Older games that still hold up really well?

• Claw. Still looks pretty well, is a blast to play and is fairly difficult to boot. A shame it's hard to come by these days.
• Heroes Of Might And Magic 3: not the shitty "HD" edition Ubi released recently - if only to spit in old-timers' faces, but the old one from 1999, the one with both expansions, a random map generator and tons of hours to play.
• Tekken 3: It was the first big console game I've ever played, courtesy of my cousin and his PS One. Didn't feel as clunky as Tekken 2, so even a seven-year-old could play it without much skill present.

The older Battlefield games all have at least four populated servers at any time in the day, although sadly EA has attempted to purge its record of them by removing the ability to purchase them online from Origin recently with the shutdown of Gamespy's servers as an excuse. You can still play the multiplayer by downloading special files that enable the usage of community-based servers however, which frankly makes EA's official excuse rather hollow.

The Star Wars RTS game Empire At War, like other strategy games mentioned here, remains quite unique for its theme in contrast to the plethora of fantasy or historical warfare strategy games.

World In Conflict remains one of the best Real Time Tactics games out there, although its online community has sadly been dwindling over the years and now essentially relies upon an elite minority of veteran players and the dedication of MASSIVE Entertainment's servers to survive.

Counter Strike: Source - need I say more?

edited 25th May '15 7:41:21 AM by FluffyMcChicken

While World of Conflict sounds like a really good game, (which I might have to check out,) I think its' too recent (2007,) to count as an 'older' game. I think the TC had the right idea with post-N64 being the cutoff date.

2004 or earlier games eh?

Well let's see...

• Kirby Super Star for the SNES. Picking it up today is just as fun as it was 18 years ago and just as fun as when it first came out. Similarly...
• Super Metroid. THE defining game for the Metroidvania genre. Entire manuals can be written on how well it still plays this far down the road.
• Nthing Goldeneye64.
• The original Super Smash Bros..
• The first few Sonic games.
• Warcraft III. Even 12 years later since the expansion pack The Frozen Throne, it's still damn good and damn playable without mods or DOTA. Similarly...
• Starcraft. En Taro Adun!

Empire at War came out in 2006, well past the cutoff date.

I personally presumed that games that were released close to or beyond a decade ago could be considered "old" in how far and fast technology and the gaming industry has come since then. I also based what was "old" off of what could be seen in stock at your average electronics store and what games have since been considered too old to sell at such a mass level nowadays.

Maybe, but even something that came out 10 years ago is still going to be a lot more comparable to modern games than something that came out 15 years or more years ago, and there's a far greater chance of them holding up today compared to older games.

The first post also clearly lays out what we are considering "old" here.

And personally, I think it goes too recent. I find that the late-N64 era has more in common with the sixth generation than the fifth. Games like Majora's Mask and Paper Mario hold up extremely well, but that's because even though they're for fifth generation hardware, they're contemporaries of the PS 2.

We could instead go with my original interpretation of the first post, using a loose reading of the release-date of the N64—the start of 1997—as our cutoff.

edited 25th May '15 4:20:47 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

I would just go from the beginning of the sixth generation. There was overlap, after all. And early-N64 games can feel more dated.

... So, based on a quick look at our page for the Sixth Generation, we might then take the release of the Dreamcast as our cutoff, is that correct? If so, then, looking at Wikipedia's page on that console, the start of 1999 seems like a reasonable cutoff to me. (The middle of the year might be a more accurate to the spread of release dates, but a cutoff partway through a year means checking more than just the release-year for a potential entry.)

edited 25th May '15 5:09:24 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

• Star Fox 64, though mainly because there are so few space shooters nowadays.

• Mario Kart 64

• The Legend Of Zelda Ocarina Of Time

I'm down with that. And with that in mind, I've got another classic: Suikoden II. (Yes, it came out in late 1999 here in the US, but it was originally released in 1998 over in Japan.) The story's absolutely phenomenal, but the game itself still plays fairly well. Of course, the battle system leaves something to be desired, but it's not bad, and doesn't really get in the way. The first game's alright too, but the second one completely blows it out of the water.

Has anyone mentioned Street Fighter 2? I mean, 2D fighting games aren't as popular as they were back in the 90s. Similar to spaceship shooters.

Let's see... people have mentioned System Shock, Thief, and Marathon, so I'll go with...

Descent.

edited 25th May '15 7:12:15 PM by DarkHunter

Oooooooooooooooooohh yeah. There were a ton of great fighting games back then. King of Fighters 98, Samurai Shodown II&IV, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2, Last Blade, Garou, Darkstalkers, Slammasters 2, Jojos' Bizarre Adventure; so many great fighters. The genres' back in force these days, but... I don't know. A lot of fighters today are just sequels or reboots of older fighters, and the original ones don't really speak to me. But yes, the 90's was a great time for fighting games.

(Also, I didn't mention Street Fighter at all because, well, I don't really like Street Fighter. Yes, I know it created fighting games as we know them, and I respect it for that, but in terms of actually playing it, there are so many fighting games that I just enjoy playing more. It doesn't help that you couldn't even dash until the III series, and even then, you couldn't do anything during those dashes. To this day, it just seems like SF never really bother to move forward or incorporate much of what other fighting games introduced to the genre, and it feels stiff by comparison. Whereas by Ko F 96, you could run, super-jump, short-jump, roll, counter-roll, use blowback attacks, go into MAX Mode, etc. You could do a lot more, basically.)

Final Fight is still great if you feel like a fun, simple beat em up.