Top 30 Greatest Retro Video Games Ever MadeA list of 30 games created by CIVICMINDED on 29th March 2017
Super Metroid (Japan, USA) (En,Ja)SNES | |
_(En,Ja)-1-thumb.jpg) | Super Metroid is the third game in the Metroid series and the only Metroid game to be released on the Super Nintendo. It has become widely revered for its gameplay, atmosphere, and environmental storytelling, and continues to inspire many action-adventure games. |
Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (USA)SNES | |
-3-thumb.jpg) | Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is the arcade fighting game that kicked off the "fighting game revolution" of the 1990s. Play as one of eight martial arts warriors as you travel the world to knock your opponents out of the tournament! |
Final Fantasy VII [NTSC-U] [Disc1of3]PSX | |
 | A young man's quest to save the world and exact revenge upon the man who wronged him, uncovering dark secrets about his past along the way in the most celebrated JRPG of all time. |
Phantasy Star (USA, Europe) (v1.3)SMS | |
_(v1.3)-1-thumb.jpg) | Phantasy Star is an 8-Bit console RPG released for the Sega Master System. Featuring hours of story-driven dialog, first person dungeon exploring and an epic quest, Phantasy Star spawned numerous sequels and spinoffs. |
Legend of Zelda, The (USA)NES | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | A young boy explores a huge overworld filled with enemies and dungeons to find and rescue Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon. |
Secret of Mana (USA)SNES | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | There is one force in the universe that keeps good and evil in perfect balance. It is called the Tree of Mana. But a magic sword has tricked a young warrior into upsetting this balance, spreading evil through the land. |
007 - GoldenEye (USA)N64 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | A Nintendo 64 game based on the James Bond film by the same name, GoldenEye 007 is both a crucial milestone in the evolution of first-person shooters on consoles and universally considered one of the best movie license games ever made. |
Gate of Thunder (NTSC-J)PCECD | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | Anyone who is a shoot em up fan has to play this game is a monumental game. The game is well designed and well thought out for a shump, like the enemie waves are just fantastic varied and audaious but also have a great learning curve as well. Graphics are big bright colorful and varied all very well drawn and designed and the scrolling in this game is just awesome very fluid and very fast and quiet ahead of it's time. Sound/music oh my god the sound track has to be turned up to eleven the game has a storming pumping hard rock heavy metal soundtrack is just so damn good hell I got this soundtrack on my mp3 player masterful soundtrack. The effects are great too but the music is just incredible. Gameplay, this game has it in abundunce great controls fluid responsive and well layed out. Great enemy wave awesom scrolling and huge bosses just great. Overall this is a 6 out of 5 a masterful game one of the all time greats no doubt. |
Grand Theft Auto - Vice City (USA) (v3.00)PS2 | |
_(v3.00)-1-thumb.jpg) | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the second 3D game in the series and sixth original title. It features more of the same sand-box action-adventure gameplay with a new 1980s setting, new characters, new weapons and much more. |
Metal Gear Solid [disc1of2]PSX | |
 | Battle-hardened operative Solid Snake returns to active duty, as terrorists have taken control of a top-secret nuclear weapons disposal facility in an island off of Alaska. It's up to Snake to stop a nuclear threat, rescue some hostages, and maybe find out his relation to these terrorists. |
Forgotten Worlds (NTSC-J)PCECD | |
-1459142194-thumb.jpg) | When you think of Capcom, what almost always comes to mind immediately is their penchant for fighting games like Street Fighter and platformers like Mega Man. What is oftentimes overlooked, however, is their collection of groundbreaking shoot ‘em ups (SHMUPS) like Side Arms, Aero Fighters, Gun.Smoke, and 1941. In the 80’s and 90’s, SHMUPS were a cornerstone of the Capcom lineup, particularly in the arcades. One of their more unique entries was Forgotten Worlds. For a lot of reasons, FW really stood out from the pack. First and foremost, the game doesn’t take the standard approach by having the player pilot a space ship, jet, or other vehicle; you fly around as an upright-oriented human (reminiscent of Space Harrier) while a weapons satellite orbits around you (a bit like R-Type). The 2-player simultaneous co-op game provides for 360 degree rotation of your character so that you can attack incoming threats from all directions. In a way, FW also conjures the feeling of games like Robotron in that your movement and aim are controlled independently. This allows for some tricky maneuvering and multi-dimensional offensive strategies. The second item of note is that Forgotten Worlds takes place in some of the most beautifully drawn environments in SHMUPS history. Each level derives its theme from a specific concept or cultural element. You begin in a steampunk level with giant moving gears, venting steam pipes, and assortment of brass paraphernalia. Later, you explore worlds which resemble ancient Egypt, Asia, and the like. I remember playing this game to death at a 7-Eleven in Bethlehem, PA as a kid. I dumped way too many quarters into that machine. Later, Forgotten Worlds would be ported to a little-know console called the NEC TurboDuo. The TurboDuo was NEC’s ramped-up version of the Turbo-CD, a CD-ROM add-on peripheral for the TurboGrafx-16 and the first of its kind in the world of video games. Despite being ported to several systems of that era, the TurboDuo version was essentially flawless. Everything was intact from the arcade coin-op including the amazing soundtrack and somewhat unintentionally comedic digitized voice. Again, all of the little touches in FW are what make it so memorable…the shop girl who will sell you items, weapons, and game tips…the multi-directional scrolling (even diagonal!)…the mammoth stage bosses who sometimes occupied the entire screen. When Forgotten Worlds was being developed for the arcades in 1988, it was allocated a budget of $5 million. That was an unheard of amount in that time and can be argued that it’s still pretty bold even by 2016 standards. Nonetheless, Forgotten Worlds was a niche hit. Some die hard SHMUPS gamers found the adjustment hard when adapting to the relative complexity of the controls while others embraced the challenge. It’s a bit sad that Forgotten Worlds never received a sequel, spinoff, or remake. Personally, I would absolutely LOVE to see a modern day redux of the game similar to what was done with Strider on the PlayStation 4. Who wants to help me start a petition?!? |
Tomb Raider (E)PSX | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | Tomb Raider stars Lara Croft in her first title as she races through the jungles of Peru to the sands of Egypt in pursuit of the Scion, an ancient artifact reputedly holding the key to the ancient mystery of Atlantis itself. It would later be remade as Tomb Raider Anniversary. |
Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake Eater (USA)PS2 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | The third installment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise is swathed in the Cold War, and it's up to Naked Snake (the "father" of Solid Snake) to keep the Soviet Union and the United States from all-out nuclear war. |
Double Dragon (World)SMS | |
-1-thumb.png) | Double Dragon is a game credited, in part, with the popularity of the beat-em-up genre in the arcade craze of the 1980s and 1990s. |
NBA Jam (USA)SNES | |
-1-thumb.png) | NBA Jam is a arcade basketball game developed by Midway studios in 1993. The game was the birth of a new sporting genre that focused around fun, unrealistic gameplay. |
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (USA)NES | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | There was a time when Mike Tyson was known for kicking ass and not biting ears, and in that time one of the best boxing games ever was released. The year was 1987 - If you were cool, you watched Transformers, had a Nintendo, and played Punch-Out!!. |
TimeSplitters - Future Perfect (USA)PS2 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | TimeSplitters is back! Featuring more insane challenges, an updated story mode and 300% more monkey. |
Twisted Metal - Black (USA)PS2 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | The fifth game of the Twisted Metal franchise. It occurs outside of the "normal" continuity and has a much darker tone than the previous games. |
Super Mario Bros. (Japan, USA)NES | |
-2-thumb.png) | Focusing on a humble plumber and his brother setting out to rescue a Princess who has been kidnapped by a vile lizard king, Super Mario Bros. is a platformer created by Shigeru Miyamoto, published by Nintendo, and is one of the best selling video games of all time. |
Manhunt (USA)PS2 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | Busted out of death row, inmate James Earl Cash wakes up to find himself in a snuff film directed by a man who calls himself Starkweather. |
Contra III - The Alien Wars (USA)SNES | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | Play as either Jimbo or Sully as you destroy aliens and ride missiles in this fast-paced, impossibly difficult shooter. |
Rock n' Roll Racing (USA)SNES | |
-1-thumb.png) | This game is soooo awesome!!! It's Monster Trucks and Rock n Roll all in one game!!! Especially the Music! With artists from Black Sabbath, to Deep Purple, this game is a great one for anyone who likes Racing and Rock n Roll! It's music is definetly better quality than the Sega Genesis Version! |
Metroid (USA)NES | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | Don the Power Suit of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran as she recaptures the dangerous Metroid species from the evil Space Pirates. |
SSX Tricky (USA)PS2 | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | SSX Tricky is the second game in the SSX franchise and was released under the now-defunct EA Sports Big label. Tricky is the first game in the series to feature Uber Tricks. |
Ys Book I & II [U][CD][TGXCD1002][Falcom][1990][PCE]PCECD | |
 | If you've not heard about Ys (pronounced "ees"), this is a great place to start. This is the beginning to Nihon Falcom's flagship series, and argueably the best version of it. The Ys games are set in a fantasy realm and are classified as action rpg's. Book I and II use the classic "bump" system for combat, in that there are no attack buttons, so if you attack an enemy dead center you'll recieve damage, but if you attack slightly off center you'll take them down. Once you get used to this style you'll be able to mow through enemies at great speed. Besides a refreshing combat experience, this game sports an amazing soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro and arranged by Ryo Yonemitsu. It's comprised mainly of synth-rock with some incredible guitar samples. Though the first "Book" is rather short, perhaps less than 7 hours, the second more than makes up for it in content and in length. Both are great games in their own right, but together they form a unique and satisfying style of gameplay. |
Zillion (USA) (v1.1)SMS | |
_(v1.1)-1-thumb.jpg) | Zillion is a sci-fi side-scrolling action game with many similarities to the Metroid series. As the protagonist JJ, the player is tasked with retrieving 5 floppy-disks from an underground base on Planet X. |
2020 Super Baseball (USA)SNES | |
-1-thumb.png) | Super Baseball 2020 is a futuristic sports baseball game played by cybernetically enhanced humans and R2D2-like robots. |
Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe)Genesis | |
-1-thumb.jpg) | The inaugural game in Sega's flagship series sees you take control of a blue hedgehog known as Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog infused conventional platforming with thrilling speed. |
Tetris (World)GB | |
-2-thumb.png) | This shape-based Russian mind-bender set the stage for innumerable puzzle games to follow. |
Blue Lightning (USA, Europe)Lynx | |
-1-thumb.png) | A flight simulator game released both for the Atari Lynx and the Atari Jaguar. |