Board 8 > Name a game released in 2003 or earlier you think still holds up well.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I thought of SM64 first.......the og, don't play that 3D All-Stars stuff

Resident Evil Remake

Still play it all the time. Favorite game of all time. Still controls well (especially in the HD remaster with the alternate controls) and looks amazing. Plus the challenge and experience it provides is still very unique.

Super Metroid first came to mind, but I played it over a decade ago.

SM64's physics, controls, and core gameplay still hold up beautifully imo. It just kinda looks like ass, and the mission design is kinda ass. Honestly it still plays better than the average 3D platformer today. That game'll probably always be a 10.

I played Vice City the other day for the first time in twenty years. The writing and voice acting hold up at least. And the soundtrack is phenomenal.

Most of them tbh

Just one? THAT's hard. I mean if you said between 1993 and 2003, that gets hard. But there are tons of classic games that hold up and really don't need any improvement. Ms. Pac Man, Super Mario Bros, Tetris... All of those games play perfectly, and the graphics really don't need any punching up.

jcgamer107 posted...

I thought of SM64 first.......the og, don't play that 3D All-Stars stuff

TomNook7 posted...

SM64's physics, controls, and core gameplay still hold up beautifully imo. It just kinda looks like ass, and the mission design is kinda ass. Honestly it still plays better than the average 3D platformer today. That game'll probably always be a 10.

The camera was my main issue on the latest replay. I used to defend the camera a lot as one that was among the best of its era for a long time, but it wore on me this most recent time.

ChichiriMuyo posted...

Just one? THAT's hard. I mean if you said between 1993 and 2003, that gets hard. But there are tons of classic games that hold up and really don't need any improvement. Ms. Pac Man, Super Mario Bros, Tetris... All of those games play perfectly, and the graphics really don't need any punching up.

Ha, fair, I didn't mean to insinuate many of the best games from before 2003 can't still be good. It was meant more as in think of one of your favorites from before then and let's see when you last played it to fairly judge on this topic.

I've played all three of within those in the last year. If we discount phone games, most of which are just time fillers, I probably play more games from the 80s than the present. I love that we can do so much more with games these days, but sometimes can does not equal should. You could make a Pac-Man game with a million different mazes, but should you? Ehhh. There's a mobile Pac-Man game and I don't know how many mazes there were, but most of them weren't good. Also, why do they think there needs to be a tutorial to play Pac-Man?

So many classics are just great exactly as they are.

WarioWare Inc. Last played it earlier this year

First game I thought of (since I didn't know what the twist was gonna be before I entered) was Super Smash Bros Melee.

I still mess with 1P modes from time to time and I'm pretty sure I played it earlier this year. Only reason I gave up playing Vs mode is because the people suck, but obviously the game itself still plays great if so many people still actively play it to this day.

Link to the Past. Played with the randomizer in the late 2010s and it was still great.

A small note for SM64: not saying it still holds up perfectly, but that thing works way better on an N64 controller than anything else. That's part of why the 3D All-Stars version doesn't feel good to a lot of people.

Lots of more obvious answers but I'll go with Ratchet & Clank 2 for the PS2. Replayed it in 2021 before Rift Apart release and that shit is still so good. The third one is even better but that's 2004.

Final Fantasy 7, finished the Switch port today. Made the mistake of grinding a little bit and getting ultimate weapons so Sephiroth got dunked, uh, rather quickly.

Game still mostly holds up even if its mechanically boring. One of the better stories written for the series, bad translation and all.

CTR a few months back. Still really fun to play

Before 2003?

How about almost all of the Resident Evil games released during that period.

There's loads of 2D that still hold up imo Sotn, Chrono Trigger, ALTTP, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, SMW, Fire Emblem 7, The Longest Journey, Arcanum are all games ive played through within the last 10 years that didn't feel too aged, tho they obviously won't be to everyone's tastes..

If you mean only 3D games then MGS 2 (2018), both Zelda N64 games (2014ish), Metroid Prime (2015), Kotor (2020ish) are all games ive played within the last 10 years that I feel hold up well.

F-Zero GX. This isn't even debatable.

Super Mario Bros.

HaRRicH posted...

People like to say certain games held up well and I don't always know when people actually last played them in comparison to modern games to see if their opinions are tested much or not.

It's also about how frequently you go back to older video games. If you "stay with the times" you're going to get used to the changing game design and improvements. I regularly play games from virtually all eras. Good 8bit gameplay still holds up to me. Though I did underestimate how many bad games there are in the old days.

REMake is still a pinnacle of gaming

I think the opposite is often true. People criticize games for not holding up and point to things we complained about when the game was new (like the Mario 64 camera, it was always considered bad). It's more that our tolerance for old controls hasn't held up.

Super Mario World, although you could just as easily put Super Mario Bros 3 here.

first game i thought of was from 2004 oops

second game i thought of was Rise of Nations, which i guess i stand by since it's still the peak of rts lan party gaming to me

Leonhart4 posted...

It's more that our tolerance for old controls hasn't held up.

This is especially true for old 3D gaming. Even the best reviews of the best games would often call the camera annoying.

Ive played Friday the 13th NES, A Link to the Past, and Contra all in the last week. All 3 hold up very well

FFX is still the greatest JRPG of all time, so that.

If I'm balancing oldest/best I think SMB3.

Once a classic, always a classic.

I'm currently replaying Dark Cloud and I think it holds up well enough

I play Kirby Super Star once every year just so it can be the best game I played every year.

So far it's only lost twice, once to me being a child and loving Banjo-Kazooie, and once to my first playthrough of Persona 4. And I'm pretty sure it wins at least one of those runbacks today.

I feel like most SNES era and back games hold up fine. N64/PSX is when you start finding some questionable games.

This year I played Diablo 2, FFX, Castlevania 1-3. All held up fine.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses

Considering Final Fantasy X is still my favorite game of all time, that

Last played in 2021 but I usually try to get a playthrough in every year

been playing FFIX (though i haven't touched it in a few weeks due to pokemon) and i don't really notice much aging for it. worst part is HORRIBLE load time during battles, though that weirdly didn't seem to be an issue with 7 or 8 on the same console.

Super Smash Bros Melee ez

Street Fighter II, Alpha, and III all hold up pretty well. Theyre still played competitively to this day.

As for the poll, I actually played a classic game today with Hot Shots Golf 2, and well, I cant tell if I had trouble playing it because of its age or golf mechanics.

mothafuckin' ZONE OF THE ENDERS 2

Mystery Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer (1995, Super Famicom)

Mystery Dungeon 1 is a little too basic and is carried a bit by the Dragon Quest branding, but Shiren is a complete, well-designed package. I wonder what reception in the West wouldve been if it had been ported at the time; the next Dragon Quest Mystery Dungeon made it here on PlayStation and averaged about a 6/10 from the few reviews it got (but this was also the period when ANY game with 2D graphics was judged harshly by many criticssee contemporary SOTN and Mega Man X4 reviews, for example).

I finished replaying through Dark Cloud 2 (2003).

Mostly holds up but has some serious quality of life issues and although the voice acting is fine, the real issue is the script they were given so the cutscenes are... Iffy at times.

Metroid Prime still holds up well

There are a fucking lot of those

LazyKenny posted...

Dark Cloud 2

Huh, what a coinkydink

Weird to say this again twice in a week but

MGS2

And tbh it still looks great as well

Pre-2003 is what I play most of the time anyway.

I played through Grandia II myself at the end of 2021 and was planning to mention it here. Not everything about it is great but it mostly nails the things I find important in JRPGs. Think the reason you might not see much praise for the story is that it's inconsistent. There's times it's legitimately dark and surprising and willing to take risks, but there's also times it's almost laughably straightforward and cliched. Net positive overall IMO, but yeah, inconsistent.

Think you could probably point to a lot of JRPGs for this, really. I still play through the original Paper Mario once in a while and think it's fantastic - best in the series. Then you've got Skies of Arcadia, Chrono Trigger, a few Final Fantasy entries...

I've also spent a good bit of my gaming time just this year playing through classic Mega Man and those games still absolutely rock too, pun intended.

Final Fantasy..

just pick a number.

Kichikuou Rance, today, and it was released in 1996

The game's UI and ease of use are incredibly dated, but it has an immense amount of content and surprisingly good mechanics for a series that primarily bills itself as horny visual novels with gameplay. That game was the company's last ditch effort to throw all their ideas into one game as one last hurrah, and it was so well received the company bounced back and is thriving to this day

They concluded the Rance series 5 years ago and that game was basically just a massive homage to this game