I spent the summer of '81 at my buddies house killing Nazis on his apple ii in Castle Wolfenstein. For pure nostalgia unbeatable.
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If I can only choose one I have to go with WoW, nothing else has given me fun for so many years.
Cheating a little I have to add Civilization , City of heroes , Wizardry 7 , Star Control , Baldurs Gate and Planescape Torment.
Different reasons for different games , but each one of those keep a special place in my gaming memories
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Wizardy 7 was a KILLER game, I really loved that one. I love a lot of the old dungeon crawlers, but Wizardry 7 was a special one. It was no grand adventure like Eye of the Beholder or the silverbox games, but it had the same spirit of fun and adventure that those games had. It also had the philosophy of giving the player the freedom to fight and explore aggressively instead of having to barely scrape by like in other games. It’s almost like Pokemon or Final Fantasy in that way; you can get super powerful and the game doesn’t really care, as long as you know what you’re doing.
As an aside, I’m actually sad Wizardry Online didn’t survive. I know people didn’t enjoy it very much but I thought it was a ton of fun.
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Tactics is also amazing, but it doesn’t come to mind for some reason when talking about FF, probably because of its crpg nature. If you aren’t a writer, you should be, I wish I could explain things in the depth and detail you do!
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I would go with Golden Sun 2 on GBA. Nostalgy speaking, but I re-do it once in a while even 20 later. Story is great, graphics (for a GBA) are beautifuls. Combat feels great. Side content is engaging. I pray to get a new one on switch… One day…
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Quality game nice pick. What happened to that franchise?
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The team that worked on it, Camelot Software Planning, got poached to make Mario Golf and Mario Tennis for the rest of time. I’m not sure what possessed Nintendo to have them create sports games, but I really hope it wasn’t personal pettiness between them and another company like Square Enix.
They did manage to make a third Golden Sun for the DS that came out in 2010, but it didn’t take off the way the other ones did. The copies sold were pretty modest.
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I knew I recognised the name Camelot when playing a Nintendo golf game with my little cousin a ways back, what a waste of talent! Im assuming Camelot was its own entity and absorbed into Nintendo? I may be totally wrong there, but Golden Sun is super old and my memory is super shit 
Way off topic but since we are talking about older gems, have you seen Sea of Stars? Its coming out in a few weeks and looks to be an homage to the 16 bit era. Chained Echoes, which has been out for a while, is also very very good.
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I have not, I will have to check those out!
Maybe one of them will end up being somebody’s pick here in a week or two. 
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Sea of Stars has a demo on Steam, its an hour long. Chained Echoes I just recommend if you were a fan of 16 bit, turn based rpg’s. I am far more stoked for Sea of Stars than any $100 million budgeted AAA game on the horizon. I am not sure when prettier started to equate to better for the majority of gamers, but I hate it.
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My favorite retro-style game on Steam is either Shovel Knight or Stardew Valley. Both of those games really feel like NES / SNES era games, to a detail. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those ended up being an answer here at some point. There’s also Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, which is an excellent homage to Castlevania. Almost anything by Inti Creates is pretty great, which is the studio that did that game. Dragon Marked for Death is another game by them I love.
Yeah I have that wishlisted also, I really hope it’s good. I root for all these pixel games as I notice them. Maybe I’m crazy but most of them feel more fun to play than any of the 3D magenta-colored camera bloom visual vomit games and Call of Duty clones that are coming out these days.
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If you like oldschool RPG that are deep af try Darklands. You should get it on steam and it works rather well the last time I tried it. Look at the systems in place and how it’s made up. Some AAA game devs of today should take notes 
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It was my first video game
I played a lot sonic 1 and golden axe 2. Golden axe was not best at anything but it was one of my First games and I used to be repeating it over and over , trying to not loose any life . I was very fond of it. Gunstar Heroes was also good. And teenage mutant hero turtles.
But my favorite I think would be Street of rage 2.
Back In these days it was mostly “fight” games .
To tell the truth I don’t think Sega had “legendary” games, and I did not venture too much in their games.
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If you were one of the lucky few that got to play Sonic CD or Ranger-X, you might feel differently. As janky as it was, I really enjoyed Rings of Power, also. I was also really fond of Rocket Knight Adventures, which I guess goes without saying. That would be the one game everyone would bring up in the defense of the Genesis. I’ve always found that a little strange though, because the number of copies that are still around means not nearly everyone who loves that game actually played it as a kid. lol
I hear so much talk about Stardew Valley, to me it just looks intimidating. It always goes on sale, I will have to try it. Thanks for that one. Also, Dragon Marker for Death is a good game that I feel nobody knows about. Bloodstained is just quality, there isnt a better metroidvania in the past decade imo. You have good taste brother!
I appreciate the rec, but that game look a little *too oldschool for me. It reviewed amazingly, I will try it out if I can find it on a decent sale. Thanks man!
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The 3rd game wasn’t very good.
They tried to transition into a more 3D oriented game, and it lost a lot of charm imo. The chibis (small characters when you were not in combat) were quite ugly.
And the story was… Bland for lack of a better word.
I make a sacrifice once year during a red moon in the hope of a new game on switch.
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I don’t know that I can really pick just 1 game as the all-time best, but I’ll go with Torchlight 2. ARPG’s are my favorite genre, and I think I put more hours into TL2 than any other (though I suspect LE will surpass it one day). I don’t play it much any more, but every so often I’ll dip back into it for a bit (actually did that today), and it’s just plain fun. I love the colorful aesthetic, and for me personally TL2 does the best job at creating procedural maps that just look beautiful to me and mixing in lots of fun random events on maps (like the portal beast challenges).
Other than that, some honorable mentions include Jedi Fallen Order, Diablo 2, Halo, Half-Life, Mario Kart, and Super Mario Galaxy.
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I agree. As a life-long pixel gamer, I found the early attempts at 3D really annoying. Most of the time they just weren’t as charming or interesting to look at as the sprites they replaced. The only exceptions I can think of are Sonic Adventure or Mario 64. Even those obviously had a certain amount of scuff, even at the time.
These days they’re almost there. I think the Bravely Default series looks pretty good. There’s a little 3D side scroller I just got called Little Noah that also looks very good. I wish more artists would put in the effort to make 3D characters in the anime style look nice the way those do.
As an aside, I feel sorry for the Camelot guys. They were probably required to do the 3D models by Nintendo and that was probably also a game they fought to get made because they really wanted to go back to making RPG’s. They were between a rock and a hard place, seems like.
TES III Morrowind, just for the writing and atmosphere. Mods make it even better.
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I really love that game. It was a first of it’s kind. It’s hard not to agree for me, even though there are games I love slightly more now. I miss those times as a kid exploring the map and being in that world.
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