Same with any media, really. Lots of people idolize old music in a “they don’t make it like they used to” way, purely because the bad music didn’t get replayed often enough to enter the zeitgeist.
I had so much fun with that thing, one time I combined a picture of the family dog with my stepdad and showed it to my mom and proudly told her this is what it would look like if they had kids. Another time I tried to make an action film with my brother, but it was mostly just footage of him doing what he considered crazy stunts (jumping on the hotel bed).
A nice thing about gaming today is that it's gotten so much easier to play all the great games, back then my family had a PC and an N64 and could only sample Playstation games at friend's houses.
I mean some of the games were just good for their time. But then there are games like Spyro the Dragon, Ocarina of Time, Half Life, Banjo Kazooie and GameBoy Camera that hold up still as some of the best games in their genre ever. Sonic Adventure has basically never been topped by a game in its franchise since. (At least as far as 3D action games in the sonic series are concerned)
Yeah, Adventure 2 Battle topped the original in most ways tbh. I wish it had more variety in the playable characters, (Adventure 1 had Big, Gamma, and Amy, for instance).) But I understand that they wanted to create a sort of mirror/parity between the light and dark storylines so they gave both sides the same three gameplay styles, instead of having six distinct playstyles.
It was so confusing. I didn't know how to actually do the events, and it's not like I could look it up, so I have many memories of starting the ski jump and superstitiously button-mashing in hopes that I land right.
Like. I get survivorship bias is a thing. But how many great games came out in 2025?
Fabio (ffvii I meant but I'm leaving Fabio because it's hillarious)rebirth is the only thing I've enjoyed much honestly. Where's the good stuff? Maybe I'm just not seeing it playing it but I just don't see many games out there I'd call great.
Oh, expedition 33 is really dope. That's something.
I didn't love Silksong. It was alright. But I never finished it. Haven't played hades 2 or split fiction - didn't love hades 1 (didn't hate it either. It was alright) so never bothered. Never even heard of split fiction.
I still have to play Fabio Rebirth, but I can't find the strength. Playing Fabio Remake Intergrade was such a painful experience for me, every single interaction is delayed to make the game longer, and I didn't really like the combat system. I ended up playing it on the easiest difficulty just to see how they butchered changed the story. Ironically the only part I found enjoyable was the Yuffie DLC. I might play Rebirth in 2026, my cousin will probably keep pestering me until I do it.
Before looking at the picture I knew Thief would be there. The game itself is great but the level editor and the fan missions really made that game shine. The fan mission "Hush, Hush, Sweet Harlot" was arguably better than the original game story.
The OG trilogy plus the mostly unrelated remake are in a bundle on GOG right now for under $8.
Well yeah… it’s about that time that games were only a decade of advancement since computer gaming was created. Prior to that it was speak and spell and pong.
It's wild to me that not only have I play most of those games, I played them when they came out. It was nice having friends and physical copies of shit.
That's actually incredible! I remember getting a SNES, then a Dreamcast. Only years later did I get a PS2 which played PS1 games. I never owned a N64 and would play it at friends houses.
No one I knew owned every system, but we would trade systems and games all the time. I was 16-17 in this era, so my friends and I had cars and jobs and shit, so we traded a lot of stuff around.
I'm surprised to see Xenogears sitting smack in the middle of all that. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game, but I've never met another person offline who had heard of it. I have tried many, many times to beat many different turn based RPGs. I just simply can't, I get bored. They're just menu simulators to me. But Xenogears was the sole exception to that rule in my life thanks to it making you perform combos for your moves. I ripped its music and used it on HTML webpages as a kid. I still have and frequently use my OG beta gmail account, which includes the first name of the main character, Fei.
You can make one of these for just about every year.
2023 was one of the most recent years, with games like: Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Final Fantasy 16, Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Lies of P, Octopath Traveller 2, Dave the Diver, and Hi-Fi Rush.
With bony hands I hold my partner,
On soulless feet we cross the floor,
The music stops as if to answer,
An empty knocking at the door.
It seems his skin was sweet as mango,
When last I held him to my breast,
But now, we dance this grim fandango,
And will four years until we rest.
I mean, not strictly talking games this year but we've had Baldur's Gate 3, Expedition 33, Hades 2, Fellowship, Little Kitty Big City, Dispatch, Split fiction, Silksong, Black ops 7 (lol jk), Nightreign, Lies of P and plenty more that I probably am not aware of recently. Games haven't gotten shit lately, games have always been shit. Just like "all music from the 70s was good" is due to only the best standing the test of time, "games were better in the 90s" is because we forgot the absolute garbage that surrounded the gems that still hold up.
Most of these are above mid but not at all "legendary". The series they are part of are legendary, but the specific games are not at all the high point and reason for that.
There are definitely some timeless masterpieces there, but not enough to make it some singular year that has never been surpassed or equalled.
My favorite part about 2007 for video games was how close it was to 2008, the actual best year in gaming.
That's when indie games started getting a foothold on consoles, including Braid and Castle Crashers. Plus Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and the Wii hitting its stride with Wii Fit, Mario Kart, and a Smash Bros. Not to mention mainstream fare like CoD: World at War, MGS 4, and GTA 4.
There were also a tremendous number of absolute trash games that we don't remember because we don't remember them.
I remember giving my NES games away. I had like 200 of them.
The person receiving it went, "Bet you have a good memory out of every game." And I just kinda answered, "Not really. Most of them sucked."
Even the good ones?
Out of that pile of 200 NES games, maybe like 10% were good.
Ah, sorry, I was setting up a Bashir/Garak "Especially the good ones, my dear doctor" thing.
10% isn't bad, though. What was your favorite bad one?
Same with any media, really. Lots of people idolize old music in a “they don’t make it like they used to” way, purely because the bad music didn’t get replayed often enough to enter the zeitgeist.
Gameboy Camera is my favourite 1998 game
I had so much fun with that thing, one time I combined a picture of the family dog with my stepdad and showed it to my mom and proudly told her this is what it would look like if they had kids. Another time I tried to make an action film with my brother, but it was mostly just footage of him doing what he considered crazy stunts (jumping on the hotel bed).
How did your mom react?
She started laughing and asked me to print it out and she then stuck it on the fridge.
Actually, I hit my friend in the thigh. Turns out it's really hard to throw stuff blindfolded. You probably shouldn't do it.
I’ve found if you don’t put the blindfold around your arm it stays just as easy to throw things as before.
Turns out I hit an artery, blood started gushing everywhere and you won't believe what game got hit by his blood!
All of them? Because it was an artery, those fuckers have no restraint.
Yes! 1998 really was an amazing year for gaming!
Oh hey that reminds me Blade came out in 1998 too, love that movie
Imagine missing a game so massive it has had a billion sequels, an MMO, and a 700 million dollar television series made because of it.
Damn 1998 had hands
1998 was great but 2004 was the greatest.
I've been saying that same thing since 2005 lol. 2004 is peak gaming. It was great living through that era.
I invite you to create a post, am very curious about the winners 🙂
So, I just watched the F1 movie with Brad Pitt, and the mention f2 and f3.
I only just realized, that f zero is likely meant to be the next one after 1, as in the new elite race rank.
That game was so fucking good.
Iirc it's 0 gravity as well.
I've always been surprised that Nintendo never saw any litigation over pretty much calling their racing game Formula 0
Decades from now when we have Speed Racer type tracks they'll regret that.
When they said in The Matrix that the late 90s was peak human civilization they weren't lying
I want to argue with you, but the 90s still had the best food festivals. Gyro wasn't as popular but like my favorite Greek restaurant opened in 94.
You usually have to pay extra for greek
i'm so sleepy i can't remember what you mean
GO TO BED
the problem is i'm sleepwalking
You should eat your hands then.
throws dart
hits Tomb Raider 3
throws again
Ah yes, the smash hit Roll Away, which I have definitely heard of.
And that's Mario Party, the first one, not Mario Party 3. The cover design is confusing.
Kula World in most of the world. Roll Away was just the US title.
Haven't heard of it by that name, either, so the comment still works!
Gave it a go, generating a random coord via random.org - 580 x 1087:
Whoops!
In reality, I'd be much more likely to miss by being too to the right, since I'd be aiming for Abe's Exoddus.
youtried.jpg
Now I just feel old. Really old.
I described pinball arcades once. Never again
I cannot overstate the impact the mid-nineties had on GPAs across the board.
This picture doesn't even show the full depth and breadth of the PC market at the time. Arcades had some strong offerings at this time, too.
God I can feel that Charizard Pokémon Red cover in my soul.
A nice thing about gaming today is that it's gotten so much easier to play all the great games, back then my family had a PC and an N64 and could only sample Playstation games at friend's houses.
spyro and crash were my jam back in the day
I mean some of the games were just good for their time. But then there are games like Spyro the Dragon, Ocarina of Time, Half Life, Banjo Kazooie and GameBoy Camera that hold up still as some of the best games in their genre ever. Sonic Adventure has basically never been topped by a game in its franchise since. (At least as far as 3D action games in the sonic series are concerned)
Sonic Adventure 2
Yeah, Adventure 2 Battle topped the original in most ways tbh. I wish it had more variety in the playable characters, (Adventure 1 had Big, Gamma, and Amy, for instance).) But I understand that they wanted to create a sort of mirror/parity between the light and dark storylines so they gave both sides the same three gameplay styles, instead of having six distinct playstyles.
I wore out the connector pins on Rogue Squadron.
You should not have switched games.
I played the hell out of the Nagano Winter Olympics game!
It was so confusing. I didn't know how to actually do the events, and it's not like I could look it up, so I have many memories of starting the ski jump and superstitiously button-mashing in hopes that I land right.
96-98 is the greatest three year run in the history of gaming.
Depends what you mean by "greatest". Most revolutionary? Biggest leaps forward? Possibly.
But most of those games don't hold up today.
We're also getting a strong cheerleader effect on this picture. Mario Party 3? Turok?
This has the original mario party (the dice block isn't intended to be part of the title)
Fair enough. Still not exactly a masterpiece.
Turok was pretty shit tbh.
Many of the other games were great though.
Like. I get survivorship bias is a thing. But how many great games came out in 2025?
Fabio (ffvii I meant but I'm leaving Fabio because it's hillarious)rebirth is the only thing I've enjoyed much honestly. Where's the good stuff? Maybe I'm just not seeing it playing it but I just don't see many games out there I'd call great.
Oh, expedition 33 is really dope. That's something.
Pretty positive you're just not seeing it, because 2025 has been awesome.
Hades 2. Silksong. Split Fiction.
If a Donkey Kong or a Mario Kart had come out in 1998, it'd be in this picture.
And then I didn't play Death Stranding 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, or Blue Prince, but the word of mouth is excellent.
Also Outer Worlds 2.
I didn't love Silksong. It was alright. But I never finished it. Haven't played hades 2 or split fiction - didn't love hades 1 (didn't hate it either. It was alright) so never bothered. Never even heard of split fiction.
It's ok to just not be that into gaming anymore. But if you are looking for a game to get into, they're out there.
I still have to play Fabio Rebirth, but I can't find the strength. Playing Fabio Remake Intergrade was such a painful experience for me, every single interaction is delayed to make the game longer, and I didn't really like the combat system. I ended up playing it on the easiest difficulty just to see how they
butcheredchanged the story. Ironically the only part I found enjoyable was the Yuffie DLC. I might play Rebirth in 2026, my cousin will probably keep pestering me until I do it.I loved the Fabio remake personally. One of my peak gaming experiences since original Fabio. But that's just me.
Where the Freeman is Half-Life?
Edit: 2nd row, my app was cutting off the top and bottom of the image oops
Middle of second row.
Before looking at the picture I knew Thief would be there. The game itself is great but the level editor and the fan missions really made that game shine. The fan mission "Hush, Hush, Sweet Harlot" was arguably better than the original game story.
The OG trilogy plus the mostly unrelated remake are in a bundle on GOG right now for under $8.
Hard to top 1998. Same thing with 2007-2009 but for franchises.
Kula World was suprisingly a lot of fun.
The year “pixels actually started to look like something I don’t have to imagine”.
Well yeah… it’s about that time that games were only a decade of advancement since computer gaming was created. Prior to that it was speak and spell and pong.
It's wild to me that not only have I play most of those games, I played them when they came out. It was nice having friends and physical copies of shit.
That's actually incredible! I remember getting a SNES, then a Dreamcast. Only years later did I get a PS2 which played PS1 games. I never owned a N64 and would play it at friends houses.
I don't think anybody I knew owned every system
No one I knew owned every system, but we would trade systems and games all the time. I was 16-17 in this era, so my friends and I had cars and jobs and shit, so we traded a lot of stuff around.
Sonic Adventure came out in '99 outside Japan.
Well I guess you'll be throwing that dart really far.
I'm surprised to see Xenogears sitting smack in the middle of all that. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game, but I've never met another person offline who had heard of it. I have tried many, many times to beat many different turn based RPGs. I just simply can't, I get bored. They're just menu simulators to me. But Xenogears was the sole exception to that rule in my life thanks to it making you perform combos for your moves. I ripped its music and used it on HTML webpages as a kid. I still have and frequently use my OG beta gmail account, which includes the first name of the main character, Fei.
You can make one of these for just about every year.
2023 was one of the most recent years, with games like: Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Final Fantasy 16, Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Lies of P, Octopath Traveller 2, Dave the Diver, and Hi-Fi Rush.
Here's are some more spoilers for The Sorpranos, Tony plays Mario Kart in an episode, and he opens the fridge in another episode.
I got my son the game boy camera and the printer for Xmas this year
This album/song came a year later in '99, but I think it still fits here, it was recorded in '98 lol.
With bony hands I hold my partner, On soulless feet we cross the floor, The music stops as if to answer, An empty knocking at the door. It seems his skin was sweet as mango, When last I held him to my breast, But now, we dance this grim fandango, And will four years until we rest.
A local pawn shop is selling PS1 Spyro the Dragon for $70.
I hear, in tomb raider 3 there is a secret code that will show her boobs.
It was a lie!!
Our standards were much lower. We’ve been spoiled.
But, on the other hand, games have gotten kind of shit lately.
I mean, not strictly talking games this year but we've had Baldur's Gate 3, Expedition 33, Hades 2, Fellowship, Little Kitty Big City, Dispatch, Split fiction, Silksong, Black ops 7 (lol jk), Nightreign, Lies of P and plenty more that I probably am not aware of recently. Games haven't gotten shit lately, games have always been shit. Just like "all music from the 70s was good" is due to only the best standing the test of time, "games were better in the 90s" is because we forgot the absolute garbage that surrounded the gems that still hold up.
Most of these are above mid but not at all "legendary". The series they are part of are legendary, but the specific games are not at all the high point and reason for that. There are definitely some timeless masterpieces there, but not enough to make it some singular year that has never been surpassed or equalled.
That’s a lot of bangers
I played every game on that image except rollaway, and whatever is below 1080?
looks like unreal
Xenogears is one of my all time favorite games. What could have been...
I closed my eyes and pointed at a random spot. Got Thief twice in a row.
Guess I gotta play it now.
I get that you can't include all the bangers but banjo kazooie and turok 2
Eh, the Era of Ps1 was the beginning of over saturation.
Besides 2007 was objectively the best:
BioShock, Portal, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Crysis, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and God of War II
My favorite part about 2007 for video games was how close it was to 2008, the actual best year in gaming.
That's when indie games started getting a foothold on consoles, including Braid and Castle Crashers. Plus Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and the Wii hitting its stride with Wii Fit, Mario Kart, and a Smash Bros. Not to mention mainstream fare like CoD: World at War, MGS 4, and GTA 4.
1997
It’s on there.
1995
How the fuck is Half-Life not on there?
It is
Oh I see it now