This game is held back by its age but I have to appreciate all of what it was trying to do. For its vintage, it's going for so many different things and the mechanics are layered so heavily. Keep in mind I'm basing my impressions on a localization from the 2005 Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence release, but I like the story and its attention to detail.

The music is also very, very good.

I struggle to find a good list of games that I like from the NES era but the end of its era is when a lot of my favourites arrived. As for Dragon Quest IV, there's just something so comfy about this classic NES RPG. This game was huge when it came out, in terms of scope. I also think the storytelling was the best so-far in console gaming. What an incredible adventure!

This was my first Mega Man game and it's pretty beloved among fans. It's the game where the formula was perfected. I have very early memories of playing it and never beating it because it was very hard, but I'm glad to have started on that game. It holds up pretty well, too. I got this one through the Anniversary Collection and I've played it a few times these last couple years. Endlessly enjoyable!

Although this is a game very hard to play in hindsight with its dangerous dungeons and lack of mid-level saving, the amount of depth that this world has is astounding. It was super fun to explore this world even if it was super frustrating. A very memorable game.

My favourite game of 1990 and practically a perfect game. Does Super Mario World have a single bad level in it? I'm trying to think of one and even something like Forest Secret Area, as simple as it is, is doing something pretty neat with open space. It feels SO GOOD to play and conquering it is a joy. It's the perfect difficulty level– providing adequate challenge for a casual playthrough but offering more intense obstacles for dedicated players.

Archaic in hindsight, I still enjoyed the one or two playthroughs I did of this game when I found it on an abandonware site back in 2009ish. I was impressed with the scope of the game since I had no played any Civilization title before, and game this old being this vast was surprising.

I haven't "truly" beaten this game as I never did the second loop and warped to the final boss, but my time with it was well-spent with its fair but rough challenge and engaging platforming.

A classic and unmistakable title from my childhood. There was nothing else like it and it introduced to a lot of different subgenres of gaming. Looking back, I think the Lemmings games were held back by the hardware at the time (no rewind or save state feature is a big problem for a game like that), but I still cherish the game.

The music is also very good.

When I first played this (and keep in mind I played it towards the end of the nineties), it blew me away. What other game had this kind of world and was this fun to explore and master? The secrets were so intricate and truly puzzled me to solve.

This is also the first game I can remember using a strategy guide for. One day my dad got a bunch of diskettes and on one of them was a guide for this game. We didn't have internet yet, so it was interesting to get that kind of guide (that likely came from GameFAQs) back then.

A Final Fantasy as my favourite game of 1991? Not too surprising.

I was introduced to this game after Final Fantasy VI and was disappointed with how regressive it seemed in hindsight. Since then, I've played it over and over. I've listened to the soundtrack countless times and it's early-SNES tinny sound has grown in my heart. I know every plot beat. I play this game like binging an old TV show. It's so comfy to play it– to spam spells on Baigan before he gets Reflect up, to get the treasure from Eblan Castle as soon as you get the airship, and to conquer the Lunar Subterranean by beating all the bonus bosses and collecting all the treasure. Awesome stuff!

A superbly open-ended and involved cosmic adventure! This is one of the first games that felt vast in a way you would want space to feel. The characters and writing is very charming.

The big problem I have with it is that the combat is never satisfying.

Although it wouldn't be released in the States until years later, this game means a lot to me. In terms of the franchise's early point, Final Fantasy V is the most mechanically-involved and complex entry. It can be frustrating, especially when your class experiments don't pan out, but this is a very fun game with lots of creativity and customization. Although the graphics are still in that era of oversaturated colours and the field sprites were still 16 by 16, but they ARE expressive and still pretty good. Don't care for this soundtrack as much as the other two SNES Final Fantasy OSTs but it's still good.

What game could surpass Final Fantasy V as my favourite game of 1992? This gem, that's what!

There's no other RPG that has this scope and pulls it off so well. This is the story of a person's life. You play through the role of a young hero that goes from being a kid to an adult with kids of own and what other video games stories tell themselves this well? I like the graphics and this world is so fun to explore. Just thinking about traversing this world map and uncovering its secrets is intoxicating. Dragon Quests: they always have such evocative world maps that beg to be explored.

To start out 1993, I include this title. Although this is remake, I include it on this list because it was most of my exposure to SMB and SMB3 and the entirety of my exposure to SMB2 and the Lost Levels. I have a lot of nostalgia for this updated game and I really dig the graphics. The music is mostly an improvement although I think the updated Overworld theme for SMB1 loses some of its charm.

An incredibly solid and playable Mega Man experience that would be remembered a lot better if it didn't come out on the NES two years after the SNES had launched.

This is a double-entry for the Solar Winds duology. They're a couple of space games that have many mechanics but ultimately fall into the 'adventure' category since what you need to do is very specific, like an adventure game (although Solar Winds has more verbage and a lot of different mechanics).

What drew me to the first Solar Winds game when I was young was I was compelled by its mysteries and the vastness of its universe. This is a game where you literally have to warp across lightyears using limited fuel to get to your destination and there's a satisfaction when you get it right, because the consequence of failure or misdirection is pretty much game over.

I was a huge Mega Man fan when I got this game and this game kept up that favour. I liked the upgrades and the animal-robot Mavericks (seriously those designs are sick).

This is also the first game that I beat before my brother. It was a huge triumph for young me.

This game is so incredibly fun, even if its controls are a little touchy in hindsight and the idea would have landed better in the dual-stick era. Oh well, still a cool game. I love the music, the graphics, the monsters, including the purple kind you can turn into! Maybe the game is a little too long and difficulty for its own good and there's no way I could ever beat this game legit but I've had great times with it.

I think I played this one before Lemmings the original. My problems with that game are the same here but I love the non-linearity of this title and all the different zones are really cool. We got some awesome worlds in this game: Beach World, Highland World, Circus World, Shadow World, Outdoor World, and Sports World are my favourites. The music is nice too. I have a lot of nostalgia for this one.

This is another DOS game I checked out around 2009ish when I found an abandonware site and got really invested in a small playthrough of this large game. I was blown away with how large and complex this game was. Nowadays I know that a lot of the content was procedurally generated or not individual to specific locations, but when I played it it felt like around any corner anything could happen, and that's really impressive and it's probably how a lot of players felt like when they played it when it was contemporary.

1994 features a lot of top 10s for me. Here's the first!

I don't even know where to begin with this one. This game is so many things to me. It was one of the first games with a grown-up sensibility, if that makes? Of course kids can play it, but the atmosphere in this game, as encapsulating as it is, is very dry. It's borderline a horror game. Heck, it practically is at some points. It's also very melancholic too.

It's also just a really good game with great exploration and a super power curve. I have fond memories of... mostly being frustrated on where to go next. I remember restarting the game when I got stuck in that one area in Brinstar where the three goblins teach you to wall-jump. I couldn't figure it out, so I reset. Finding the Gravity Suit was also an issue. Memories~

This is probably the game I've put the most time into. Between me playing through hundreds of wads, I've clocked days upon days into Doom II. I know that might not count if you see those wads as their own thing, but I stand by my statement.

When I first played Doom II, I wasn't terribly surprised by it being an FPS because I was still young enough to not have expectation on what video games can and cannot do. I would play the Doom I shareware after this game and although I like that Episode I, nothing compares to Doom II with its Super Shotgun and expanded enemy roster.

While the level quality is up and down, I was compelled by a lot of those levels. They intrigued me. I barely understood the game back then and had to use cheat codes to get anywhere, but the nostalgia remains. Not like I haven't played a ton of the game in the meantime and found more things to love about it.

This might as well be the game that influenced my tastes the most. Maybe? Playing this for the first time introduced me to so many new ideas. The drama of this narrative was unlike anything I had seen before and the game was challenging while also so easy to pick up and understand. I was familiar with RPGs but not to FF6's complexity.

There are so many moment ingrained in my brain that might not do a whole lot to me now, but when I was young, they struck me in a way nothing else did.

Also people that still call this game "Final Fantasy *3*" can lock themselves in a tomb.

Special mention goes to The Ultimate Doom which was mostly a re-release of the original 1993 Doom except with an additional fourth episode: Thy Flesh Consumed.

And this fourth episode was really something! It pushed the difficulty of Doom to its limits while also having a lot of very interesting ideas. In the nine levels that this episode contains, many of them have a strong core and excellent detail, something that was missing from Doom's episodes 2 and 3.

Although this game was never officially localized in the West (or at least this edition of the game), I have played a fan translation and enjoyed this game quite a bit. The graphics are nice and detailed and have this soft palette to them. The music is JRPG music but with a sound palette that's warm and folksy on one end and rockin' and fast on another. The combat was a cool experiment although it doesn't hold up well.

What I like about this game the most is its scope. I can't think of any game that feels as big as this one. The plot is very detailed for its vintage. It feels like it takes a long time to beat, but that might be because I had played it a few times before I finally finished it including a playthrough where I got to the end of the second act and quit. I also haven't played this game as much as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI.

A very robust stategy RPG. Might be a better strategy game than Final Fantasy Tactics! The story's surprisingly grounded for an SNES game with some pretty chilling moments.

Although I like the third game more, DKC2 is a close second. The gameplay is refined for the first game and this time it's a legitimately excellent platformer with great level design, tantalizing secrets, and compelling challenge. The graphics are great. The music is really good but like the game itself, I prefer the music of the third title. Also, I think Diddy and Dixie make the best partners.

Everyone's favourite JRPG has a spot on my list!

It's the quintessential adventure RPG where the mechanics aren't very deep but there's enough "snap" to them that make them very engaging. Exploration and environments are a joy to uncover. The story is good backed up with awesome time travel mechanics. The characters are distinct and are only helped by great side content that slots into the main plot so well that they don't feel like extra material.

Damn, Yoshi's are cute. I would never want to ride one (unless they wanted me to), but I would want to be friends with one. Maybe one day the Yoshi would let me gently pat their adorable snoot.

So this game is a childhood favourite. It's one of the first games I can remember where I felt drawn into another world. I was captivated with the world of Yoshi's Island and wondered what it would be like to live there. This is also one of those games that beating it for the first time was a real triumphant moment for young me. That final boss, from presentation to the perspective and intensity to the sick music, is a knockout, and beating it was a huge moment for me.

Speaking of the music, the music is pretty great although I was always disappointed that you couldn't hear the tutorial theme past that opening level. The music was part of the reason why the game was evocative.

I never did a lot of completionism stuff back when I was young but I do like the idea of the game keeping 'score' of certain collectibles.

Welp, this is it. My favourite game.

What did Earthbound do for me? It was an emotionally charged-story that used its direction and scenario design to influence the player's emotional reaction. The music is splendid and very experimental. The environments are so lively, oftentimes based around real-world locations and mixing up the concept of dungeon and town. The surreal imagery ensured that nothing else would look like it.

To this day, I still think about this game and take lessons in its craft.

NOTE: I consider this a 1995 game by its NA release date because of the localization is so important to why I like this game.

Final Doom is two completely new campaigns for Doom II.

TNT: Evilution is seen as the weaker half of the release, I like it a lot, though. For the first time in the franchise's history, the levels actually look like the real-world places they are supposed to represent! That's a great hook for a campaign especially considering how Doom II's 'Hell on Earth' levels didn't look anything like real places. It's a little boring but still enjoyable and the original music is fantastic too.

The Plutonia Experiment was a push forward in level design and difficulty. This was the next step in Doom challenge, but it also has consistently great levels. This is probably the best retail Doom campaign ever made.

Civilization II had an isometric view and the graphics were leagues better than the DOS primitivism of the first game. I played a few rounds of this game although playing the subsequent games muddled my memories of this one.

I got introduced to this one back when I was a kid but actually played through relatively recently, like in the last couple years of writing this (2021). I didn't use any modern sourceports, I played the thing pretty vanillaily. Clicking all those times would hurt my hands but it was a pretty old-school and involving experience. The slow speed made it a very atmospheric experience!

I played this one through emulation. I liked it's action-platformer gameplay with RPG-like customization mechanics. The story's pretty cool, too, and rich for a 16-bit era game.

Duke Nukem 3D was tantalizing when I was a kid because my cousin, all the could talk about was how dirty the game was. Now it took me to the late 90's to get ahold of actually playing it and by then I think the shock value didn't mean so much anymore. Instead I could focus on exploring these fascinating levels.

Like EarthBound, this game has its levels based around real environments (for the most part) which made the action and fantasy of it all more tangible. Looking back I think this game has some pretty bad gamefeel, but it's still pretty fun and I have fond memories of it.

My first RPG! And what better to get into RPGs than one themed around a popular character?

Although it took me a bit to adapt to turn-based combat (not to mention the mechanics of this game don't hold up well), I grew to love this game and it's epic journey across the Mushroom Kingdom and into Smithy's Factory. The environments and characters are delightful. I could get frustrated pretty quickly, though, especially with that one-on-one fight with Johnny in the Sunken Ship.

The music was so good though. Yoko Shimomura took the vibe of a Mario soundtrack and turned it into something texturally resonant and varied.

This was my first experience with Kirby and I loved this smörgåsbord of gameplay types. It starts simple with Spring Breeze but soon we get the full-fledged Kirby experience with The Great Cave Offensive and Milky Way Wishes. The venues are excellent and these are just adventures that you want to go on.

Aaaaand ANOTHER great soundtrack on this here game.

I don't have much bad to say about this game except that Kiddy Kong is a dud of a character design. At least the balance between Kiddy and Dixie is pretty good. In terms of light-vs-heavy, that relationship is a lot better here than in the first game.

Anyway... great level design, great locales, a good and involved adventure, an awesome world, perfect challenge, and the music... Oh god. This music finds the best middle ground between atmospheric and poppy. It's great.

I played Fallout 2 a few times before going back to this one but this is a great small-size RPG. I think it's about ten hours long, in fact I had a very special playthrough of this game the first time I got going where I completed the entire thing in a single day. It was really nice to just chill out on a Saturday and get an entire RPG out of me.

The second time I played this game was also very special because I remember playing this game while first listening to Death Grips' debut mixtape Ex-Military, which was an emotionally riveting experience. Who else has traversed the Glow while listening to MC Ride rap about doing so many drugs that he forgets how to smile?

Does this game hold up well? Not really. Other console shooters have come and gone and this seems archaic in comparison but I think back to this game and love it's structure with difficulty influencing objectives. I like the gamefeel too, with soldiers reacting to your shots in various ways. I like the myriad of weapons. I played a crapload of multiplayer too back in the day. The music? Also killer.

This might be the best game to have Final Fantasy to its name. Great mechanics and customization, and a story was way ahead of its time in terms of social commentary. It's a real work of art, you know? Before the idea of video games as art had taken off.

This one took a couple years for me to finally beat. I think I got to act three the first time I played. The next time I really gunned for a playthrough I was warned about the Riovanes fight although I cannot say that's what stopped my first playthrough.

It might be a sin to put this game over Tactics, but I must be true to my heart.

I have some splendid memories of playing this when I was teenager (around 2004ish). It was a little more complicated than Final Fantasy VI but I loved the environments and world. I loved the story and the intensity it had. The music's also pretty good with "On That Day, 5 Years Ago" being a chilling favourite.

What tops out two Final Fantasy games for my favourite of 1997? This RTS.

This is one of those games I've played countless hours of, even this vanilla version without the expansion's QOL features.

Several popular community-made campaigns required this vanilla version. I'll talk more about my experience with this game in the Rise of Rome entry in 1998.

So this is what introduced me to RTSes, a genre I still love and enjoy.

I loved building bases and collecting resources and taking on armies. The presentation of this game is especially good. These pixel graphics just pop. Although simple in hindsight, I like the speed and snappiness of this game compared to its sequel. I also like the ancient setting more than medieval times.

I first played this on the N64 back around 2000. I hadn't played anything like it but quickly got into. Exploring this zombie-ridden world was excited and I loved the puzzles.

I got invested in the story too. This is another example of a story really affecting me as a pre-teen. It was so thrilling following the narrative around the Birkins and Ada Wong. It was satisfying to see Leon toss the G-Virus into the abyss.

This game also uses something I've always wanted games to use: whatever you could call it in general, I like Resident Evil 2's A and B scenario. The second playthrough shakes things up, remixes the game just enough that it makes it a new experience even if it reuses a lot of the same stuff. Very cool, honestly.

Okay, this mammoth.

This was my first western RPG. Not the best introduction to the genre because all that open-endedness allowed a myriad of ways to screw up your character and playthrough. Not to mention, this game is real rough at the start.

I love it though. It's such a lived-in world with so many quests to do, so many stories to interact with. The environments and graphics– oh, if only I had know how spoiled I was then.

Because they came out in the same year and exist as a singular piece in my memory, this blurb represents StarCraft and Brood War.

I have played countless hours of StarCraft and its expansion. I've played it multiplayer, I've played custom maps. I have done a lot of stuff but in the end, I am in love with its six main campaigns. The story of StarCraft (or specifically its expansion) was unlike anything I had enjoyed before. It was so dark, especially in the Brood Wars campaigns where it gets almost Lovecraftian in its bleakness and apathy to humanity.

Another banger soundtrack.

I can honestly say I will never be remotely good at this game no competent to get further than liberating one extra mining town. This might not be a game I could enjoy to get good at but I do find it really fascinating. The attention to detail is beautiful. All these guns. I like the idea of this game even if I'm shoddy at it.

While this came out in 2000 in the States, I go by the Japanese release date because in the end the core concept here is what I like about the game whereas the English localization only hurts the experience. It's one of those famously bad translations.

I gotta say, though, I like the plot of this game, or what I understand of it. The world is fun to explore and the environments are cool. The world map the progression of the world map is one of the best in JRPGs. The music is standout and the setting is neat.

One of the best strategy games ever!

It has that cyberpunk psychedelia where its as trippy as it is digital. It's a real transhumanist experience and although I have only played one major playthrough, I felt my mind transcend as I got to the end of the tech tree and developed technology that went beyond the physical plane.

Although I this game is a prime example of Not Aging Well, it's an intricate, memorable horror-RPG experience. It's unbalanced, janky, and has pretty bad game feel, but I love it. It's formative.

I've finished this game multiple times and it's one of the first games I can think of where I have played through multiple builds. Even with other RPGs, I usually stick to one kind of build, even on repeat playthroughs. No, in System Shock 2 I've played Standard weapons, Heavy weapons, Laser weapons, and Exotic Weapons.

When I first played this game back in 2000ish, I was blown away with the story and how complex it was. It was probably the first time I played a video game story with political drama and a commentary on class warfare. I remember being so blown away, maybe even insulted, at the moment where Magnus defects from the Empire and joins the revolution.

The gameplay is also pretty cool. The classes, the tactics, it's all so good. I also have a special love for the item icons. I don't know why, I just like them. The music is aces, too.

There is a lot wrong with this game but I like so many aspects of it, so many strange aspects, that I can't help but love it. I like the weird sci-fantasy setting. I like the locales and complicated game mechanics. I like exploring this world. The music is a classic soundtrack, too.

This was my first "modern" Final Fantasy when I played it back around 2000. It was different but in a way that I grew accustomed to.

I have some fond memories of playing this game back in the early 2000s. Needed my brother to beat it but it was a fun time playing this pretty robust simulator.

Although I normally prefer the first AoE game, I still have lots of love for this much more popular sequel. Most of the time, me picking between the two is a matter of what I'm feeling at the moment.

AoE2 is more comfy, by far. The graphics are warmer and maybe a little muddier but not without its charms. A lot of advancements were made in this sequel and I've clocked in countless hours of this game as well.