Top retro games

This includes all the essential games from the era of the arcade, as well as the original 8-bit consoles and their bit follow-ups. Many of the retro games on this list have remained extremely popular to this present day, and are often still played by passionate fans on preserved consoles or on computers via emulator software.

Some of these games are part of ongoing franchises that have remained vital to this day, such as the classic "Mario Bros. Experimental video games have been around since the s, but it was two game breakthroughs in the early s that really brought games more mainstream attention.

The same was not true of 's "Pong," from the same creators, that recreated table tennis for arcades and eventually sold nearly 20, machines. By the late s, video game consoles for the home were becoming more commonplace, with both the Intellivision and ColecoVision competing in toy stores and introducing many of the titles we're still familiar with today including the original "Donkey Kong" and "Space Invaders.

Super Mario Bros. Super Mario World. The Legend of Zelda. Sonic the Hedgehog. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Mario Kart Super Mario Kart. Donkey Kong Country. Final Fantasy VII. Mortal Kombat. GoldenEye Street Fighter II.

Super Smash Bros. Super Mario Space Invaders. Donkey Kong. Duck Hunt. Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Mega Man 2. Super Metroid. Also as well it was the most expensive arcade ever released a whopping for every arcade when it first came out.

It was released in the second quarter of July in To play Pole Position you need to use a browswer if you can settle for the DOS and Atari versions which you can find right here.

Rollin around at the speed of sound, got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow. No No cut that off, this is the wrong game entirely this is the story of the first Sonic. Sonic the hedgehog. With the success of nintendos Super Mario Brothers, sega was quick on their feet to find something to compete with Mario. Segas first console was met with only a little success thanks to the powerhouse of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

For months the whole company of sega was working on creating a character just for their consoles. They would try many animals from rabbits to rhinosaurses that wore overalls and picked up items and tossed it at enemies. During this time they came up with an idea to make a platformer that would get faster and faster as the level carried on. This became a the biggest part of the game series in general. They came up with a name of MR. They decided to color the hedgehog blue to mimic the colors that sega uses as a company.

Everyone in the company had a meeting and Hirokazu Yasuhara said the name should be sonic the hedgehog. Everyone thought it was a good idea and sonic the hedgehog came out June 23, How do you play it in ?

Simple you go to steam and you can grab your copy here. You hear a Segaaaaaaaa as you turn on your Sega Genisis. Soon after you are speeding with a blue hedgehog. Mario has nothing on this guy. Codec Noises are heard. Unknown voice "Snake we need you to be on one last mission" Snake "What is this problem now" Unknown voice "It is nothing that extreme snake we just need you to be part of a article on a website called gamersdeicide.

Hideo Kojima had an idea to bring a third metal gear solid game to the 3DO in Hideo Kojima thought that the original 2 metal gears did not sell enough, so he decided he was going to name the game metal gear solid. The development started in mid with the focus on being the greatest playstation game to ever come out. The idea of the game was to make it as realistic as possible for the time so the team went onto the field using weapons, explosives, learning military techniques and talks to even having the office they work in as a testing well pretend testing ground of all the above things.

Metal gear solid was shown to the public in and was released on September 3, Why is this on the list? I personally think that metal gear solid is a game that every person should play. The story, the atmosphere, the music all hooks you within 5 minutes of playing. Not to many stealth games were made around this time. Most games were focused on action and shooting where the goal of this game was to not get caught and to be as stealthy as humanly possible.

How do you play metal gear solid in on the pc? You can go to amazon. Here is the link to the reddit setup for MGS1. You boot up your sony playstation, a sense of excitement fills the air. You learn of your first mission, you have to get to the Darpa Chief.

Can you do it Snake? So close to getting caught you panic, you tap on the back of the wall to alert the grunt of where you are. You jump to the side and grapple him and knock him out. All is safe for now. You look down at your cockpit, the engine is failing you see a planet very close to you and you head to it. As you go closer the planet pulls you in and you slowly fall to the planets surface.

You panic, you do not know if you are going to live or die. Crash, I survived but now I am trapped on a alien planet. It has been nearly a decade since the original game came out, nintendo wanting to revive a series that has a potential to sell came up with an idea to create Super Metroid.

They would bounce ideas off the top of their heads to continue what metroid started. The development cycle for super metroid took 4 years. The reason why that it took so long is Nintendo had a bunch of games coming out, people from the team were taken to work on other games. When Nintendo had no options and needed a new upcoming action title the focus went directly onto super metroid. Super metroid was released on March 19, Why is super metroid a part of this list?

First off the map design of the game was incredible with players being able to be lost in a world totally alien to them. The mapping system was one of the first in a video game. To make the game longer nintendo specifically made challenges in the game where you would need to use a new weapon to access new areas. This required a lot of backtracking and this style of gameplay is still used today under the word metroidvania.

The game also allowed you to shoot from all directions and introduced a lot of gameplay variables like the morph ball and the grappling hook. The struggle to create this game was unreal, in a world of 1 ups and powerups how would a city builder survive, this is the story of that.

Will Wright was working on a game named Raid on Bungeling Bay, it was a war game where you rescue hostages and use a helicopter to destroy buildings. He did not like developing the game he much rather focus on building the world around the game. At the same time he was doing this he got into entertainment that focused on city building or world buildiing. This lead to Will Wright focusing on urban planning and level editors and trying to combine the two ideas.

At the time every game was won or lost. You either got a highscore and won the game or you died and you get a game over. Will brought this to every developer out there with none of them wanting to publish the game. They said it would be impossible to market this game nor will it ever be a success. It was frustrating to him because he worked very hard on creating this idea. Finally a little tiny company named Maxis decided to take Will under their wings and sim city would be released in february You can play Simcity right here from your browser.

A beginning of your new city. Not much is here but you can have your New York City in no time. This game is the grandaddy of them all, no game would probably exist without the success of pong. It put atari onto the map as a game company! There once was a man named Allan Alcorn, he had a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Right after Atari was founded, the owner of the company approached Allan Alcorn, and said hey I need you to combine your skills to do something new for you.

What was that? Well Atari said hey we need you to make a game. What does the game entail? Well we want you to make two paddles on both sides of the screen with a moving ball in the middle. They both sought out a game that was similiar to their idea. They came across the magnavox odysseys table tennis game and they were amazed at it. They thought they could do it better and make it into a gaming cabinet and sold across the world. They decided that they could do something with this and they brought the device to a local bar.

The bar loved the idea and they went to the biggest arcade company midway at the time. They showed the prototype and midway was very happy with the product. There was a defect and they found out that what was causing the defect was the massive amounts of quarters in the machine. Pong was released November, 29th How do you play pong online?

You can even play people online here. While being basic in its design, it became one of the first successes in video game history. Now the plumber has been upgraded to the next level 3d. Who does he have to save? Who has to be defeated? We been here once, we have been here times. I will give you a little history about a game called super mario Now this one starts off a little weird.

Do you remember that game croc? That adorable little crocodile that jumped and hopped through pixelated worlds? I know you guys know croc! Word on the street is that during the middle s, crocs developer secretly made a 3d platformer game which used yoshi and presented it to nintendo. Nintendo got mad that they used yoshi and fired the team. Nintendo then took the idea from the company and then work on Super Mario 64 started. The croc game still came out on the playstation and on the PC as well.

It took 3 years to create this beast of a game and with good reason it is one of the first times nintendo went into a 3d world. Super Mario 64 came out on September 29, Well this is the first time nintendo entered the 3d realm.

They built a new controller just for this 3d space movement. Grab yourself a Sony PVM, sit down with a lovely beer, and enjoy one of the best fighting games of all time! Super Mario Galaxy marks the halfway point in this list of the best retro games of all time, and man is it a classic. Nintendo new they had to pull a stonker out of the bag after the success of Super Mario Sunshine, and boy did they not disappoint.

Galaxy felt so different to everything that ever came before. Sure, Sunshine was cool with the FLUDD gameplay and the cool new dynamic, but playing upside down while running around planets and jumping on Pirhana plants in zero-gravity simply blew me away. The concept is simple — save Peach from Bowser. Stars make up the bulk of the collectible action, though finding them amongst the stunning levels is no simple task… mainly because the temptation to explore every nook and cranny will leave you forgetting what the main mission was in the first place!

Familiar faces and brand new ones make up an all-star memorable cast, and Mario has plenty of cool tricks up his sleeve for gamers to pull out along the way! Remember everything I said about the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy? Well, the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy gives the original three Spyro games the exact same treatment. We all know that the best Spyro games are the original 3. They provide instant nostalgia as soon as the loading screens appear, which is pretty much why we play the best retro games, after all.

But the sheer difference in the makeup of these original titles as seen in the Reignited Trilogy is astounding. Honestly, there are so many things I missed in these games the first time around that I spotted while playing on the Nintendo Switch. The music and the moves on Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 were phenomenal.

And, while the first ever Tony Hawks game is undoubtedly the pivotal title that got the ball rolling, the second game perfected the formula and acted as the basis for the many titles to come. How many of you can remember the tunes in this game? Street skating in this game felt so real too.

The grungy settings and epic ramps were so addictive that trying to repeatedly playing the same moves over and over again never got boring, and that feeling when you finally pulled off a …. Grand Theft Auto IV takes the 7th spot in this list of the best retro games of all time. Power through a city that looks, feels, and probably smells like New York City as you work your way up the social ladder by intimidating and killing people that stand in your way….

It had huge explosions, epic weapons, and so many missions and side quests that players could just roam for hours at a time simply exploring. Opening up the elements of the map while hijacking cars, visiting strip clubs, or working as a hired goon were all parts of the journey that gamers went through with this game.

It even had its own internet and email platform for characters to use! MSG was the worthy winner of out best PS1 games article, and for very good reasons. So, why is MSG one of the best retro games ever made? Well, for starters, it has the coolest name ever, and the main character is called Solid Snake.

Ducking and sneaking is often more effective than running in all guns blazing… I learnt that the hard way. Even though most of this game is viewed from a top-down perspective, having 3D combat moments really draws gamers into the heart of the action. Konami made a masterpiece when they produced MSG, and the series has only gone from strength to strength since. Ever since Ninja Gaiden put players in the fast-paced role of a sword-wielding hero, there has been a hunger for these types of experiences.

The Messenger continues this tradition with even faster and more rewarding gameplay. While the game looks like it came from the NES days, there are certain aspects of The Messenger that emulate the look of the Super Nintendo.

The fast moment-to-moment gameplay gives players a huge sense of power and coolness that only a sleek side scroller such as The Messenger could provide. This randomly generated action game has a totally retro look that helps the brilliant simplicity of the gameplay.

Arguably one of the greatest achievements in indie gaming , Shovel Knight and all of its expansions have captured the hearts of gamers everywhere. Shovel Knight takes everything that the classics did so well and amplifies it with modern techniques and sensibilities. Gamers everywhere are hoping for a full sequel and potentially an entry in Super Smash Bros.

Mitch Rayner lives in Fredericton NB Canada, and is a musician, writer, social worker by trade, and overall lover of all things video games and movies!