Game of the decade: The 1990s

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 90's was the best the best decade for gaming.  It seemed like almost every company was giving their all to make some truly great games.  Even EA made really good games in the 90's.  Yes, that EA!  There were so many great platforms that I think I just have to talk about my top 5 platforms of the 90's and give my favorite game from each.

5. The Arcade
The arcade in the 90's did not compare to the arcade of the 80's, and yet it still was putting out a lot of great games.  Most of these games were fighting games, not a genre that I am too excited about, but I still would go in and play the occasional fighting game.  Every so often some other type of game would pop up.  My favorite of these was Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom by Capcom.  I love 4 player beat em ups, and I love D&D.  This felt like the arcade game that I had been waiting for all my life.  In fact, even though there are a lot more arcade games I really love in the 80's, this is my favorite arcade game overall.  I have beat this game countless times, but what is great is that there are all sorts of different paths to take through this game as well as secrets to discover.  And there are 4 different characters, each of which plays fairly differently.  There is just a ton of replay value to D&D Tower of Doom and that is why I replayed it so much.

4. Sega Genesis
My SNES was stolen in my senior year of high school.  When I went away to college I got a Sega Genesis to see what it had to offer.  Turns out it had a ton of great games too.  I played Sonic and a D&D game and a couple of other Genesis games.  Then I found Shining Force.  This was the first tactical RPG I ever played and it was my favorite Genesis game during the 90's.  However, for the past few years I have really been getting into retro gaming and playing a lot of Genesis games I missed the first time around.  Ironically, my favorite Genesis game, as of now, is Sonic the Hedgehog.  I really liked this game back in the 90's, but I never got past the water zone.  Then in 2018 I stuck with it and realized that the zones after it are just amazing.  Star Light Zone is my favorite zone in the whole game, with catchy music to go with the amazing gameplay.  I finally beat the game in 2018, and that is when I fully appreciated the amazing design of the first Sonic game.  Those early stages are easy because you are supposed to collect lives and continues to make it through to the very end.  Sonic the Hedgehog actually borrows its overall game strategy from rogue-likes.  It's a Mario-level platformer with a rogue-like strategy built in.  It's such a unique and well designed game, and that is why it is my favorite Genesis game overall.

3. SNES
My favorite platform of all time is the NES, and yet when the SNES launched I went out and bought it day 1.  I knew Link to the Past was going to be on the SNES, and Zelda was my favorite series (still is).  While waiting for Zelda, I played several other great games like Super Mario World, Actraiser, Final Fantasy 2(4), and Super Castlevania 4.  The SNES was such a great system and Link to the Past was my favorite game back in the 90's.  However,  when I go back and play these games it turns out that Super Castlevania 4 is my favorite SNES game.  Link to the Past is great, but there are several Zelda games I like better.  But Super Castlevania 4 is my favorite Castlevania.  It just has amazing controls.  I love all of the things I can do with the whip.  At the same time the game is still tough and trying it's best to kill you.  To me this is old school gaming at its best: tough but fair challenges paired with great controls.  The game keeps the challenge high enough, but gives you all the proper tools you need to overcome.

2. PS1
I did not play a ton of PS1 games back in the day.  Like the SNES and Genesis I have been revisiting the PS1 library these past few years, because in the 90's I spent so much time with my #1 platform (see below).  In spite of all of this the few PS1 games I played at the time are some of my favorite ever.  In fact I have 2 PS1 games in my top 5 of all time and no other console can boast that.  And my favorite PS1 game back then is still my favorite PS1 game: Final Fantasy 7. This game really took storytelling to the next level.  I really loved how it felt like I was the main character in a movie.  Now this sort of thing feels old and overdone, but when FF7 came out it was totally original.  On top of that if you were like me and chose a certain character to be Cloud's love interest then the game becomes even more impactful when something pivotal happens to said love interest.  It impacted me so much, because I consciously chose her.  That is something you can't do in a novel or movie.  But in a game you can make choices and that makes you even more engaged in the story and more impacted by things that happen to the character you've chosen to favor.  For this reason all other story games pale in comparison to Final Fantasy 7. 

1. 90's PC
If you were to ask me about any other decade I would say that console gaming absolutely blows away PC gaming.  But in the 90's that was totally reversed.  First of all, so many of the "amazing" things that people thing about for consoles actually happened to the PC first.  CD Rom gaming? PC first.  3D gaming?  PC first.  Internet gaming?  PC first.  All of it happened in the 90's first.  But more importantly the games were just amazing.  Even the games that embraced none of these tech innovations were just so original and phenomenally made and there were so many of them: Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Dungeon Keeper, The Sims, Civilization, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Master of Magic, several games from the Ultima and Wing Commander series, and more D&D games that I can possibly count.  And yet the game that I just purely enjoyed playing most among all of these great games was Heroes of Might and Magic 2.  I had played great strategy games like Master of Magic before this, but what I found that I liked most was just assembling an army of elite forces and then going around and kicking the enemy's ass.  Well in HoMM2, that is what the whole game is built around.  Sure you develop your cities and explore the map like other 4X games, but this game really emphasizes just building up an impressive army that is going to stomp the enemy into the ground.  It's just so much fun and so satisfying.  Technically my favorite game of the whole decade is Final Fantasy 7.  But I have to say that my favorite game on my favorite platform, the platform I easily played the most during the 90's, is Heroes of Might and Magic 2.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 28 January 2020