Best 10 games to help you get into retro
04.10.2023 - 15:05
/ destructoid.com
/ Best
I technically never stopped playing retro games. When I had my Gamecube, I was still playing games on my SNES. However, around that time, I also bought an NES. The games I got with it – games like Total Recall and Kid Icarus – had me convinced that I just hated games on the NES. It wasn’t until I was introduced to a couple of games on this list, that retro gaming truly opened up to me.
I do believe that games age, but mostly on a technical level. Poor framerates and blurry graphics can make it difficult to return to an early 3D game. Their design, on the other hand, is rarely completely superseded. Video game development really just goes through trends. Right now, there’s a particular style of game that is favored by gamers, but this was different 10 years ago, which was different 10 years before that.
As such, it’s more of a matter of acclimating to the design climate of the time period, which can be difficult if you don’t know where to look. Maybe I can help. The following is a list of games that may provide you with a gateway into retro gaming. These aren’t necessarily what I consider to be the “best” games in general, but they’re ones that, if you’re reluctant but curious to try older games, might be a good place to start.
Have you not played Pac-Man? Games of the golden era of video games (before the 1983 crash) can be a little dry for newcomers since they are more about competition through repetition. Whether you’re playing by yourself or challenging others, you’re still doing the same thing repeatedly, building skills, and trying for the best outcome. They tend to lack the progression that helps keep you glued to more modern titles.
Pac-Man is one of the retro arcade titles that are still easy to enjoy today, and that’s partially because, on a surface level, it’s more dynamic and harder to predict. Instead of simply learning patterns and strategies, you’re also decoding the personalities of the four ghosts that chase you.
Ms. Pac-Man is an improvement over the first game in just about every way. There are more mazes, more dynamic ghosts, and a more attractive protagonist. Yum. It’s just too bad it was made without Namco’s permission. Now, because of various rights issues, Namco prefers to pretend it never happened. But we know better. And if you’re able to get your hands on a port of it, it’s a great jumping point for getting into the earliest days of gaming.
The gameplay in the NES port of Nintendo’s 1984 boxing game is so refined and so unique that it’s timeless. Outwardly, you might be expecting a competitive boxing title, but Punch-Out!! is actually a much simpler game of pattern recognition and reflexes. It’s a series of battles where you must memorize the tells and movements of a