Mainly talking about console games as I'm sure most gamers in that era never heard of these  games as PC gaming was very small back then. It's not just botw by the way. Most games were 2-3 hours longs in the early 90s till n64/ps1 came out. Gaming is just massively better now. You can play racers, fighters, and shooters online. Triple aaa single player games are mainly around 20-40 hours long and that's not even including if you want different endings and wanna get complete all the side missions, then you have massive open worlds like gta, witcher 3, botw,rdr2 and skyrim giving 100s of hours of gaming. Just compare thr highest rated games of 90s to the highest rated games of 2010-2020 and compare play time it's not even close.

Yet those older games were actually fun to replay. None of those up there did I ever entertain the thought to ever play them again after finishing them. And 'finishing' those 100+ hour games usually leads to playing until you get bored of it. I very much disagree that gaming is massively better now. It's pretty rare nowadays when I feel like starting another play through. The new God of War, didn't finish, too much crap. Older GoW games, played several times and enjoyed every play through. More is not necessarily better, often it's worse. The big problem with open world games is you do all the fun stuff first, then you are left over with the work to finish the game :/

Plenty long games on PS1 as well, but not bloated with open world repetition. And the best things: No online multiplayer, play with friends locally in split screen. No MTX, no season passes, no limited time content, no buggy mess at release, no spoilers everywhere, no You Tube / Twitter / TikTok nonsense.

Btw Might and Magic 3 came out for PC, Mac, Amiga, Sega CD, TurboGrafx-CD and SNES, but yeah after that just PC and Mac.

I have to give it to the 1980's, although the 1990's is a c  lose second.

The 1980's had TWO Golden Ages: one for arcade gaming and one for console gaming.  Arcade gaming started the decade off with Pac Man, but the amazing thing about the arcades at this time is how they just kept releasing hit after hit in just the span of a few years.  Not only had arcades become extremely popular, but arcade machines were everywhere.  You could go to a pizza place, grocery store or convenience store and find a couple of arcade games there to play.  I have never since seen gaming so thoroughly infused into the mainstream culture to the extent that it was during the early 80's.

And then the other megaton bomb of the 80's was the NES.  This is the first time the biggest console games were actually made for play at home instead of simply being arcade ports.  Having continuous music was new.  Being able to save your progress was new.  And most importantly it created a crapton of the biggest gaming franchises that are still huge today: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Tetris, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metal Gear, Mega Man, Castlevania, etc....  What we think of as console gaming was essentially created by the NES, and it had the most innovative games of any console ever.

The 1980's also had some decent computer games, but I wouldn't really call it PC gaming, because Microsoft OS was not really important in the 80's.  Computer gaming is actually what makes the 90's competitive with the 80's.  Basically the invention of the mouse + Direct X from Microsoft is what made the 90's the golden era for computer gaming.  Really Direct X is what turned "computer gaming" into "PC gaming", and of course there were a crapload of great games to go with it.

Console gaming was also pretty good in the 90's, but arcades were dying out.  Revenues were high from fighting games, but there was very little variety between game genres in the arcade.

So in the end I have to give it to the 80's.  It had 2 Golden Eras: Arcade and Console, plus it had some decent computer games as an honorable mention.  The 90's had amazing PC gaming, where PC gaming finally came into its own, and the 90's also had really good console gaming, but console gaming was not as innovative as the 80's.  And the 90's kind of had arcades as an honorable mention, but they eventually died outside of Japan by the end of the 90's.

‘More’ (or ‘longer’) isn’t necessarily better though.

But is length the same as quality? I would argue not. Modern Assassin's Creeds are far beyond 100 hours, but I usually stop playing after 20-30 hours, as that is the time it is fun to play. A game like 'A Short Hike' is only 1 or 2 hours long, but I think it is better than 80% of the 50+ hour games, it has what is needed and is impactful and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Games that are really engaging for all of 50, 70, 100 or more hours are actually pretty rare. So I wouldn't see the playtime (or content) as a mark of quality.

Ahh the Amiga, good times and slightly nightmarish ones <3

I still know an artist in the Fur community that to this day is still using Amiga (His work was even featured way back in their 1992 & 1994 edition of the  Amiga magazines).

Also I feel the same way when it comes to the latest games these days. I always try booting one of them up, don't feel the spark, and go back to older games like C&C or heck, even Monkey Island (since the new Monkey island content is out now for SoT and that's about the only AAA game I'm playing with friends atm that I feel something of a spark).

I think the 00s are when the industry peaked. In a lot of ways game design hasn’t really evolved very much from the formulas found in the late 00s and early 10s. Sony’s first party in particular basically hasn’t evolved in the last 10-15 years, they are more or less releasing the same types of games, just larger and better looking

It all subjective. if you really enjoy a game these days you get like 10x the content of the 90s plus online play,  if you wanna finish that content it's up to you. Most of my top games of the 90s were not that repayable for me

MGS1 one and done
Resident evil 2 one and done

Mario 64 after 120 stars no reason to go back
Street fighter 2 franchise including street fighter alpha 3 and x-men vs street fighter. no online play back then 
Zelda OOT/LTTP after finishing it no side content really worth exploring. 
Gran turismo this had great replay value but no online play
Golden eye was fun but no online play 
banjo kazioo same as mario 64
sonic 2d
Mario 2d
nes as well

mega man x franchise as well

Nes. sega genesis, and and many super nes games get hurt by not having save states.

Let me compare my top games of 2010-2020

Sikero finished 5 times loved the combat and multiple endings and story

GOW 2018 finished 2 times

Bloodborne same as above but finished 4 times

Batman Arkham city 55 hours Got both endings, same for Arkham knight 

MGSV 80 hours 

RDR 70 hours

BOTW 100 HOURS

Last of us finished 3 times cause i loved the atmosphere and story much

Ghost of Tsushima 50 hours and wanna do a replay on ps5

GTAV  80 hours

Super Street fighter 2 turbo 400 hours in thanks to online play lol.

Spider man 60 hours before i got bored but was great fun.

There just wasn't that many big games in the 90s that had quality gameplay more then 25 hours for me.

The 90s. It had:

- The tail end of the NES's life, including the NA releases of Super Mario Bros. 3, River City Ransom, Ninja Gaiden II, Final Fantasy, and four of the original six 8-bit Mega Man games

- The 16-bit era, which has a solid plurality of my all-time favorite games, including Super Mario World, Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Mega Man X, and Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog. Preteen me was beyond hyped for the SNES when it was new, and the Genesis was a pleasant surprise as well (literally, as it was an unexpected Christmas gift in 1991).

- A fair number of classic early 3D games. While the transition to 3D was a rough one, and few of the games of that era have aged well either mechanically or visually (and most didn't even look good to me back then), it did produce some of my all-time favorite games, like Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64, and Final Fantasy VII. I spent a ton of time playing games on the N64. Gen 5 didn't produce as many games I liked as the 16-bit era did, but the ones I did like were excellent.

- The Dreamcast, which didn't live long, but its launch window gave us what I still think is quite possibly the best fighting game ever (Soul Calibur), as well as one of the only halfway decent 3D Sonic games.

- Arcades still being relevant. The TMNT arcade game was released less than three months before the 80s ended, and was the most popular game in 1990. Then fighting games hit big with Street Fighter II in 1991 and Mortal Kombat in 1992. While arcades did start to decline in popularity in the latter half of the decades, they were still a thing, and new games were continually being released.

- PC gaming gaining relevance. Windows did a lot to make PCs popular, with Windows 3.1 and especially Windows 95 making the OS a household name. It was around this time that PC games really started to hit the big time. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom popularized the FPS genre, with other hits like Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, and Half-Life releasing later in the decade. RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Diablo as well as RTS games like Command & Conquer and Starcraft also debuted in the 1990s. Myst was also a massively popular title.


In the last edition of VGC's Top 50 Greatest Games event, 15 of my top 25 games were released in the 90s (again going by North American release dates), with six being from the 80s and only four being from the 00s.

I was having this same discussion elsewhere regarding game length. My time is finite and therefore extremely valuable, and if a game is asking for a lot of my time, it'd damn well better be worth it. Sadly, that's far too often not the case. While many modern games may be vast, they're shallow. Open world games in particular are guilty of this. Too many of them are just filled with a bunch of filler and padding. The devs give you a checklist of repetitive copy-and-past objectives that are there just to fill up space and time, to give the player 40-60 hours worth of things to do but that don't really move the story forward. Often times, you're kind of compelled to do those tasks, as such games often have RPG mechanics, requiring you to earn EXP in order to unlock new abilities and expand your health and other bars. Even the most well-designed open worlds can start to get repetitive at times. Elden Ring is the best open-world game I've played to date, yet even it has you facing the same bosses multiple times in thematically-similar side dungeons (though the rewards were often worth it). There's only so much unique content you can have in a world that big.

I prefer depth to breadth. I'd rather have a game that only lasts 8-20 hours but is densely packed with a variety of challenges and experiences. Hell, many of my favorite games of all time are games I can beat in one to four hours. Seeing as the 90s are my favorite decade for gaming, followed by the 80s, that was kind of the norm for me growing up. I can blitz through a run of Super Mario Bros. or Gradius III in less than an hour, but those games are non-stop fun with not a drop of filler. And shorter games are usually ones I'm more likely to replay. If I have only 60 hours to devote to gaming in a month, I can either devote all of that to a single open-world game, or I could choose four 15-hour games or a dozen 5-hour games.

2000s have PS2, handhelds and PC games being accessible. Internet made MMO so fun, I played them a lot on cyber cafes.

I believe the game design of the 2000 is the biggest long lasting in gaming history. Today our games are basically 2000 games with better graphics and bigger length. Quality of life changes were so good. No more clunky 3D controls of PS1/N64 era




2000s wins by far