Summary
Retro games have a special place in the hearts of many gamers. Aside from the obvious nostalgia, they have the unmatched kind of simplicity and mechanics you often only find in indie games these days. And besides, just because new games exist doesn’t mean you’re able to’t go back and enjoy the old stuff.
Another reason why older game developers constantly dropped hits is the post-launch process. Unlike today, post-launch patching wasn’t feasible, so developers really put their back into releasing polished games. That said, here are some greats that hold up and will never be beat, even looking at them with a modern lens.
8A Bard’s Tale
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A Bard’s Tale is a fantasy RPG that follows the typical hack-and-slash gameplay. Your character is The Bard, a cynical musician roaming the country searching for “coin and cleavage”. But fate has other plans, so he finds himself an unwilling hero on a quest to rescue a princess trapped in an evil tower.
Aside from the immersive lore and intuitive combat, the game’s use of humor is incredible. It’s also not as loot-oriented as most other dungeon crawlers, where you constantly gather and arrange your inventory in submenus. Sometimes, the narrator breaks the fourth wall because of the sheer randomness of The Bard’s story. Not, of course, without a snide retort from The Bard himself.
7Chrono Cross
“You sure are a buzz-kill” - Sprigg
Chrono Crossis a pleasantly bizarre Japanese role-playing game (JRPG). Serge, the main character, is a young fisherman who passes out while running errands with his friend and wakes to find that no one recognizes him. After some digging, he discovers that he is in an alternate dimension where he died ten years prior, so he sets out to make sense of his new reality and return to his original timeline.
As a sequel toChrono Trigger, Chrono Cross is highly fresh and inventive, but if you played Trigger, all your favorite characters are likely dead. That said, Cross’ charmingly written cast of playable characters is so huge that you have a hard time choosing who to use. Unlike many games, it allows you to run away from battle, which is goofy but can help you avoid random fights. To keep things fun, some enemies can and will chase you down.
6Planescape: Torment
“Endure. In enduring, grow strong."- Dak’kon
Planescape: Tormentis a tactical RPG with character interactions that’ll make you giggle more than once. Your character, The Nameless One, is an immortal covered in battle scars from countless lives. However, you forget all your memories with every death experience, so you set off through Sigil hoping to uncover your past.
Graphically, Planescape: Torment features the typical top-down isometric perspective you only find in infinity engine games with a compellingly dreamlike setting only China Miéville could describe.
Every interaction is unique and keeps you wanting more: you meet a levitating skull, a perpetually burning man, and a succubus who can’t stand metal (a nod to the Tanar’ri race inDungeons and Dragons), to name a few. Admittedly, Planescape: Torment is more for the story than the combat, and is perfect if you love dark fantasy novels disguised as video games.
5Evoland
Evoland is aZelda-liteRPG that journeys through the action-adventure gaming history through a collection of minigames. From 8-bit graphics, through 16-bit and 3D, you are exploring a world where the graphics and mechanics continuously evolve each time you unlock a treasure chest.
Your character is Clink, a portmanteau of Cloud fromFinal Fantasy 7and Link from theLegend of Zelda, and you are joined by Kaeris (a nod to Aerith from Final Fantasy 7), who seeks your help to save her hometown from evil forces.
The stories in Evoland are well-thought-out, and the characters will crack you up with their amusing throwbacks to JRPG history. The battle system is also robust enough to keep you interested while giving you a taste of different games. Overall, it is a short and sweet romp that’ll appeal to anyone who grew up on Final Fantasy, Diablo, and Dragon Quest.
4Anodyne
“To be honest. I kind of like sitting in boxes” - Icky
Anodyne is an action-adventure game that borrows heavily from Zelda but stands on its own beautifully. Your character is a broom-wielding man called Young, on a quest to comb a portal-littered realm in his subconscious to unlock the truth of the world and his role in it. Throughout this dream world, you’ll battle 16-bit bosses with nothing but wits and your trusty upgradable broom.
Anodyne is full of charming puzzles that are old-school in the best way and an exploration of a mildly dark and bizarre world through a thought-provoking story. Let’s not forget the excellent boss design: their health is generally low, which is perfect because you wield a literal broom, and you need to figure out their patterns. Most of all, the eeriness is fantastic because it gives this Zelda-esque game a distinct taste.
3Starflight
“Xenon, where’s my money?” -Borno
Starflight is a 1986 sandbox RPG centered on space and combat. Set in the year 4620, an ancient alien race is causing stars to flare and destroy all living creatures, and your character, a starship captain, is sent to explore the galaxy in search of them. So, you venture into the solar systems in hopes of gathering clues to help you destroy the Crystal Planet before it eradicates your home system.
Starflight’s beauty lies in its ridiculously unpredictable gameplay as the story unfolds. There is no set path, so you can switch between mining, train vehicle combat, and alien diplomacy, which involves forming a ship’s crew consisting of humans and aliens. But if, for instance, your crew’s communicator officer fumbles over an alien encounter, or you misread sensor readouts, your entire team could be killed or crushed by gravity. This flavor of retro kept you on your toes.
2Wonderboy In Monster World
“It is because of you, hero incarnate, that the legend shall repeat."- Biomeka
Wonderboy in Monster World is a 1991 side-scrolling action RPG. Your character, Shion, is on a quest to save the Monster World from the evil Demon King. So, you travel through the realm’s six interconnected lands, running, crouching, jumping, and making mincemeat of your enemies. Each land has a menacing boss and is populated with monsters, and with only one save file, you don’t need a reminder to collect precious hearts.
What makes this game unique from other Zelda-lites is resource scarcity. Hearts are highly limited, magic is expensive, and you need money for everything, so you must restart and aim to get further with every game-over.
Sure, Shion moves a little slowly, but the game keeps the distances short so that playing doesn’t become a chore. Admittedly, Wonderboy in Monster World isn’t groundbreaking, but the controls, combat mechanics, and story make it a worthwhile adventure.
1Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse
“Uh oh” - Mickey
Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse is a 1994 platformer based on Disney’s most popular character. You control Mickey, who is transported through seven Disney Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1928 through 1990. Mickey has two (rather vanilla) modes of attack: jumping on his enemies or firing at them from his trusty pouch of marbles, which, by the way, are limited, and each level has a symbolic enemy from the corresponding cartoon. The game’s difficulty comes early and will have you sweating buckets to beat the Mad Doctor in level 2.
Visually, the game is delightfully colorful, and even the gray world has enough details for applause. It also has clever gimmicks like Mickey keeping his colors in a monochrome world, perhaps to drive down his futuristic background. It does lack a coherent plot telling us why Mickey is time traveling, but the clever level variations and character animations will keep you coming back.
