I noticed that pretty much all games I played in my life have been released after 1990. So now I’m asking those with earlier experience here:
Which games can you recommend from before that time?

But: they should still be fun in their own right and not just interesting to play in an historian sense of trying to understand how genres developed.

Games I played that are older than 1990:

  • Tetris (classic for a reason)
  • Pacman (interesting but simple)
  • Prince of Persia (was too young to understand how to correctly play this game, I should maybe try to play it again)
  • The Legend of Zelda (too old school and clunky for my liking)
  • Agent641@lemmy.world
    10·
    3 days ago

    Prince of Persia, 1989.

    This game pioneered rotoscope animation and directly influenced the Tomb raider series in many ways:

    • Crumbling slabs that you fall through
    • spikes that kill you if you fall on them, but you can walk through them
    • Clanging jaws that will chop you in half
    • the re-cycling of multi-tier map design, when one big room with many levels becomes a central atrium to which you return many times, just sometimes higher or lower than you were before. Also a very clever use of limited memory resources.
    • A random doppleganger encounter that hurts you when you hurt it.
    • block-based jump physics with standing, running, and vertical jumping
    • hanging from ledges as a mechanic
    • little known fact about prince of Persia but if you holster your sword and hold X and T while drawing your sword, the player draws a pair of uzis instead
    • bob_lemon@feddit.org
      2·
      2 days ago

      Be aware that the game requires you to memorize the level layouts, including multiple completely blind jumps.

      It’s still a great game, bit I thought it’d mention this because it may frustrate players trying it out.

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        Oh and you have to beat it in under an hour or you automatically lose.

        That was a fun mechanic. Fun, fun, fun.