What are your favourite games from the 90s?

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this thread is making me want to set up the old consoles and play "ninja gaiden 3: the ancient ship of doom", "donkey kong country", "donkey kong country 2: diddy's kong quest", and "jet force gemini" >_>

there were just too many good games in the nineties to list them all. some other favorites that immediately come to mind though are "super mario world", "super mario all-stars", "super bomberman 2", "donkey kong country 3: dixie kong's double trouble"(don't own that one, but my parents had rented it for me enough times to have owned it), "descent"(psone version), "metal slug", "super mario 64", "tomb raider", "bloody roar", "goldeneye 007", "bomberman 64", "tomb raider 2", "quake"(n64 version), "metal slug 2", "banjo kazooie", "house of the dead 2", "dead or alive 2", and "gran turismo 2".

Unreal Tournament
Starcraft: Brood War
Super Metroid
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Front Mission
Doom I & II
Magic the Gathering: Shandalar
Carmageddon 1 & 2 (the awesome PC games, not the crappy console versions)
Quake III: Arena
Descent II
Raiden I & II
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
Hexen
Final Fantasy V
Turrican II (I bet I'm one of the only North American fans of this one )
Streets of Rage
Sparkster (SNES)
Crusader of Centy
Sunsetriders
Gunstar Heroes
Metal Slug / X
Kirby Superstar
Warcraft II
Diablo
One Must Fall: 2097
Killer Instinct (SNES)
Mortal Kombat II

Would it be OK to include Perfect Dark and Metal Slug 3, even though they came out in 2000?

DOOM II
Civilization II
Imperium Galactica

Sim City
Resident Evil 2
MediEvil
Metal Gear Solid
Siphon Filter
Madden Series
Street Fighter
Tekken
Duke Nukem
FF7

Remember those days fondly. There are complaints from the younger generations today regarding the graphics. But those pixelated polygons were pretty state of the art and going from 2d platforms to 3d games was exciting back then.

^I've never understood the complaints about the graphics, I'm all about the gameplay. Apparently Excitebike had a tragic looking sky because Nintendo was written on it. As if that's a problem.

Seems like I hear more complaints about PS1 and N64 era games being dated rather than older NES era. Maybe because older ones are considered classics? I dunno. I totally agree that the gameplay is what matters. I started the original Castlevania recently for the first time and am having an blast with it. Very cool game.

Mario-wise, there's Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, and Yoshi's Story.

Thank the current state of the industry for that one. The big companies have been hammering that idea into consumers' heads for years now, that if it doesnt have mind-melting graphics, it CANT be a good game. Because CLEARLY the visuals are all-important, right? *rolls eyes*

As for me, the games of the 80s and 90s outdo pretty much everything after (aside from the rise of indie games recently, which tend to be VERY similar to alot of things from back then). There's way too many for me to possibly list. It was mostly about the NES, SNES, and Gameboy for me, back then. The N64 to a much lesser degree as it just didnt have all that much on it to be honest. Far as I'm concerned, it had Mario 64, Blast Corps, Banjo, DK64, and Smash, and that really was about it (no, I didnt like Ocarina much). I never got an original Playstation until much later.

Other than Nintendo's stuff (and even older things that I already had) it was PC games for me. Doom was probably THE big one for me; I still have this giant, 1200-page book that's JUST about how to create levels for it... this being back when things like modding or level design was about as far from "user friendly" as you could get. Nowadays, it's pretty easy. Back then? You couldnt even SEE the level you were putting together; if you wanted to have a look, you had to exit the editor and load the entire game. Which was this huge process. And it took like 3 seperate combined programs to make ONE level and all of them had to be run to compile the bloody thing every time you wanted to test it. But I was into the game enough that I learned it anyway, and really had a blast with it (and it got me interested in game design). Later on Duke 3D came out, which made the design stuff more sane, but still, Doom got me into that. If I had to pick a sort of "ultimate classic" it would probably be Mario, but right after that would be Doom, I think. And that time period was just full of wonderful stuff like that.

....Also, games had freaking color back then. That was nice too.

Lastly I miss Rare, as they were back then. Not just for things like Donkey Kong Country and whatnot, they also made alot of other really awesome stuff like the original Rad Racer. Now, they're... well... best left unspoken of.

Planescape: Torment technically qualifies as a '90s game, though I didn't get my copy until the '00s.

The map on the left is an actual level from Doom. It's one of the earlier levels in the game.

I didn't play video games in the 1990s.

I liked Ms. PacMan from the 1980s. And others like Centipede, Donkey Kong, Punch Out, and quite a few others from the late 70s-early 80s.

I love those 80s arcade games! Especially Defender, Robotron 2084, Spy Hunter and Asteroids. No wait, Asteroids is a 70s game.

I remember the "thump-thump-thump" of Space Invaders. That sound would dominate the whole video game arcade.

Oh geez, I remember that. Well, I remember it from a MUCH later time. Up in Wisconsin near my other house, there used to be this excellent arcade that lasted for such a very long time. It was pretty much all older games in there, from the earliest days through the Golden Age; they had very few "modern" games in there.

And holy crap, there just isnt anything like those old ones.

Space Invaders had that constant thumping, yeah. But then there was Galaxian, producing an unholy racket that just drowned out even that (and absolutely everything else). I never did figure out why that machine was so loud. I also didnt care.

It was really freaking depressing when that place randomly vanished. There just wasnt anything else like it. It was the closest thing to a real 80s arcade that was left (right down to the look and atmosphere of it), and then... it was just gone, one day.

There's still an arcade I know of about 40 minutes from my house (which apparently is also one of the biggest arcades there is, period), I still need to check that out as it's mostly retro games too. THAT one isnt going anywhere anytime soon, instead apparently it needs to get even bigger; I dont know what maniac runs that place, but he sure loves his arcade cabinets.

And I also play alot of these older games via my PC. I have Mame and some 8000+ roms on it (all arcade titles up through a certain specific year).

If I had to pick a favorite arcade game though, it might be Juno First. I encountered that at a convention one time (and for whatever reason it then keeps appearing at so many others, because that makes sense somehow) and got totally hooked. I am thinking that most people have no bloody clue what it is, but as far as I'm concerned it's a masterpiece.

I liked going to the arcades; you had to watch out for the gangs of hoods/punks, though, who would try to dominate certain games.

Those were the days when you could meet a girl, and "take her home." Decent girls and decent guys did this.

I'm glad these sorts of places are still around for people who enjoyed arcade games and the lively atmosphere.

Yeah, they're still around, but only barely. By far the vast majority of them are completely gone.

As it is, in my case the big one near me is the *only* one I'm even aware of within quite a big area from where I'm starting.