No arcade was perfect all of the time, but the best arcades offered you a place to not just simply exist in but feel like you actually belonged in. Of course, there is also the sense of community that arcades provided. Beat-em-ups, light gun shooters, and even 2D action titles like Metal Slug were pretty much perfected in the arcades during this era, and time has done little to improve upon those genres in significant ways.
Arcade games were far from perfect (and were often designed to be frustrating), but some of the best arcade titles of the ‘80s and ‘90s have aged remarkably well compared to other retro experiences. However, any discussions about the joy of arcade gaming should start with the quality of the very best arcade games. Either you hear the word “arcade” and instantly enjoy a nostalgia-fuelled dopamine hit, or the idea of spending a significant amount of time in a proper arcade feels like such a distant concept that it might as well have been in fashion centuries ago. The former group has already made up their minds, and the latter group has so little context to work with. Trying to talk about the virtues of the retro arcade scene is a difficult task. It’s a small thing, but again, this is one of those areas of gaming that I feel has gotten objectively worse over the years for reasons that have little to do with the quality of the actual products. Even little pleasures (like the mascot mode in NCAA Football) have vanished over the years for reasons that stopped making sense long ago.
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From licensed spin-offs like NBA Street and NFL Blitz to wild concepts like Mutant League Football and (at the time) even Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, sports games generally used to be significantly more ambitious and varied than they are now. Perhaps more importantly, I miss when sports games were encouraged (or perhaps simply allowed) to be a bit more…well, fun. Getting more than one NFL or MLB game a year shouldn’t feel like a distant, impossible memory. Granted, this is hardly a new complaint, but the lack of genuine competition in the modern sports game market is heartbreaking, frustrating, and honestly a bit ironic given the subject matter. While I will be referencing games released beyond that point from time to time, this list largely focuses on trends that were common in the industry 20+ years ago.Īt the very least, I miss a time when the official licenses to the biggest sports organizations in the world weren’t controlled by a few companies satisfied with churning out increasingly stale yearly installments. In other, words, I’m considering “retro gaming” to be anything that happened before 2004. At the very least, there are numerous aspects of the retro-gaming scene that feel important and even “better” today simply because the industry has moved so far away from them for reasons that haven’t always benefited gamers.Īs before, though, please note that there is a soft 20-year cutoff rule for this list.
If it’s true that not everything was better once upon a time, then it stands to reason that it would be true that some things perhaps were. More importantly, there are many aspects of retro gaming that don’t require rose-tinted glasses. I’m as nostalgic as anyone for gaming’s golden days, and I love celebrating all the things that made that era so special. However, the fact of the matter is that I can’t be too negative about retro gaming for too long. Last week, we took a look at some of the worst things about retro gaming and some of the ways we should remind ourselves that not everything was better back when.
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