20th century games that have aged the best

[Shadow1980]

Pretty much all the good ones from the arcades, NES, Genesis, & SNES. Most sprite-based graphics at least as advanced as early 80s arcade games hold up extremely well. The gameplay on those older games is still fun, too. Whenever we do our all-time Top 50 games each year here at VGC, my list has twenty games from the 8-bit & 16-bit generations, and 19 of those are in the Top 30. Super Mario Bros. 3 is still my favorite game of all time, and the rest of my Top 10 is rounded out with six other 20th century titles: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy IV, Super Mario World, Mega Man 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Now, Gen 5 games haven't held up well at all for the most part. Honestly, even back then when those games were new I though most of them looked rough, esp. on the PS1. Terrible model quality & textures were rampant, frame rates were almost always clunky, and most devs couldn't seem to figure out how to make compelling gameplay experiences that utilized the third dimension. So many game series that tried to switch to 3D failed to do so. Nintendo and Rare seemed to be the most adept at making good 3D gameplay experiences. Visually, only the most cartoon-y games still hold up. My Top 50 list has only four N64 games (Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, & Perfect Dark) and a single PS1 game (Final Fantasy VII). I was generally not too keen on the switch to 3D and felt it was a very rough transition, and I don't think 3D games really hit their stride until Gen 7. I've long felt that the industry shouldn't have been so quick to abandon 2D sprite-based graphics, as the few that still made such games showed it was still viable. Capcom in particular showed that with the PS1 Mega Man games and especially Street Fighter 3 (the latter not getting a console port until the Dreamcast).