The PlayStation 2’s library is easily among the best of any console ever released, and even if you were to narrow down the list of games to the very best, you’d be left with dozens (more like…
The PlayStation 2’s library is easily among the best of any console ever released, and even if you were to narrow down the list of games to the very best, you’d be left with dozens (more like hundreds) of incredible titles.
But the PS2 hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth, and even though you can hook up the console using RGB component cables to a great upscaler (or use other means) to get the best visuals on a modern 4k TV, emulators have grown in popularity with PCSX2 offering gamers means to scale titles to render internally at higher resolutions, run with a more stable frame rate and, even make use of texture packs.
But do you know what’s better than an emulator? Taking the existing Playstation 2 game and recompiling it to run on a modern platform (such as your Windows or Linux desktop PC). That’s exactly what is being worked on now with PS2Recomp, a static Recompiler & Runtime Tool.
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By pwdisswordfishs 2026-01-2923:496 reply > The PlayStation 2’s library is easily among the best of any console ever released, and even if you were to narrow down the list of games to the very best, you’d be left with dozens (more like hundreds) of incredible titles. But the PS2 hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth
Besides the library, the PS2 is the most successful video game console of all time in terms of number of units shipped, and it stayed on the market for over ten years, featured a DVD drive, and at one point was positioned by Sony not just as an entertainment appliance but as a personal computer, including their own official PS2 Linux distribution.
In a more perfect world, this would have:
(a) happened with a hypothetical hardware platform released after the PS2 but before the PS3, with specs lying in between the two: a smidge better than the former, but not quite as exotic as the latter (with its Cell CPU or the weird form factor; whereas the PS2's physical profile in comparison was perfect, whether in the original form or the Slim version), which could have:
(b) resulted in a sort of standardization in the industry like what happened to the IBM PC and its market of clones, with other vendors continuing to manufacture semi-compatible units even if/when Sony discontinued it themselves, periodically revving the platform (doubling the amount of memory here, providing a way to tap into higher clock speeds there) all while maintaining backwards compatibility such that you would be able to go out today and buy a brand new, $30 bargain-bin, commodity "PS2 clone" that can do basic computing tasks on it (in other words, not including the ability to run a modern Web browser or Electron apps), can play physical media, and supports all the original games and any other new games that explicitly target(ed) the same platform, or you could pay Steam Machine 2026 prices for the latest-gen "PS2" that retains native support for the original titles of the very first platform revision but unlocks also the ability to play those for every intermediate rev, too.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-302:224 reply > (a) happened with a hypothetical hardware platform released after the PS2 but before the PS3, with specs lying in between the two
I would argue strongly that the weak hardware is why the PS2, and other old consoles, were so good, and that by improving the hardware you cannot replicate what they accomplished (which is why, indeed, newer consoles have never managed to be as iconic as older consoles). You can make an equally strong case that the Super Famicom is the best console of all time, with dozens of 10/10 games that stand the test of time. I think the limitations of the hardware played a pivotal role in both, as they demanded good stylistic decisions to create aesthetically appealing games with limited resources, and demanded a significant level of work into curating and optimizing the game design, because every aspect of the game consumed limited resources and therefore bad ideas had to be culled, leaving a well-polished remainder of the best ideas in a sort of Darwinian sense.
> (b) resulted in a sort of standardization in the industry like what happened to the IBM PC and its market of clones, with other vendors continuing to manufacture semi-compatible units
Unlike the PC market, the comprehensive list of "other vendors" is two entries long. Is it a more perfect world if Nintendo manufactures knockoff Playstations instead of its variety of unique consoles? I don't think so.
I love retro consoles as much as the next middle aged software developer, but realistically, the reason those consoles are so iconic is because we were children. Every console generation is that special generation for one group of kids.
I do agree that sometimes limitations breed creativity, but that’s not the only thing that can make the magic work.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-304:144 reply I know it's easy to trot out "nostalgia", but do you not think it's possible that older games can genuinely be better than newer games? I very much think it is common to find such games, even games I had never played in my youth. There were bad games then too, of course, and good games now, but I think the ratio of hits was higher. Particularly now that modern game development is so sloppy. Microtransaction-infested games rule the world, and while the indie scene does still produce excellent gems, most of them tend to be significantly less polished and rougher around the edges.
Yeah I think that individual retro games can be incredible and stand the test of time. For me Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night are timeless. As a whole though, it’s hard to measure. Today we have microtransactions, in the past we had games that threw in one bullshit level so you couldn’t beat it during a rental. (Lookin at you battletoads) and bad movie tie-ins, lazy arcade ports, etc. There’s always going to be trash.
One thing retro games obviously don’t have is hindsight. Shovel Knight feels like the best NES games, but lacks crap like lives and continues, because it learned from later games like Dark Souls that you can make death punishing without making it un-fun. Hollow knight builds on my favorite games with a couple of decades of lessons on how to make platformers more interesting and less frustrating.
The difference between microtransaction today and trash in the past is that the old games achieved success by not being trash. Yes trash existed but it was generally not successful and the market generally rewarded quality so the money and dev effort went into quality games. Today the money is made by gacha games so that's where the effort goes. Not the same imo.
By vlunkr 2026-01-310:04 There was plenty of movie tie-in shovelware that sold well. ET is obviously the infamous example, but this continued to go on into the 3D era. Sports games too. They aren't universally bad, but often they succeeded just because they have the official license. It's just like any kind of media, bad stuff can succeed because of deceptive marketing or slapping a familiar name on garbage.
This is all a vast oversimplification. There are obviously hundreds of games coming out every year without gacha mechanics.
I do feel like you miss the point if you compare retro games with today AAA games.
The good video games of today are 100% indie.
I love Super Mario Bros as much as the other guy, but a game like Celeste is objectively better in each and every aspect.
I’m a 90’s kid and I had a blast with my N64, gamecube, Wii …
But I’m also having a blast nowadays with :
- Outer Wilds (it’s forbidden to say what it is)
- RimWorld (colony builder)
- Satisfactory (time vacuum)
- Factorio (factory builder)
- A Hat In Time (3d platformer with a lot of love for the n64/gc but with its own character)
- Poi (same)
- Vampire Survivors (dopamine fountain)
- Tinykin (looks like Pikmin but actually the chilliest platformer I played : smooth, calm, beautiful, good design, good music)
- Pizza Tower (Wario Land with a pizza twist and a lot of love)
- Kathy Rain (point and click)
- Stanley Parable (idk what it is but it was fun)
- Evoland
- The Touryist (chill adventure)
- Super Meat Boy (hard platformer)
- Celeste (hard platformer but that loves you and encourages you)
- Hell Pie (3d platformer, ode to Conker Bad Fur Day)
- Stardew Valley
Etc …
There are a lot more but I can already say that each and every game of this list gave me at least as much pleasure as my childhood games.
By surgical_fire 2026-01-309:46 That's not entirely untrue. Triple A is the current day shovelware. It's just that the shovel is made of gold and expensive.
I find my enjoyment in select retro games and indies nowadays. When I find a game I really like that is not an indie, it is typically something that is explicitly not AAA (such as Octopath Traveler).
Hell, one of my all-time favorites is a indie I olayed a couple of years ago - Ender Lilies. It became the best Metroidvania ever for me, when I thought nothing would ever dethrone Castlevania Aria of Sorrow.
So yeah. If gaming has a future for me, it is with indies.
By bspammer 2026-01-307:36 I really didn’t expect to get a new favourite game of all time in my 30s, surely the nostalgia factor was too strong, but Outer Wilds was exactly that for me.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-309:543 reply 1) Anyone who says Celeste’s music is better than Super Mario Bros’ is a liar, and I don’t even like Nintendo games. 2) Let’s look at some of those release dates, shall we? 2019, 2013, 2020, 2017, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2016, 2013, 2013, 2008(!), 2019, 2021, and 2016.
That’s a period of 15 years. For an American, the NES released in 1985 and the PS2 released in 2000, also a period of 15 years. The fact that your “games of today” list is kind-of competing with four console generations itself is an indication that quality isn’t higher now, even with a considerably higher volume of releases.
Also only two of those games came out in the last 5 years, so things really aren’t looking great for modern games.
By framapotari 2026-01-3011:251 reply Things aren't looking great for modern games as a whole because a HN poster didn't include new enough games in their list of modern games they enjoy?
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3012:05 Things aren’t look great for modern games because when people think ‘modern games’, they think of titles from the last decade.
Except most of those games aren't "retro" because, unlike real retro games, they are mostly still updated and they work on any recent computer/console.
So for me, even for the oldest ones, they are still part of the same "era". What I mean by that is that if you buy any of the items in this list in 2026, it will not feel like it's an "old" game.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:121 reply Surely that just shows how much things have stagnated. If a 2011 game and a 2026 game don’t “feel” different, where’s the innovation?
By fluoridation 2026-01-3020:08 That's not what GP said, what they said is one doesn't feel _older_ than the other, not that they don't feel different at all.
That aside, is innovation (technological or otherwise) the goal of video games? If past a certain year the best games of every don't seem to be any better than any other, but just different kinds of good, to me that's not stagnation, but rather that the designers collectively figured out how fun games that are not constrained by the hardware. There's a reason, for example, that past a certain point lives systems just about went away, or autosaving nearly completely replaced manual saving.
By wizzwizz4 2026-01-3016:47 Super Mario Bros works on any recent computer / console. Is it not retro?
By Wowfunhappy 2026-01-3015:551 reply > Anyone who says Celeste’s music is better than Super Mario Bros’ is a liar, and I don’t even like Nintendo games.
…I’m a liar, I guess.
And I do like Nintendo games.
By natebc 2026-01-3018:10 I think that person doesn't understand what a liar is either lol.
I'm too slow to finish a game like Celeste but the soundtrack is an all timer. Lena Raine's music is fantastic.
Super Mario music is great too ... why do we have to tear one thing down to lift another up?
By ranger_danger 2026-01-3016:06 > a game like Celeste is objectively better in each and every aspect
As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding.
By Swoerd 2026-01-3013:46 [dead]
By GoblinSlayer 2026-01-3022:26 I played Yoshi's island as an adult and think it's the best platformer game. I wonder if it counts as nostalgia.
By youngtaff 2026-01-3012:14 IMV Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube is way better than any of it's successors
>the reason those consoles are so iconic is because we were children
if you spend some time on youtube and look at people too young to even have been around play through those games it just becomes evident very quickly how wrong that assessment is. There's an energy even among young audiences when they're playing games like Metal Gear Solid 1&2 for the first time that you hardly see for anything coming out today.
There was a level of artistic talent in that generation, also in animation of the time, that simply doesn't really have a parallel today and brushing it off as nostalgia has a lot to do with he inability of people to recognize that there's no linear progress in art. Talent can be lost, some periods are better than others, just having more cpu and gpu cycles available does not produce better art.
The fact that almost 30 years after games like MGS it's still Kojima and a lot of Japanese guys now with increasingly gray hair who end up getting a lot of awards and pushing the envelope that should tell you something.
By sapphicsnail 2026-01-308:49 I think people forget there were a ton of shit SNES/PSX/whatever games. I personally have a soft spot for the 16 bit era but there are plenty of indie games coming out that are just as beautiful and creative. There's also way more exploration with narrative structure now then there was back then.
I can name 2 games too. Look at games like animal well or balatro. They’re wildly original and not made by old Japanese dudes.
yes but it's important to note they're indie games, on the periphery of the culture for a reason. Animal Well is an explicit 16bit scanlines retro game. The first game that comes to your mind is one harkening back to the aesthetic of the 90s. In 1998 you had, and this is of the top of my head: MGS, Starcraft, Thief, Half Life, Baldurs Gate, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil, Xenogears, Unreal and I'm probably forgetting some all in the same year.
That's not just games but entire modes of expressions and genres being invented. So successful the industry is still occupied with reproducing those franchises, not inventing new ones.
Animal Well was great, but it's also so exceptional now, like Expedition 33, that people frantically celebrate each AA title in an otherwise extremely bleak culture.
To each their own, but I don’t know how you can call it bleak. This is a golden age of gaming if there ever has been one. So many phenomenal games, amazing sales, way more cross-platform games. Yeah there are assembly line AAA games, just don’t play them.
It kind of reminds me of "No good music comes out anymore". There's more music coming out now than ever before. It's all bad? No. It's just that the music with the biggest marketing budget isn't to your taste. Whatever you like, even if you don't know it exists yet, there's new music coming out to your taste right now. It might take you some effort to find it.
By GoblinSlayer 2026-01-3110:49 That's a systemic problem of sorts. First, there are already more games than you can possibly play. Second, modern games contain a lot of bullshit and are not in your taste. Third, you need a whopping battlestation to play even pixelart platformers. It's not clear if modern games are even worth to bother.
Look at my list here [1] but I think it’s coming back. Sure the big studios are all collapsing from everywhere and extracting value from everywhere like any shitty corporations. Nintendo feels like they are surviving a little more but even them are more and more doing corporate shit.
But what I see is also happening in parallel, is that the people nostalgic from the 90s era of video games are now 30 to 40, are now senior programmers and they are determined to create another batch of truly good games.
Sure the biggest studios have the biggest marketing budget but when you read a little about them, they are just all slowly dying. Most news about big old studios are about firing thousands of people, being bought by other corporations who will also fire people.
Sure, Expedition 33 feels like an outlier, but it’s just a game from ex Ubisoft employees. Ubisoft which is sadly also slowly dying.
By necovek 2026-01-309:40 I think Nintendo and Sony were almost the pioneers of "corporate shit": yes, Nintendo has a bit different style of gameplay they target, but their business practices have been corporate-protectionism for decades.
By surgical_fire 2026-01-309:321 reply I disagree.
I routinely revisit old games with a critical mind. It is an interesting thing to do.
I find that quite a few games I really loved as a kid are special because I played during a formative age, yes. Some are better left in the past.
But I find some that still manage to impress me to this day. They are not good only as a memory, they are just really good.
And a second counter is that my all-time favorite consoles are the SNES and the Switch. I have been gaming ever since the Atari 2600 days. The Switch was released well into my 30s. I have no nostalgia for it.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough because I agree with everything you said lol. What I take issue with is the parent comment trying to assert that the SNES (or any console) is the greatest of all time. There’s too much subjectivity in art to make a statement like that. I’m trying to say that it’s nostalgia informing their opinion, even if they’re disguising it with technical arguments.
By surgical_fire 2026-01-3015:111 reply Ahh ok. My bad, I really misunderstood your point then.
To expand on it, to not let the thread go to waste - I think there is value in nostalgia, we should not ignore our past, it makes who we are. But it is important to recognize when something is good only for nostalgia.
For example, I adore the original Phantasy Star. It was the first RPG I played and to this day I remember my absolute awe in exploring an open world. One of the first things I did there was to walk along a narrow path in between some mountains and the ocean, only to be slaughtered by a group of spiders way too strong for me. It was amazing. Getting out into the world, exploring caves, it felt like an adventure. And later getting into an starship and exploring other worlds. Alis Landale is to this day my spirit animal - When I am given the option to create a character I often make a girl with auburn hair and name her Alis.
I came back to this game twice in the past years - once playing it on Emulator with an improvement patch, another on the Switch re-release. I still had fun printing grid paper and drawing maps on my own, going into a 4 level cave to get to a cake shop, etc. But I recognize it is pure nostalgia. Recommending that game should only be done in a "if you want to see an early stage 8-bit RPG, you can do a lot worse than Phantasy Star". When I play a new RPG I am chasing the same rush my 8 year old self had when playing that for the first time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have a lot of trouble nowadays to engage with modern "blockbuster" games, or triple-A if you want to call it that. Even darlings such as Elden Ring or BG3 failed to grab me. In current times, I do find my rush typically on Indies, or at most lower spec games when made by giant publishers. It is no coincidence that I still enjoy Nintendo games, I suppose.
Maybe I am just getting old and jaded lol.
I'm pretty similar. AAA games are very similar to modern blockbuster movies. They're playing to the lowest common denominator, and often aren't motivated by any central vision besides making money. But just like Hollywood, sometimes a really creative project makes it through all that machinery. A series that has worked for me are the modern Doom games. Could have been a lame cash grab but they nailed a really interesting formula and continued to tweak it in each game.
By surgical_fire 2026-01-3021:38 I don't disagree. I really enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima years ago. By all accounts it was very much an AAA game. But enjoying those for me is the exception, not the rule.
On the other hand, I have been finding a lot of fun with Indies. Lower spec games mean seem to have a liberating effect, in that they can experiment with gameplay, aesthetics, style, narrative, etc.
It may be some romanticism on my part, but I think that when a project does not cost hundreds of millions to make, there's less anxiety with taking some risks.
Which brings me to those games made in the 90s. Those games were typically short (an RPG like FF6 that took 50+ hour to finish was gargantuan back in the day). Those games did not have obscene costs, a game flopping didn't mean the studio was closing. Things changed, if for better or worse I can't say.
By mistercheph 2026-01-306:253 reply Will people ever be nostalgic for the xbox one? For the iphone 14?
I doubt it. These products might even be good, but they are not like their early ancestors in several significant ways that will have them relegated to the footnotes of history. Most importantly, they are difficult to distinguish from both their immediate predecessors and their immediate successors. I don't mean to say that people won't have treasured experiences from this time that they long for in 20 years, just that I doubt the console will play as significant of a role in the memory.
By mlrtime 2026-01-3012:57 Maybe not xbox one, but I was talking to younger folks about how I'd play mario kart for hours and hours...
They didn't associate but then told me their own anecdotes with the Dreamcast. So my experience matches OPs, its the time/place more than the console.
By abustamam 2026-01-3019:33 I got an Xbox One in college. One thing that it had that I'm surprised my PS5 doesn't have was split screen functionality. You could play a game and watch TV (or do whatever else) at the same time. I never touched an XSX so I can't attest if it has something similar, but the concept was pretty neat.
I wouldn't say I'm nostalgic for the X1, but it was a good piece of hardware.
By pjerem 2026-01-306:54 Just for the joke, I own the og Xbox One and it’s the only console I hated from day one.
I clearly remember plugging it to my TV with excitement and being greeted with gigabytes of mandatory updates. And then I discovered that you weren’t able to play the game from the disk and that you need to install it on the fucking hard drive !! And then I discovered that the disc reader was actually slower than my fiber connection which means it was faster to play a game from the online store than installing it from a real disk.
I think I had to wait for at least a full hour just to play my first game.
And on top of that the performance was actually not that good. 30fps everywhere, it was worse than the Nintendo games on Wii / GameCube which usually ran at 50/60fps.
I still own this shit but I never liked it. At least it was useful some month ago when I had to update my Xbox controller firmware (but since I didn’t power it on for years , I also had to wait for updates :) ).
I belong to the 8 and 16 bit home computers generation, which grew along those consoles, yet for those on my circle consoles weren't special, home computers were.
Hence why I find funny the remarks of "PC gaming" is growing, for my crowd it was always there since the 1990's.
By wing-_-nuts 2026-01-3014:492 reply >I find funny the remarks of "PC gaming" is growing
If anything, with current prices, it's dying. I don't say this as a 'pc v console' flame. I'm saying that if you want your hobby to be widespread, sustainable and growing it needs to be accessible to a broke highschooler. PC gaming might be affordable to us tech workers, but it isn't to them, and that's a problem. Hell even console gaming has become very expensive in the last couple years. A ps5 is $500, which is reasonable for what you get, but the $70 games and $80 / yr PSN sub adds up.
By GoblinSlayer 2026-01-3021:31 NES games are accessible :3
Also 2-player games.
By pjmlp 2026-01-3015:20 Not really, because as anyone old enough to have played games with 48 KB, that were quite additive, the gameplay is what matters, not GB for textures.
I am a bit younger (my first PC was a 486), but much like you I and most of my friends grew up with PCs. My happiest memories are endless evenings playing Counter Strike and Diablo 2 at Internet cafés.
So yeah, PC gaming is growing... back home in Europe it has always been the number one platform!
By pezezin 2026-01-3023:35 I first started with big LAN/Demoscene parties. Between 2003 (when I finished high school) and 2008 (when I finished university) I attended Euskal Encounter (https://ee33.euskalencounter.org/) every summer. LAN parties at friend's places came later, after we all moved out of our parents homes and got our own cars xD
God, how do I miss those days...
By RankingMember 2026-01-3015:551 reply I can't believe we lugged our CRTs around too. So much weight being moved around but it was worth it!
By natebc 2026-01-3018:13 I have some great memories of LAN parties at friends playing Unreal Tournament and even that funky Nerf version they made.
By PetitPrince 2026-01-308:221 reply I join my voice in disgreeing with this. While some games can indeed be rose-tinted (I have fond memory of that Game Boy Spiderman game, and it's a terrible shoverware game), many of them are traiblazer (like, invented a genre) or are still standing on their own very well.
Some? There are tons of horrible old games, vastly outnumbering the good ones. It's just by now it's fairly established what the good games are and the bad ones are mostly forgotten my most.
We simply don't have the same luxury with new games, they can be hit and miss, and reviews are untrustworthy.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-309:363 reply I feel as though this reply doesn't really address what is being said in the prior post at all. Yes, bad old games exist. But there were literally dozens of genre-defining games that would go on to shape how games continued to be made in the decades since. Somebody posted a list of indie titles they consider good and probably half of them are outright homages to these older games. Games that are so good they define or reshape genres are few and far between nowadays. They do exist (Vampire Survivors was mentioned, and it is one), but not anywhere near the rate they used to.
You have to consider that it’s easier to create a genre when there are fewer games in existence. On Atari you’d make a game called “basketball” and bam, new genre!
By anonymous908213 2026-01-3015:06 That is why I specifically included "or reshape". Atari was first for many genres, but it didn't meaningfully define them, or to the extent it did they were significantly reshaped by future games. Super Mario Bros. was far from the first platformer but it, and future developments in the franchise, were so much better than everything that came before them that they became the face of the genre. We see Metroidvanias copying the Super Metroid / Castlevania formula for three decades and counting. None of those copies, not even the wildly successful ones like Hollow Knight, reshaped the genre such that future games were made in their image. And so it goes for most genres. It is certainly possible to reshape a genre in the modern era; Stardew Valley did it, for example. But it is rare for new games to pull off a concept so well that everyone after them copies their homework. Everyone is still copying the homework of the games from 20, 30 years ago.
By PetitPrince 2026-01-3010:33 Yeah I was responding to the opinion that old games are good because of nostalgia, which I don't agree with at all. Some are good because of nostalgia, some are good because they're just that good (there's a thriving community around NES Tetris for instance), some are good because they pushed the medium forward (Metal Gear Solid, Warcraft, The Sims, ...).
By mrguyorama 2026-01-3017:52 >Yes, bad old games exist. But there were literally dozens of genre-defining games that would go on to shape how games continued to be made in the decades since
The N64 had one of the smallest videogame libraries ever. It had less than 400 titles. How many of those were "Super great" vs how many were utter garbage?
The SNES had 1749!
The vast vast majority were slop.
A lot of the "great" ones are only really great in context, ie no preceding works to draw from and with the technological limits of the time.
Is Pilotwings good? As someone who grew up with similar age flight simulators but not pilot wings, it is extremely mediocre. Same for StarFox and StuntRaceFX even though both were dramatic at the time, but they do not hold up in the slightest. 12fps is not that fun.
>Games that are so good they define or reshape genres are few and far between nowadays.
Yes, this is called a new domain maturing. This is the expected outcome in all new domains. You pick all the low hanging fruit and explore most of the solution space.
Scroll through this list and tell me things were better back then
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Nintendo_Enterta...
By wing-_-nuts 2026-01-3014:422 reply >the reason those consoles are so iconic is because we were children.
If that were the case, we would only really love the games we grew up with. I stayed at an air bnb that had a ps2. I sat down and played ace air combat; a game I'd never touched on a console I'd never had as a child, and I had a blast.
I also recently picked up fallout 1/2 for a couple bucks on steam, and while the controls and graphics weren't great, I still enjoyed the game even though I never touched it in childhood.
Realistically, there are a few games for the xbox / ps2 era where the graphics really have not aged well, but for the most part I am not a pixel snob, at all.
By drdeca 2026-01-3016:49 > If that were the case, we would only really love the games we grew up with.
I’m not sure that’s true? Like, perhaps the preference might generalize from the several games one did play as a child to other games which are similar to the ones one played as a child, with the preference still being a result of which games one played as a child.
By vlunkr 2026-01-3014:59 Sure, I didn’t say all old games are bad, we just have to be aware of nostalgia as a factor. It’s difficult for a game to match the ocarina of time for me, because I had simply never experienced something like that. As an adult I recognize that it is a good game, but also that someone who wasn’t there at the time isn’t going to see what I see in it.
By JoeyJoJoJr 2026-01-302:363 reply This might be a nitpick, but I could probably only count 5-10 SNES games that would be considered 10/10 IMO, and not many that I think are worth sinking decent time into these days, compared to something like Burnout Revenge - a great game but certainly not a 10/10 game.
Still, I do find the SNES library, and 16bit games in general, quite astounding from a creative and artistic perspective, but not so much from a player’s perspective.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-302:422 reply A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Kirby Super Star, Donkey Kong Country 1-3, Super Metroid, Megaman X series, Dragon Quest series, Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound... just off the top of my head, are all very much worth playing today.
The Dragon Quest series, while beloved, is hardly the epitome of peak SNES gaming. It’s always been (purposefully) extremely conservative and dated in its design.
If you’re gonna go for quality SNES RPGs that show the console shining, you’d be better off with Terranigma, the Final Fantasy series, Tales of Phantasia, Chrono Trigger, etc, etc.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-303:041 reply There is indeed a very strong and deep library of JRPGs to recommend, but I strongly disagree that DQ is not among the best. I recently replayed two of them in the past two years and both were still 10/10 experiences for me. They are conservative, sure, but that's not a bad thing. One of the points I was making about limited hardware is that polished simplicity can trump overeager complexity, and I think the DQ games are a shining example of that.
I love DQ. My point wasn’t that they were bad RPGs. Simply that they don’t fit within OP’s point.
Most of them could just as easily be NES/SMS games with slightly tuned down graphics; they don’t push the SNES in any meaningful way. As mentioned, that’s an intentional decision and not intended as a slight.
I get your point, but "slightly tuned down" is a bit hyperbolic.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-3018:04 From the context of the conversation, it was clear they were talking about the Super Famicom entries, not saying that DQXI could be demoted to a Famicom game[1]. I don't really agree with them, although I didn't feel like continuing to belabour the point at the time. I think the SFC remakes of the Famicom DQ games (1-3) add an entirely new dimension to them. Despite their influential heritage, I do not think DQ 1-3 on the Famicom stand the test of time, and I don't think they're worth playing other than for the historical value of seeing how the genre developed. Whereas I think DQ 1-3 remakes on the Super Famicom conversely absolutely do hold up as top-notch experiences.
[1] Although notably, they did release a demake of DQXI into a Super Famicom-style game!
By deaddodo 2026-01-316:30 Did you just use a Gen 8 (3DS/Switch, PS4, Xbox One) game to make a point about SNES gameplay? Did you intentionally miss the point or are you attempting to obfuscate it?
Obviously a game for modern consoles is going to be far more advanced than an NES game; even while still being quite conservative.
Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 2 11/10.
Seiken Densetsu 3 is good too. Only released in Japan but got translated by fans to be played on emulators. Now part of Collection of Mana for Switch and officially remade in 3D for Switch, PS4, XBox and Windows named Trials of Mana.
As a SoM fan I'd hesitate to give it 11/10, mostly due to how the optimal strat for an action game is how you menu through spells, interrupting combat flow.
By uxp100 2026-01-3013:42 Yeah, I had great memories of secret of mana and SD3 (emulated in translation, I think that was Aeon Genesis?) and I replayed them with my partner in 2020. For a few hours. Honestly, kinda miserable.
Single player it was less fun than I remembered, multiplayer it was awful. SD3 is a beautiful game, and very overrated.
> This might be a nitpick, but I could probably only count 5-10 SNES games that would be considered 10/10 IMO firstly, this seems like a pretty flawed standard for evaluating a consoles library, no? but secondly, "5-10 10/10"s seems like a pretty good amount for any consoles library anyways, unless you value a "10/10" less than i guess i would
By JoeyJoJoJr 2026-01-305:56 I’m not criticizing the library of SNES. I have very fond memories playing SNES games. It was more in response to the statement that there are dozens of 10/10 games on SNES. Let me clarify, there are not many 10/10 games on SNES (or any system for that matter), let alone dozens.
By anthk 2026-01-308:19 Between JRPG's, plataformers, SMK and Top Gears you can sum more than 20.
By Someone 2026-01-3014:39 > Unlike the PC market, the comprehensive list of "other vendors" is two entries long
Before there was “a sort of standardization in the industry” the comprehensive list of “PC vendors” was one entry long.
Years before that, there were several times there was “a sort of standardization in the industry”, both of which led to there being many vendors.
- the Altair bus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-100_bus#IEEE-696_Standard: “In May 1978, George Morrow and Howard Fullmer published a "Proposed Standard for the S-100 Bus" noting that 150 vendors were already supplying products for the S-100 Bus”
- CP/M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M#Derivatives: “CP/M eventually became the de facto standard and the dominant operating system for microcomputers, in combination with the S-100 bus computers. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s.”
By trashb 2026-01-309:39 This reminded me of the following quote "Limitation breeds creativity", and therefore the PS2's limitations where instrumental to it's success.
The PS2 in may ways was a great improvement on the PS1 however it was not easy to develop for and could do certain things very well, other things not so well. One example is the graphics due to the unusual architecture of the Emotion Engine (gpu). I think this forced the developers to consider what their games really required and where they wanted to spend the development effort, one of the key ingredients for good game design.
Additionally the release hype of the PS2 was quite big and the graphics that where achievable where very good at the time, so developers wanted to go through the development pains to create a game for this console.
Not to forget besides the mountain of great titles for the PS2 there is also a mountain of flopped games that faded into obscurity.
By delaminator 2026-01-300:202 reply > and at one point was positioned by Sony not just as an entertainment appliance but as a personal computer with their own official PS2 Linux distribution.
to avoid EU import taxes
By pjmlp 2026-01-307:36 As owner of PS2 Linux distribution and related hardware, it was sort of ok.
Sony intended it to be the evolution of Playstation Yaroze, fostering indie development, instead people used it mostly to run emulators on the PS2, hence why the PS3 version lost access to accelerated hardware for graphics.
PS2 Linux had hardware acceleration, the only difference was that the OpenGL inspired API did not expose all the capabilities of a regular DevKit.
Community proved that the development effort wasn't worth it.
The XBox arcade and ID@XBox programs have also taken these lessons into account, which is why you only see everyone running emulators on rooted XBoxes, not the developer mode ones.
The market of IBM PC clones only happened because of an IBM mistake, that was never supposed to happen, and IBM tried with the PS2 / MCA to take their control back, but the Pandora box was already open, and Compaq was clever with the way they did reverse engineer the BIOS.
> featured a DVD drive
Wasn't it also among the cheapest DVD players on the market back then?
Yes, it was like the same price (close enough) as a regular Sony DVD player, which was nuts.
There were cheaper off-brand DVD players, of course.
You did have to buy a remote separately, though, unless you wanted to use the game controller (which had a cord).
By prmoustache 2026-01-3022:37 Back then, unless you were using a projector, the screens weren't that big so we seated clother to the screens.
Besides there isn't that much operation you need to do with a DVD. Appart from volume control (which was set on the TV/speaker system command), you would just need a pause when you wanted to go for a pee so no big deal to only have the corded controller.
By BrtByte 2026-01-3011:43 Ironically, what you're describing is kind of happening now, just in software
Unlike the PS3 which the US Air Force bought 1,760 and clustered into the 33rd most powerful** at the time.
(**Distributed computing is very cheat-y compared to a "real" supercomputer which has insane RDMA capabilities)
By mywittyname 2026-01-304:24 We had clusters of them in university too.
If all you needed to do was vector math, a dedicated vector processor with eight cores that are capable of running as fast as the extremely wide bus could feed them with data is the way to do it. You couldn't buy anything close to it's capabilities (for that specific task) for the money.
I remember the course we used them in being hard as hell, and the professor didn't really have any projects prepared that would really push the system.
From what I understand (may be wrong) this is exactly the reason that they stopped allowing Linux installs on PS3s.
People were buying them just for this purpose. However, the consoles were sold at a discount because Sony expected users to buy games, controllers, etc. If someone bought a PS3 alone, without anything else then Sony lost money.
By ChoGGi 2026-01-3013:55 It coincidentally happened around the time this came out.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110106074158/http://psx-scene....
Then they sued him. There's a bunch of archived links on his Wikipedia page.
By pwdisswordfishs 2026-01-3018:10 "it was a dreadful, useless computer, even then"
So you don't dispute the thesis that the hypothetical general-purpose machine described in the comment would have needed to have been been better than the PS2?
By emodendroket 2026-01-2921:0811 reply This is cool but of course it's only going to be a small handful of titles that ever receive this kind of attention. But I have been blown away that now sub-$300 Android handhelds are more than capable of emulating the entire PS2 library, often with upscaling if you prefer.
By observationist 2026-01-2922:387 reply Moore's law never ceases to amaze (the vulgar version where we're talking compute/dollar, not the transistor count doubling rate.) It won't be too long before phones are running AI models with performance equal to or better than current frontier models running on $100 million dollar clusters. It's hard to even imagine the things that will be running on billion dollar clusters in 10 years.
By freedomben 2026-01-2922:551 reply I do hope you're right, but I'm quite skeptical. As mobile devices get more and more locked down, All that memory capacity gets less and less usable. I'm sure it will be accessible to Apple and Google models, but models that obey the user? Not likely
By timschmidt 2026-01-2923:161 reply As state of the art machines continue to chase the latest node, capacity for older nodes has become much less expensive, more openly documented, and actually accessible to individuals. Open source FPGA and ASIC synthesis tools have also immensely improved in quality and capability. The Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 contains an open source Risc-V core designed by an individual. And 4G cell phones like the https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-pro are available on the market built around the very similar ESP32. The latest greatest will always be behind a paywall, but the rising tide floats all boats, and hobbyist projects are growing more sophisticated. Even a $1 ESP32 has dual 240mhz 32bit cores, 8Mb ram, and fast network interfaces which blow away the 8bit micros I grew up with. The state of the open-source art may be a bit behind the state of the proprietary arts, but is advancing as well.
It's really fun to have useful hardware that's easy to program at the bare metal.
By direwolf20 2026-01-301:111 reply Even when technically accessible to individuals it still costs at least 10k$ to get a batch of chips made on a multi project wafer.
By timschmidt 2026-01-301:502 reply chipfoundry.io charges $14,950 for packaged 100 chips. As far as small batch manufacturing goes, that's reasonably affordable. $149 ea. Occasionally I see better deals crop up as part of group buys or for bare dies. Presumably, one would prototype their design on an inexpensive FPGA board first, to verify functionality. So as to be reasonably sure the first batch of chips worked. Folks like Sam Zeloof are working to build new tools for one-off and small batch designs as well, which may further reduce small quantity prices.
By jacquesm 2026-01-305:58 Some of the chips I use in my design that are not custom are in that price range, so to me that looks extremely affordable.
By direwolf20 2026-01-309:13 You can't order one chip. You need a whole batch.
By ericmcer 2026-01-3016:37 It might not be in our lifetimes... the frontier models are using terabytes of RAM. In 10 years iPhones went from ~2GB to ~8GB.
2012 Macbook pros had up to 16gb, 2026 maxes out at 64gb. So 4x increase in 16 years. 1996 Mac desktop had 16MB of ram, so from 1996-2012 there was a 1000x increase.
We won't see gains like we did from the 80s-2000s again.
> compute/dollar
That's ironic because building a PC is getting more expensive than last year for the first time.
By heliumtera 2026-01-302:234 reply I don't think you're going to see phones with 512gb VRAM+RAM in your lifetime.
By bentcorner 2026-01-304:51 When I was a kid I recall my cousin upgrading his computer to 1 or 2 MB so that we could get some extra features when playing Wing Commander 1. That was 1990.
35 years later, burner phones regularly come with 4 GB of RAM these days. 3 order of magnitude difference, not taking into account miniaturization and speed improvements.
In another 35 years who knows what will happen. Yeah things can't improve at the same pace forever but I would be surprised if anyone back in 1990 could predict the level of technology you can get at every corner store today.
Maybe it's not that everyone gets an RTX 5090 in our pocket, but maybe it's that LLMs now can run on rpi. Realistically it's probably something in the middle.
When I was a kid in Elementary we used DOS computers with maybe 4MB of RAM or few MB and the Play Station wasn't many times powerful. A few years (two or three) later we got Windows 95/98 with 128 times more RAM. A few years later, computers could emulate more or less the PSX and the N64, all within six years.
By cubefox 2026-01-309:29 The PlayStation 5 (16GB) has only twice as much RAM as the PlayStation 4 (8GB), and the PlayStation 6 will likely have just 1.5x as much as the PS5: 24GB. And even that might be optimistic with the recent explosion of memory price.
This is a joke right? Not even 10 years ago the first phones with 4GB RAM came out, today there are quite a few phones with 24GB. At that rate we'll be at 512GB by around 2040.
By heliumtera 2026-01-3015:21 Phones have as much memory as Android requires, not much more. A low end thinkpad 10 years ago had 8gb memory, and today is same capacity bit more modern and faster. By the same rate we would have a very very fast 8gb memory thinkpad by 2040. Same thing with GPUs. Mid range GPU 10 years ago had 12gb VRAM, mid range AMD GPU last generation (6600xt) had 8gb and 7600xt 16gb, Nvidia 5060 comes at 8gb/16gb.
Phones with 4gb ram is not feasible today because they wouldnt be able to run Android and phone home comfortably, even being a thin client requires running Android and react application on electron. 4gb is not good.
In 2040 phones will came out with the bare minimum to run Android, all the stupid Chinese apps Android distro pushes into consumers, and a react application on electron.
I don't think there are "quite a few" phones with 24GB. For example, even the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which is one of the most expensive ones out there, only has 12GB DRAM.
By heliumtera 2026-01-3015:22 Maybe he fell for the 12 + 12 crap they advertise where half the memory is swap
By plorg 2026-01-3015:26 I took it as a comment on the economics of RAM, but I think the current state is transitory (does AI continue apace? Prices will eventually justify more competitors, even at tremendous startup cost. AI crashes? More RAM for the proles)
By cvs268 2026-01-303:34 A tech-optimist would perceive this as a death-threat! :,-)
> ... It won't be too long before phones are running AI models with performance equal to or better than current frontier models running on $100 million dollar clusters.
Maybe, perhaps phones will have the compute power... But not enough memory. If things continue the way they are, that is. Great for AI firms, they'll have their moat.
DRAM price actually hasn't decreased much over the last 10 to 15 years. In the decades before, there was a huge increase in memory capacity, perhaps even exponential like for transistors.
By spookie 2026-01-3020:47 Well, we live in extraordinary circumstances today. A $40 kit (Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6000 C36 16GB) is now $199. And that is the cheapest DDR5 I saw. With this year's news of even more allocation towards data centres, Micron exiting the consumer market, and the current inertia of things, I think it will take quite some time for us to see prices back to as they were.
By pants2 2026-01-307:04 In the same way we have websites running on disposable vapes, it may not be long before such a device could run a small local LLM, and lots of appliances could have a local voice interface - so you literally talk to your microwave!
By deadbabe 2026-01-300:45 They will not build that phone because then you won’t subscribe to AI cloud platforms.
It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and it's incredible. Been playing WiiU and PS2 games flawlessly at 2x res, and even tackling some lighter Switch games on it.
By reactordev 2026-01-2922:1711 reply It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles.
- Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES
- Punchout (good arcade fun) NES
- TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version
- NBA Jam Mame Version
- Secret of Mana SNES
- Chronotrigger SNES
- Breath of Fire 2 SNES
- Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X
- FF Tactics PS1
I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.
Outer Wilds, Baba is You, Blue Prince, Hades 1&2, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Clair Obscur, What Remains of Edith Finch, 1000xResist, Return of the Obra Dinn, Roboquest, Rocket League, Dark Souls, etc. I could go on, and on, and...
Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match.
Do you actually engage with modern games?
Those may be some amazing games you listed but none of them scratch the itch that some folks have for twitchy NES games. For some reason, modern indie developers never try to emulate the tight, twitchy, highly responsive controls of NES games. Instead, they go for floaty, slow acceleration-based, more forgiving controls.
The puzzle games in your list have no equal though. The NES is pretty light on puzzle / adventure games, though it did receive really nice ports of the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate) as well as Maniac Mansion, and it has a couple of unique ones with Nightshade and Solstice that blend in a bit of action while remaining primarily adventure games.
By CoolGuySteve 2026-01-300:141 reply A large part of this is because the latency on modern TVs can be anywhere between 4.7ms and 150ms so games have to allow for a lot of slack in their input.
The NES and SNES had 1-3 frames of latency depending on the game.
Don't modern TV's come with a game mode to reduce this latency (turns off any kinds of image processing)?
I have a 12 year old Samsung LCD monitor that is advertised as 2.5ms
By CoolGuySteve 2026-01-3018:031 reply Yes but like all non-default settings, a large portion of the player base doesn't have it enabled. Games have to be designed for a large market, not just high end OLED buyers.
Even then, most VA/IPS/LED displays have something more like 20ms of latency in game mode due to slow LCD refresh rates. Controllers are also randomly delayed by 2.4GHz interference.
This 8bitdo Pro 2 on my desk has 18ms latency all the time. It actually kind of sucks and it's one of the faster wireless controllers.
By Grazester 2026-01-3020:04 The Dual Shock 5(wired) and Dual Shock 4(wireless) were some of the best controller where it comes to latency. https://rpubs.com/misteraddons/inputlatency
Edit:// those 8bitdo controllers are pretty terrible looking at that list, Wow.
By jasomill 2026-01-3017:49 Yes. I get about 5 ms latency on my 2024 LG OLED (a bit more at 120 Hz, a bit less at 144 Hz).
But there are other sources of latency that stack.
Oh they absolutely do - you just might be unfamiliar with them. I grew up playing Ninja Gaiden, Megaman, etc. There's definitely an audience for 2D games with extremely tight controls. Off the top of my head:
- Shovel Knight
- Spelunky 1/2
- Rogue Legacy
- Cuphead
I’m familiar with all of those games. They’re few enough in number that I see the same small set brought up every time I make this point.
I think they’re the exception that proves the rule. There are fewer of them (noteworthy ones anyway, I’m sure there’s a long tail of obscure ones) than there were popular games of this kind on the original NES. I think Derek Yu’s release of UFO-50 is indicative of his similar need to scratch that itch!
I think noteworthy is the key. Others with tight controls and timing that I can think of (that are less known) are Downwell, Caveblazers, Celeste, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Tiny Barbarian DX, VVVVVV.
And these are just ones that I've personally played.
I have heard of Celeste and I have played through VVVVVV. I will check out the others.
Celeste is kind of an example of what I was talking about though. The game gives you a ton of movement options and "floaty" air control with a lot of maneuverability. NES games never did that. The controls were simple and highly responsive, but generally very "committal."
The only recent game I know of with controls that really felt like a NES game was La Mulana. That game did not allow you to reverse directions in the air after a jump. Once you jumped forward you were fully committed to the arc of that jump.
I see what you're going for. We're sort of struggling to come up with a common nomenclature . For me when I hear floaty controls I think of games where the physics are loose (SMB) as opposed to tight controls (Megaman).
Personally, I really hate being forced to commit to a jump direction like you would in Castlevania.
But there are quite a few NES games that give you control in the air: Megaman, Ninja Gaiden, SMB2 as Peach, Contra, etc.
Different strokes for different folks.
I do like games with air control, I just also like the old school non-air-control games.
Modern platformer devs seem to be very much heavily biased to the air control side, where characters can maneuver in both directions at high speed to a far greater distance than their jump height. I really don't like that level of control, as it leads to the need to make level designs based on large amounts of horizontal movement in the air. It's a style of gameplay that came out of Super Mario World's infamous cape powerup, which severely undermines the challenge of that game.
By vunderba 2026-01-313:09 To be fair: The mario games (outside of perhaps the Lost Levels) were never particularly challenging games in the first place.
SMB3 introduced us to Raccoon Mario which lets you also cheese large sections of trickier levels.
By techpression 2026-01-305:35 NES games are pretty darn slow and not very twitchy at all compared to something like Super Meat Boy. I’m not into the genre too much but I know there are quite a few more of them. And Street Fighter still requires very exact frame execution if you want to take it to the extreme.
I’m as nostalgic as anyone, but games today are just so much better in every way.
Those may be difficult games but they don't have the twitchiness of a game like Super Mario Bros. They're on the order of 1/4s to 1/2s maneuvering (with great anticipation) whereas SMB is loaded with 1 frame tricks (1/60s). It's an order of magnitude difference.
By yellowtaxi9sols 2026-01-309:01 This still feels like a lack of knowledge on the medium, and a bit of faffery around the meaning of "twitchiness". There are still a ton of momentum platformers being made, UFO 50 alone has like 5 included. Even ones with full on mechanical restrictions, such as Yelow Taxi Goes Vroom, which tried hard to go the opposite way, and has has no conventional jump button to preserve momentum with, it's almost entirely about precision setup and aerial readjustment.
Huh? 1 frame tricks are the top shelf of speedrunning moves, definitely breaking how the games are designed to be played by orders of magnitudes.
Speedrunners use 1 frame tricks in more modern games as well. It is considered extremely hard even amongst the already insane speedrunning community, no matter whether the game is SMB, Odyssey, or anything recent.
Of course it's extremely hard but you can't do it at all on modern games with unresponsive displays. The point is that when you press the button in SMB, the action happens on the screen an order of magnitude faster than a modern game. Modern games have slow, floaty, laggy controls.
It's not just games though. Computers have done the same thing [1]. Modern PCs are an order of magnitude slower, latency-wise, than an Apple II.
By reactordev 2026-01-304:38 This is why on Rock Band, you had to “calibrate your TV” because of input and audio lag from when the game generated it.
As a game dev, this is true. Old hardware input was very fast whereas today it’s software and it’s 50ms give or take. Add more milliseconds for your TV to refresh. It was common to see 150-250ms lag.
By darth_aardvark 2026-01-301:361 reply Have you tried UFO 50?
By chongli 2026-01-302:37 I haven't. I'm a huge fan of Derek Yu though, so I need to!
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3010:082 reply 2019, 2019, 2025, 2019, 2019, 2017, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2017, 2024, 2018, 2020, 2015, 2011.
I only see three games here less than five years old. The oldest is from three console generations ago. Do /you/ actually engage with modern games? Remember the time you’re comparing to had 5-year console generations. This is like someone on the release date of the PlayStation 3 saying that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a “modern game”.
I just listed a few games off the top of my head, and in contrast to the person who I responded to having listed a bunch of 90s/early 2000s games. In comparison, mine are certainly modern.
If you want "modern", 5 years old maximum, then we have, for example:
Backpack Battles. Elden Ring(Nightreign). Tainted Grail. Monster Train 2. Escape from Duckov. Nine Sols. Hollow Knight Silksong. Black Myth Wukong. WH 40k Rogue Trader. WH 40k Space Marine 2. Spirit of the North 2. Patrick's Parabox. Stacklands. Balatro. Ender Lilies/Magnolia. Tunic. ANIMAL WELL. Dome Keeper. Inscryption. Reus 2. Astral Ascent.
I just had a scroll through my steam library and picked some games I really like/love that felt like they should be less than 5 years old. I've not double checked. This is what I meant by "etc. I could go on, and on, and...". I wasn't saying that cause I ran out of games to list.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:191 reply Why were those games on the top of your head? If things were as healthy as you claim, surely your head would be full of exciting new titles? Would you have, in 2006, brought up Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Doom as titles to show modern gaming’s superiority over the Atari 2600?
Why are you trying to do weird gotchas instead of engaging with the discussion? I don't get it.
And comparing time periods like that isn't proper, 10 year old tech now is a lot more similar than 10 year old tech was in 2006. 1996 and 2006 are vastly different tech-landscapes. 2016 and 2026? Barely different.
Or do we wanna pretend the leap from Doom to Crysis is the same as the leap from the Witcher 3 to Clair Obscur? Modern is a relative term and we did not define it at the start of this conversation.
So for you to just join in afterwards and retroactively try to apply your own definition, which you are yet to share, on to my original comment just doesn't make much sense?
What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to convince? And of what? Chill out man.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-312:201 reply So you’re admitting that “barely” any progress has been made in a decade. Perhaps you can use that fact to divine what you’re missing.
By Novosell 2026-01-3110:36 Ok, last comment from me as I truly believe you're just here to be annoying at this point, but I'm also passionate about this subject.
There has been barely any technological progress in the last decade, yes. Which is what makes the last 10 years not compareable to the 1996-2006 period. During that period, you had massive technological innovation which could inform and enable innovations in gaming at a greater rate than the current technological trends allow for. You can only do the 2D to 3D transition once. We can't really go into 4D.
But that's TECHNOLOGICAL progress. Gaming is also an art. Art doesn't "progress", it just changes. Harry Potter isn't more "progressed" than the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's just different.
I could write much more, but you clearly don't actually have an opinion, as you never respond to anything, you just try to "gotcha" me, and even when presented with good modern games you just decide they're invalid cause they don't fit your undefined definition of modern. Then when you do get "modern" games given, you dismiss them cause they weren't presented first.
This is so dumb man, truly.
By framapotari 2026-01-3011:541 reply Elden Ring, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Dredge, Blue Prince, Balatro, Astro Bot, Hades II, Silksong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Pacific Drive, Death Stranding 2, Split Fiction
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3012:142 reply It’s too late for that. You crafted that list after seeing the criterion, so it does nothing to disprove the point that the games people think of when they think about “good modern games” aren’t actually modern.
Maybe your point was that, but that's not the point the person you replied to was addressing. Nobody was arguing about the specific definition of "modern."
The original commenter made a very clear claim: that the most recent "peak" system was the Xbox, which was discontinued in 2005, and that everything after that has been a rehash.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:15 If the pace of quality titles is such that people have to go fishing through multiple decades to find what they believe to be a convincing-looking list of titles to compete with the OG Xbox, that is an indication that yes, even with more games coming out, fewer good games are coming out.
By framapotari 2026-01-3013:021 reply Haha what? Do you believe that it's somehow been proven that "people" think about good modern games in some specific way? Based on a comment from one person?
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:092 reply This is not the first time this thread has been made, nor will it be the last, and there’s someone (or at least two people in this case) who does it every single time.
By reactordev 2026-01-3018:45 I’ll never hesitate to brighten the mood with heated debate over best games of history ;)
By framapotari 2026-01-3020:08 Well in that case this is clearly the official opinion of The People.
Of course there are good modern games, but I agree there was something special about the first 3D generation of hardware (hardware cheap enough to be in home consoles at least) and the games it enabled.
Only VR has come close recently, but that hasn't hit in the same way because it is still too expensive and cumbersome.
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:082 reply This. Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2. It was a story. Less about blowing stuff up with guns and more about uncovering the secrets of Black Mesa. Then came along mods…
The first one was Team Fortress. Remember that? Still strong today as a ftp title TF2. The second one was a spec-ops style delta force mod (I can’t remember the name) but it gave the 3rd modder the idea that a modern setting could work. Counter-Strike was released as an early alpha on my forum and the rest was history.
I mention this because this was a tuning point from fixed function pipelines to programmable pipelines (shaders).
There was this awe of what we can do, what could be possible, and today’s modern games are a fulfillment of that. I feel this same sense of awe when it comes to some of these foundational models. It’s just incredible what they are capable of.
In reality, while AAA titles have been pumping out annual titles to keep shares high and pigs fat, there have been some wonderful indie titles, smaller budget games, that have made a significant impact on the games industry as a whole.
By anyfoo 2026-01-300:15 I loved Half Life 2, and it was highly influential, but that influence lives on.
Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Dark Souls, and Return of Obra Dinn were among the mentioned titles. All of these games tell a story, each of this game does it in its own, magnificent way.
You act a bit like those kind of games are hard to find, but some of them are highly popularized best sellers that keep getting remasters (I don't mean remakes), and still find a huge audience in entirely new YouTube Let's-Plays alone.
> Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2.
Half-Life used the GoldSrc engine [0], based mostly on Quake 1 and also some parts of QuakeWorld and Quake 2
By skhr0680 2026-01-302:08 It was just called the Half-Life engine then. It was developed in parallel with Q2, and in general has feature parity with Q2, with a few huge features that they were able to add because of the extra year of development like skeletal animation.
By reactordev 2026-01-301:47 Which is why I mentioned it. The engine itself was a copy pasta blend of idTech stuff with their own architecture.
By reactordev 2026-01-2922:515 reply Ok, I’ll give you Rocket League. That’s an entirely new spin on a genre I didn’t see coming. The rest are just RPGs or platformers you like. Good games, but not innovative. Yes, some new franchises have been born and some successful indie titles have been launched but most of the market share in the games industry is held by the top 5.
Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.
By TimorousBestie 2026-01-2923:221 reply I hope I never become this jaded and cynical about video games.
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:253 reply Keep playing them for 20 years :D
Into the Breach only came out 8 years ago, but I'm still playing it vigorously.
I'm sorry to say, your nostalgia-colored-glasses are so strong, you're actually blinded by them. I grew up in the same gaming era as you (started around early to mid 90s, but the peak was later), and I too have fond memories. But there undeniably has been some magnificent progress in pretty much all aspects of gaming.
Somewhere between 2005 and 2010, I thought I had outgrown gaming, and that no game would have anything to offer to me anymore. But years later I learned that that was just because I was stuck thinking that JRPGs were the pinnacle of gaming, it turned out that I had grown out of those. Obviously your story will be different, but I bet there is some story to you somewhere.
By lgl 2026-01-300:55 This! Both FTL and Into the Breach are evergreen games imho.
I've been playing games since I could hold a controller basically, so 26-ish years, and I think modern gaming is phenomenal. I feel sad for you, but it is what it is. Just your loss in the end.
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:494 reply Modern gaming is a micro transaction DLC hellscape. Are you serious?
Are they fun? Yes, they are designed to be addictive. So you spend money on pixels.
None of the games I mentioned have micro transactions.
Outer Wilds, 1000xResist and What Remains of Edith Finch all moved me to tears. I still can't casually listen to the soundtracks of Outer Wilds or 1000x, as they simply evoke too many emotions.
Stop conflating Call of Duty and the like with "modern gaming".
You're jaded, and I feel sad for you.
Have you played "A Space for the Unbound"? It's quite moving (I teared up multiple times) and I love the unfamiliar, to me, setting of rural Indonesia. It reminds me a lot of To The Moon, which I will assume you're no stranger to.
By Novosell 2026-01-309:29 Ah, no, I've not played it. It's been on my wishlist for quite a while tho :) Been on a bit of a JRPG streak lately.
I didn't know it took place in Indonesia though, that's very intriguing. It will probably be my next game of this ilk then, thank you!
And yeah, no stranger to To The Moon :P
By anyfoo 2026-01-300:22 Maybe give it another try? I have been playing lots of games for the past few years, some vigorously. Not a single one of them has a single microtransaction, because that's an immediate turnoff for me.
I've been gaming for twice as long as you. You're picking the wrong games.
By reactordev 2026-01-305:012 reply Oh? If I’m picking the wrong games, and they’re all on the Steam top 100, what games should I be playing? Give me a 2025 title I haven’t tried.
By charcircuit 2026-01-2923:581 reply What’s wrong with paying for entertainment?
By reactordev 2026-01-300:131 reply Nothing, that’s why I bought the game. Don’t shake me down for more money because you couldn’t forecast.
By charcircuit 2026-01-300:561 reply Microtransactions are part of the forecast of revenue the game will make.
By reactordev 2026-01-301:50 Now they are, they weren’t when they were introduced. Now, it’s the long tail to a crappy launch.
By buttercraft 2026-01-301:56 I've been playing them for 35 years and I don't share your opinion at all.
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:222 reply Open world game but also a mystery game as we’re a couple others mentioned above. Those go back to Carmen San Diego and Sherlock homes series. Open World, we’ve seen plenty of those.
Well, nothing new has been invented since checkers, if you really think about it hard enough and reduce everything to a few buckets of games that everything can fit neatly into, then everything is just a mystery game or just open world or just a platformer. Again, I have a feeling like you're just looking at it mechanically and not how these elements work together to produce a game that is larger than just the sum of its parts. Outer Wilds has puzzles and open world and mystery element to it - and all of those have been done before. But has anyone else combined them this way to produce a game with this narrative? No, I don't believe so(happy to be proven wrong, as always).
Like the other commenter said - I hope I don't become jaded like this about video games, it still brings me joy to see how every new game twists the known formula a little bit more and in new and exciting ways, I believe there are several nieches where we haven't seen the game of that genre yet and I can't wait to see it emerge and how and who is going to do it.
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:472 reply Have other games put together open world and mystery? Yes.
I have a feeling you haven’t played those games otherwise you’d see the similarities.
Yes, I am ABSOLUTELY looking at the mechanics of the game. I’m also looking for innovation. Take something someone tried (maybe it was a big part of their design) and make a full blown out version of it. Pushing the genre in either a new direction or opening one up. Outer wilds did neither. Not to say it wasn’t a good game. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying outside of those that played it, it will be forgotten. It changed nothing. It came, it endeared, it left.
By soulofmischief 2026-01-308:071 reply Have you played Outer Wilds though?
I'd finished a playthrough of RDR2 in 2022 and thought I was done with gaming forever, that nothing would ever be able to touch that level of experience again. I stopped playing for months, completely having lost interest.
Then I discovered Outer Wilds, went in completely blind, played in VR, and had one of the most engaging experiences of my life. It's a true gamer's game.
By reactordev 2026-01-3010:151 reply >”Have you played Outer Wilds though?”
Did my review not tell you that I had?
By soulofmischief 2026-01-3011:11 I somehow completely glossed over those two sentences, sorry!
By Rohansi 2026-01-3115:59 Comparing Outer Wilds to Sherlock Holmes is way too big of a stretch for me. There are mysteries in both, yes, but it's the mystery of the (game's) universe vs. crimes.
I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.
>>Good games, but not innovative
Calling outer wilds or Clair Obscur "not innovative" just tells me you haven't played these games from start to finish, and I don't mean any offence saying this. Unless you mean just mechanically?
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:371 reply What’s innovative about Clair Obscur? Its battle mechanics are clearly heavily inspired by Paper Mario, Shadow Hearts, and Legend of Dragoon, it inherits a bunch of mid-level design stuff from Dark Souls, and its story structure is extremely standard, also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls with a hint of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Kingdom Hearts. It’s competent, somewhat refreshing and not actively consumer-hostile, and it’s a sign of how bad things have gotten that that’s all it takes to be heaped with praise.
By gambiting 2026-01-3023:48 Oh don't get me wrong - mechanically I actually think it's boring as hell, which is why I asked OP if he only talks about mechanics. But I will say that in terms of story and world building it's exceptional - so many games nowadays are just some kind of variation on a standard fantasy/scifi trope, CO has a completely "fresh" repertoir of enemies and locations that feel new, and I didn't have any clue where the story was going until act 3 - I think its exploration of grief and the ability to make you bond with characters while not unique, it's definitely up there with the best video games ever made(imho).
>>also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls
I see that comparison a lot and I don't see it, and I've played every From Soft game from start to finish. Maybe the painted world from DS3 is sorta-kinda similar, but not really?
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:34 I have played both. I stand by my statement.
By rpdillon 2026-01-303:21 What did you think after you got into room 46 of Blue Prince?
By throwaway173738 2026-01-303:37 It was the first rpg I played where there was so much attention paid to continuity you could see all the other areas in the skybox.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:251 reply That’s not a great example to pick, given that Demons Souls exists.
By reactordev 2026-01-3018:47 And that was a successor to Kings Field…
These kids don’t know.
By anthk 2026-01-308:27 Innovative? Check Blade/Severance.
>The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died
lol
There are countless already classic modern story driven games which pushing the boundaries of video games forward.
I know nostalgia is a very strong drug and I also love the games I grew up with in the 90s but it's pure ignorance to say that 1, "storytelling died" 2, no innovation happened in video games in modern times (whatever that even means)
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:123 reply You are misconstruing my love for nostalgia games for when you think I believe storytelling died. It didn’t die in the 90s, it died in 2010s. Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line or it didn’t ever materialize to begin with.
These days there's 200-350 new games released on steam every week. There's plenty of excellent narrative driven games if that's what you're after, mostly from indie developers.
If you're looking for deep narrative from AAA games, then the best you'll find are games like Cyberpunk 2077 - which have some decent writing in between all the action. But if you want something that'll really scratch a strong narrative itch, you gotta go deep on indies. That's where all the experimentation is happening.
You might also just be getting more genre savvy with age. When you're a kid, story beats are mind blowing. But most narratives - especially in games - tack pretty close to classic hero arcs. Once you've seen 100 of them you can often predict the entire narrative arc once you've seen the end of the first act. In other words, it might not be that games have gotten worse. It might just be that you've gotten better at understanding classic narrative structures, so it takes more to surprise you.
By reactordev 2026-01-300:09 It’s definitely an age thing. Wisdom of experience and being able to dissect storytelling elements for what they are.
Don’t get me wrong. I love games. Obviously. I just see, as you said, 300+ games being released weekly and have really no desire to pursue them. I’ll occasionally jump on the bandwagon of steams top 100 but I don’t feel connected to the games I play anymore. I still play them. It’s good entertainment. I don’t care about buying battle passes, season passes, trinkets, cosmetics, DLC content, etc. If the game is good, sell the game.
>>Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line
Be honest- you guessed the plot of Claire Obscure before you got to Act 3? Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them?
What kind of games have you played since 2018? Because yeah, there is a lot of predictable cookie cutter AAA games out there, sure. But each year there are games which are surprising in their storytelling, same as somehow there are still new and surprising films despite film being much older than gaming. Not to mention books.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3010:131 reply Anyone who didn’t guess the ‘plot twists’ of Clair Obscur at least 10 hours in advance wasn’t paying enough attention to even remember how to spell the title of the game. It’s structurally extremely standard if you’ve played Dark Souls and more than a couple of 90s JRPGs, and its foreshadowing is about as subtle as being hit in the face with a stale baguette.
By gambiting 2026-01-3011:28 I didn't realize until Act 3 what the real story was, and to be honest I don't really understand how anyone could. But maybe I'm just not good enough to understand all these subtle themes :-P
By reactordev 2026-01-2923:552 reply Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t.
By Act 2 the story was already falling apart. The game just leaves you feeling depressed. I guess since you felt something that makes it GOTY.
>Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t.
Ok, so you haven't played it then. I mean just say so, instead of making things up?
By reactordev 2026-01-3010:171 reply You can’t make up The Paintress. Awful writing.
>>Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed,
But that's literally not what the game is, which is why I'm asking why are you making up the fact about playing it? It sounds like a quick judgement based on a trailer or watching a 30 minute analysis video on YouTube.
What other games have awful writing according to you? Out of curiosity. Or is it just anything written after 2018?
Maybe a better question is - what do you mean when you say "good" or "bad" writing in games?
By reactordev 2026-01-3011:49 I’m not making anything up. I don’t fabricate. I gave you my point of view and you refuse to accept it.
It’s just not a good game.
You can have a good game and a shit story (see Gears of War, Halo). You can have a good game and an epic story (see Witcher 3, Guild Wars 2, Red Dead Redemptions). You can even have a bad game with a good story (L.A. Noire, Batman Arkham series).
What makes a game good: Are the controls intuitive? Is the world believable? Interactivity? Grounded in realism but doesn’t need to be. If there’s a story, does the story unfold or am I just playing the “living action” version of the book? If it unfolds, does it do so linearly from level to level or does it do it naturally, filling in gaps of a bigger picture?
There’s nuance in each. I generally agree with consensus on what’s good vs bad but where I differ is in the storytelling. As a long time DM, it pains me to walk through a story from chapter 1 till end in a linear fashion. This is why I dislike Diablo style games even though it’s super fun and we all love a loot piñata. It’s just such a shitty story and so linear. “Stay a while and listen…” “I’ve heard you say this 1000x grandpa!”
By 12_throw_away 2026-01-307:521 reply Ok, this was a pretty well-done troll, you totally had me until this.
By reactordev 2026-01-3010:22 No troll, I paid full price. Expedition 33 wasn’t well written.
By shakna 2026-01-304:38 > Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them?
... Yes? I mean, the games are not that subtle. Lore dump, sly smile, more game, repeat.
By mrguyorama 2026-01-3019:091 reply You thought the height of video game storytelling was the era of Mass Effect 3 and Halo Reach?
Have you played Disco Elysium? "Thank goodness you're here"? Cruelty Squad?
By reactordev 2026-01-3021:41 It’s been downhill since.
Yes I have played those games. DE is ok. Just because a game provides different story arcs doesn’t make it good.
I have not played Cruelty Squad yet.
By leguminous 2026-01-300:331 reply I disagree. There are some new (sub-) genres and great games since that period.
* Roguelites have proliferated: Hades is the most obvious example, but there are a variety of sub-genres at this point.
* Vampire Survivors (itself a roguelite) spawned survivors-likes. Megabonk is currently pretty popular.
* Slay the Spire kicked off a wave of strategy roguelites.
* There are "cozy" games like Unpacking.
* I don't recall survival games like Subnautica or Don't Starve being much of a thing in the PS2 era.
* There are automation games like Factorio and Satisfactory.
* Casual mobile games are _huge_.
* There are more experimental games, sometimes in established genres, like Inscription, Undertale, or Baba Is You.
Not to mention that new games in existing genres can be great. Hollow Knight is a good example. Metroidvanias were established by the SNES and PS1 era, but Hollow Knight really upped the stakes.
I'm sure I'm forgetting things and people will have some criticism, but I really don't believe games have stagnated in general.
"Roguelites have proliferated"
I know it's easy to feel that this is people chasing trends, but I've really come to appreciate roguelites over many of the PS2 era games because they give me real progression in a single play session, but also, that single play session is discardable.
As an adult this is a very compelling proposition.
In the PS2 era, while you can find some early roguelite-like-things, you tended to have either the games that have no interesting progression (arcade-like) and the you would just play the game, or you had very long scale games like JRPGs that slowly trickle out the progression but are also multi-dozen-hour games. Compressing the progression into something that happens in a small number of hours, yet eliminates the "I'm 50 hours into this game that I stopped 2 years ago, do I want to pick it back up if I've forgotten everything?" has been very useful to me.
This has been a fairly significant change in gaming for me. I still have some investment into the higher end JRPGs but the "roguelite" pattern across all sorts of genres has been wonderful overall. I don't even think of it as a genre anymore; it's a design tool, like 'turn based versus real time'.
By YurgenJurgensen 2026-01-3018:51 Roguelites are the worst thing to happen to video games since microtransactions. It’s an extremely attractive option to the cash-strapped indie dev, as it promises infinite ‘content’ for little development effort, but what it’s really done is turned every game into a combination of cookie clicker and a slot machine.
The fact that you think arcade games have “no interesting progression” shows just how toxic the roguelike design pattern is. The progression in arcade games is you getting better at the game. If a game needs a “progress system” to communicate a sense of accomplishment to the player, that’s because the gameplay is shallow.
For the oldies but goodies in my list:
- Any one of the 194_ games
- Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past
- Super Mario World
- Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX
- Chrono Trigger (agree)
- Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition
- Metal Gear Solid 1-3, MGS: Peace Walker
But I think there's been good stuff since.
- The Super Mario Galaxy games
- Super Monkey Ball
- MGS4, MGS5
- Witcher 3
- The Bioshock games
- Minecraft-- probably the game with the most replay value of anything of all time.
I don't know what will stand the test of time. I don't want to play any of these games now, since I've burnt them out, but at some point I'll likely want to play them again...
- Undertale
- Bravely Default
- The Octopath games
- Dispatch
- AstroBot
- Clair Obscur
By reactordev 2026-01-2922:56 Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition (whichever was the one with the most characters) as well as Street Fighter Alpha were great for the arcade machine.
Most of my buddies at the time would come over, have a beer, immediately hang it on the boat-coozy cup holders (the ones that gyro) and go to town shoulder to shoulder playing SF2. The cup holders gyro would prevent the beers from spilling as the arcade cabinet rocked back and forth from two grown men having a virtual fist fight. Best times.
By sbinnee 2026-01-302:15 Playing Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of my fondest memories I cherish. I could play it only at Taekwondo gym I was attending to. I couldn't finish it because I only had a couple of hours at the gym and I could play only during break time. Oh and I was always waiting for the break time!
By chongli 2026-01-2923:56 If you're struggling with keeping your attention, you ought to try making a list of games you never finished (or never played) and commit yourself to playing through them in order. I have been doing that with NES games and really enjoying it. I alternate between RPGs/adventures and action games, to mix things up a bit.
Recently, I have played through Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, and am now working through Fire Emblem (translated from Japanese).
Baldur's Gate 3 has awesome story telling for video game standards. Plan 100+ hours for a reasonably complete first playthrough though.
Glad to hear the love for BG3. Grew up playing Black Isle games (BG1 and BG2) so it was nice to play against a substantially more intelligent AI that couldn't be cheesed nearly as hard due to the new turn-based combat as well.
For reference in case anyone "@" me on that cause rose-tinted glasses make people blind:
No one remembers using Animate Dead (a third-level priest spell with no summon limit) to summon a skeletal warrior and walking them up to the enemy's camp/ambush? Enemy wizards proceed to waste EVERY memorized spell on a f###ing summon - and half the spells are charm/control spells that are completely ineffective against undead anyway. Isn't intelligence supposed to be the prime ability score of a wizard? :)
To be fair BG3 is not without its AI problems. Be it stupid companions walking into danger or getting stuck or enemies that do nonsensical things. It also has a ton of glitches as detailed in the excellent bg3.wiki or shown by speedrunners.
It's a complex game and I don't mind that whatsoever. With games I like I generally tread a careful path to not accidentally break it too badly (though there's also intended ways to break the game, like sacrificing Gale to BOOOAL and having the world blow up in three long rests, or destroying an important book in Gauntlet of Shar). Crashes have been few.
Also, without the wiki I wouldn't have enjoyed my first playthrough thus far as much as I do as it's really easy to miss things. Kinda intrigued by BG1/2 now.
By reactordev 2026-01-3011:53 If you enjoyed Mass Effect, you’ll enjoy BG1/2. Old school BioWare.
BG1/BG2 are excellent games but it can take some getting use to the RTWP (Realtime with Pause) system and AD&D rules (THAC0, etc).
BG2 in particular is fantastic. Highly recommend them.
> Be it stupid companions walking into danger
Oooo boy - you're gonna love the pathfinding in BG especially with 6 people in your party in tight corridors. /s
By reactordev 2026-01-3019:01 To be fair, BG2 improved a lot with pathfinding and all that BUT you still have AoE spells and crap that don’t give you enough info to know when NOT to cast them because you’re blocked by a tiefling.
By reactordev 2026-01-301:531 reply My least favorite story of the Baldur’s Gates. Sorry. I gave it a 6/10 on Steam.
By RGamma 2026-01-307:30 Guess I'll have to play the other BGs next...
By irishcoffee 2026-01-2922:351 reply > N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.
I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming.
However…
There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all.
There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.
By reactordev 2026-01-304:522 reply Money is not the limiting factor.
I agree there are many games and tons of hours of content available. That is never my issue. There’s lot of games. Games I play. I see the same mechanics in all of them. Some of them because there’s no better way to do it given our current input scheme, others, because they did it. As my kids are now grown, I no longer play kids games like Lego or Zelda (although I do recommend you play them, they are fun) but my argument about peak gaming was that we were still pushing the boundaries of what was possible, hardware wise even. Today, it’s more standardized, polished, refined, as we developed PBR rendering pipelines to recreate realism. My hill I’ll die on is that after that era, it’s been mostly rehashed franchises and game design we have seen before. Yes we have new stories, new graphics, new characters, but you’re still “kill X monsters” or “loot X from Y” style task rabbits. I am jaded because I know we can do better, it’s just the people who hold the purse won’t let us.
We have pushed technology but we have been limited in how far we can push narratives and reality. This gap is closing though. As for storytelling, there are some great stories out there, some predictable ones as well. The freedom of choice in games like Last of Us and Tell Tale Series helped push that a little further but we are still constrained to a linear timeline of events like it’s a movie or a book. Even games where it makes no sense to have it, has it as a way to tracking your level, or progress, or what areas you can visit.
Some stories should be told linearly. Some stories shouldn’t be. There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.
By irishcoffee 2026-01-3016:521 reply > There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.
You should _really_ check out Elden Ring. If you're not playing with a notebook (and you're not looking anything up) you're doing it wrong. No quest ledger, no waypoints. Shit, the story is mostly up to interpretation. It is literally the game you're describing above.
By reactordev 2026-01-3021:38 Played it. It’s ok. I’m not a fan of the hardcore, memorize all the moves of the boss, boss fights. It’s cool. It’s beautiful. It’s been in my library since launch and I have maybe 30 hours on it. That’s it.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance and KCD2 were better. Even if the games weren’t innovative.
You don't play Zelda because your kids are grown? What kind of logic is this?
By reactordev 2026-01-3010:25 I find the game design to be lacking. Not that they aren’t fun. Not that I dislike Link. It’s just child’s play. I mostly played those titles with my kids when they were little. My kids loved Zelda Breath of Wild and I told them about my childhood with the golden cartridge.
Paradox of choice. When you were single digit/low double years old, and you only had 3 games, you had to play the shit out of them. With every game available at your fingertips, there's no such compunction.
By surgical_fire 2026-01-3010:06 Renting games was a thing. I had about 30 SNES games, and likely played more than 200.
What really happens when talking about retro games is that people remember the remarkable stuff. There were plenty of shitty games back then, they are just rightly forgotten.
By reactordev 2026-01-2922:51 Blockbuster and Funco Land gave me all the titles I could get my 7 year old fingers on.
By bluescrn 2026-01-300:14 It's called getting older.
As a grown adult, nothing can recreate the feeling of exploring a new game as a child/teen. Especially during the 80s/90s, where gaming as a whole was new and rapidly-evolving.
But revisiting old favourites for the nostalgia can still be enjoyable.
By techpression 2026-01-2922:501 reply What? Dreamcast was a marvel when it came to games, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Power Stone, Jet Set Radio, Grandia, SoulCalibur etc.
By reactordev 2026-01-2922:533 reply SoulCalibur was better on PlayStation.
Dreamcast’s only hit was Crazy Taxi.
By egypturnash 2026-01-301:00 Jet Set Radio Spiritual Sequel is getting to be its own genre at this point.
By ahartmetz 2026-01-303:16 I've heard great things about Shenmue from a friend. Probably not my kind of game, but very highly rated by critics.
Say way? Crazy Taxi? The Dreamcast had an amazing library! Sonic Adventures Shenmue(1,2), Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Tennis, Entire 2k sports series, Samba de Amigo, House of the dead, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Jet Grind Radio, Test Drive LeMans, F355 Challenge, Rez, ...the list goes one
The weird yet cool games Roommania, Segaga, Seaman
Of course many of these games got ported over later on the other consoles or had sequels release on system after the Dreamcast's demise
By techpression 2026-01-308:031 reply The Dreamcast had some of the most innovative games by far, Samba de Amigo and Rez was unheard of in your home before DC and laid the foundation for many games. We also got dance mats for the home.
When someone says Crazy Taxi was the only hit I can only assume they haven’t played much at all, or is using some weird sales metric, by which all games were terrible on the DC because of how terrible SEGA did marketing.
By reactordev 2026-01-3010:241 reply Definitely sales metrics. DC didn’t sell shit.
By Grazester 2026-01-3019:58 If going by sales alone then Sonic Adventure(1) should be the only game you talk about.
By wahnfrieden 2026-01-2922:29 The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones)
For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros
And then folks waste whole that power away, with embedded widgets applications.
My Android phone is more powerful than the four PCs I owned during the 1990 - 2002, 386SX - P75 - P166 - Athlon XP, all CPU, GPU, RAM and disk space added together.
By PlatoIsADisease 2026-01-2923:181 reply I sit here with a laggy windows 11 computer with an Nvidia GPU and wonder: WTF
Its fine with Fedora, but Windows 11 is terrible.
Another one full of Webview2 instances because new hires cannot code anything else, apparently.
They aren't to blame, management is.
They all bear some of the blame.
Software engineers are hired to be the expert in their field. If you don't learn your craft, managers aren't going to do it for you.
Ideally new hires would be mentored by senior engineers who understand performance, and who can teach new hires how to write (and ship) good, performant software. But unfortunately that doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it should.
By PlatoIsADisease 2026-01-300:36 Maybe. I had a director that fired anyone who wouldn't use Microsoft Power Automate.
Previous to that director, I built stuff in python for 5 years under a different director.
By grimgrin 2026-01-2922:12 I'll take a longbet with you that this or successors tackle more than a small handful of titles
We live in interesting times
By mrguyorama 2026-01-3018:16 I find PS2 emulation to be lacking.
Of course I am spoiled by Dolphin and their meticulous work, and the leap in N64 emulation, and PS3 emulation is way farther than I thought it could ever be.
But PCSX2 is mediocre. It reports the vast majority of the library in "green" emulation state, but that usually means there are glaring issues that someone is choosing to overlook, like shadows that are broken.
The Ace Combat games for example are all broken with the hardware accelerated renderer. Things run like garbage in the software renderer for a lot of games. Multiplayer functionality is spotty and hard to set up and poorly documented.
The state of emulation of that console generation is not up to snuff, save for Dolphin. It's still very much in the "Shut up, it works fine for Super Mario 64 so it works" mindset it seems.
This is true even of official emulators! The Xbox emulator that ran on the Xbox 360 has many games that are "officially supported" with serious issues. Forza Motorsport 1 has weird slowdowns on key tracks. I understand the serious hardware difficulties but I still wish emulation accuracy was an option.
By Onavo 2026-01-2922:34 I suspect we will see a proliferation of emulator development in the next few years.
In a lot of ways, emulators are the perfect problem for vision/LLMs. It's like all those web browser projects popping up on HN. You have a very well define problem with existing reference test cases. It's not going to be fun for Nintendo's lawyers in future when everybody can crowdfund an emulator by simply running a VLM against a screen recording of gameplay (barring non deterministic éléments).
They can't oppress the software engineering masses any longer through lawfare.
By PlatoIsADisease 2026-01-2923:17 I gave up video games, but I remember that being a huge reason why I picked Android a decade + ago. Emulators :D
Apparently now iphone allows it. Eventually Apple gives features that are standard elsewhere. Veblen goods...
By BrtByte 2026-01-3011:47 Emulation is amazing for access right now. Recompilation is about making sure MGS2 or GT4 still runs in 2045 on whatever weird hardware we're using then
By lysace 2026-01-2923:23 There is so much work hunting down the proper upscaled/improved texture packs though. Supposedly.
By flykespice 2026-01-2921:392 reply What the dev of AertherSx2 did to run games smooth, even on my midrange 2019 android phone, is wonders.
Too bad the dev is a very emotionally unstable person that abandoned his port, despite his big talent.
By dottjt 2026-01-2921:42 On the flip side, maybe those traits are what lead to the existence of the emulator in the first place. Better something than nothing.
Yeah and he didn't want to deal with receiving death threats for working on a passion project. Which I guess is considered being "emotionally unstable".
By efreak 2026-01-312:10 I have no knowledge of this instance, but death threats and being attacked and stalked online tends to cause emotional instability.
By bananaboy 2026-01-2922:37 Link to the actual project rather than just a news article about it https://github.com/ran-j/PS2Recomp
