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What's your favourite era for video games? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Era can be defined as a console generation, a decade, one specific year, whatever you want. I’d encourage you to give a list of your favourite games from the generation of choice and why it was the best to you. Nostalgia is a totally viable reason too.

I’ll go first. For me, the 360 era is my GOAT. As someone in their 20s, I grew up with the 360 so nostalgia is definitely a big factor. But on top of that, I still feel like the games during that time were some of the best we’ve had. 2011 alone was a fantastic year, with Dark Souls, Skyrim, Portal 2 and many more great games. I was going to list out my favourite games from 2005-2013 but I love so many it would be far too long of a post.

I’d love to hear some of you talk about your favourite time period of games too, whether it’s agreeing with my choice or giving different opinions

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The 90s era of gaming, extending to the early 2000s. SNES, Genesis, PC Engine, N64, PS1, PS2, GameCube.

It was the era before the Internet and video gaming became extremely linked. The sheer number of classics that still hold up today, even compared to modern games, are very numerous.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

There’s lots of late 90’s-early 2000’s answers here. You’re definitely not alone in that thought

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Add one more here. Some of the greatest games came out in that period.

I made before a list of the top 10 games that impacted me the most and a large part are from that period. In no particular order:

Worms (particularly Worms World Party)
The Settlers II
Master of Orion II
Heroes of Might and Magic (particularly the first 3)
Phantasmagoria
WWF WrestleMania
Little Big Adventure
Monkey Island (especially 1-3)
Dizzy (all games in the series)
Jet Set Willy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The best thing about this reply is that literally none of those games are on my list, since I haven't played any of them (except for a Flash clone of Worms as a kid). That just goes to show the sheer amount of quality gaming that there was.

My list is moreso comprised of console games. In no particular order, and includes some later indie games:

Chrono Trigger (GOAT, ranked number 1 above all the rest of these. Fantastic story, gameplay, music, pacing, etc. I haven't played any other game as polished as this one)
Terranigma (A surprisingly deep and philosophical game for the time, even compared to other great JRPGs of the same era, or of any era)
Yoshi's Island (just raw fun)
Super Mario 64 (also just raw fun)
Majora's Mask (Surprisingly deep and emotional for a Zelda game)
Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 (2 in particular opened my eyes to actually being able to feel emotions for the first time)
Super Meat Boy (Addiction: the video game)
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Crack: the video game)
OMORI (another fantastic and emotional game, almost on the level of Silent Hill 2, but replay value isn't very high IMO)
A Link to the Past (Just raw fun, but in Zelda form)
Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 (I was especially involved in the customs scene back then)
Final Fantasy VI (A fantastic story in general)
Super Smash Bros (the series as a whole)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I didn't have any consoles, so couldn't play a lot of those games. But on PC (and on 8-bit computer before that), I played hundreds of games. There were no copyright laws in my country when I was a kid and my dad got everything he could get his hands on. In the 8-bit era he collected over 40 cassette tapes (8-10 games on each). Then when we got the PC there were boxes and boxes of floppy disks (I remember Need for Speed was on over 30 disks). Then CDs came out and I remember one CD that had 200 games on it. And as my dad collected, I tried every single one of them.

That just goes to show the sheer amount of quality gaming that there was.

I made that top 10 list years ago from some silly Facebook game that was going around at the time. The hardest part was picking just 10. My initial list had about 70 games on it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Emulation is magical. It's how I discovered most of these games.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I remember when I first got ZSNES and suddenly I had access hundreds of games I wasn't able to play before. Played through Super Mario RPG, spent so much time in Harvest Moon, and finally played the first Final Fantasy games and Legend of Zelda.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

ZSNES was also how I got into emulation for the first time. Ended up using SNES9x more, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Could not play master of orion II

Played birth of the federation before i even heard of master of orion and it ruined it lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm guessing a lot of people grew up in the late 90s to early 2000s, so it's largely nostalgia.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's not just that. 2023 was a very good year for gaming, right? A lot of the heavy hitters last year were from long-running series. Look and see how many of those series had either their genesis or consensus fan favorite entries in that time period.

Not only that, Steam, Unreal Engine, e-sports, the mainstreaming of game mods, and even AAA development itself all trace back to innovations from that time. Historically, it's a massively important time period for video games.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

As is the late 70s and early 80s with arcades, or the start of home consoles, or high fidelity 3d gaming in the 2010s (Xbox 360 and on, Nintendo Switch). Or my particular favorite, the rise of Linux gaming starting in 2013 (Steam for Linux launch) to the release of the Steam Deck.

So why is the late 90s and early 2000s so highly represented here vs those other eras? I think it's because of nostalgia, that's around the time when the likely demographic of Lemmy would be getting into games (i.e. they're old enough to remember the Internet before the last 10-ish years and be mad enough to leave Reddit, but not so old that they're interested in such things).

So that's my hypothesis as to why that era is so popular in this thread.