely, and gen 4+ (DS and onward) just doesn’t emulate as cleanly in my experience.
And I guess I’m approaching my 2nd decade of still playing certain MUDs: Achaea/Aetolia, Discworld, Lost Souls.
I don’t really game much these days, though; certainly not like I used to.
Nfs hot pursuit 2 holds up insanely well. Ahead of its time. Gt2, ff12, musashi, crash bandicoot. Lot of ps2. Still play all my 2600 and nes and n64 games too
Currently replaying the Sly Cooper series, it will always be a favorite of mine
I’ve still got my Nintendo 64, and I sometimes boot up Goldeneye for old time’s sake.
Yoshis island
Super mario world
DKC 1, 2 & 3 Pokemon gen 1&2
Banjo kazooie & tooiee TLoZ A link to the Past, Ocarina of time & Majoras mask
Warcraft 3 + frozen throne
Command & conquer 2 + yuris revenge