I was extremely late to the party with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, never having played any of them until 2016 or so. Having long missed the zeitgeist, I figured it would be one of those instances where the games were massive in their time but are simplistic or clunky to play now. But man, was I wrong.
These are mechanically deep games with a crazy high skill ceiling, rewarding skillful execution and mastery of the controls. They have much more in common with combo-oriented action games like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry than anything in the “Sports” category they’re often lumped into (and as a fan of those action games, I felt right at home). THPS 3 and 4 are just sublime to control.
Admittedly, the first two entries show their age a bit due to lacking the mechanics that flesh out the gameplay in 3/4, but they’re still solid. The 1+2 remaster is outstanding by the way, bringing in all those later mechanics for the full THPS experience. It’s a near-perfect example of a remaster done right.
Tetris. That game has aged extremely well. I played it on the original Gameboy. I last played it on a VR headset.
The most obvious answer: the original DOOM. It’s a game that does what it does so well that it is literally the template for an entire genre, and it still holds up as well today as it did the day it released. DOOM II is every bit as good. The two games have been ported to just about every device imaginable. If it has a screen, DOOM it. The DOOM community is still active to this day. Hell, John Romero released Sigil, the unofficial fifth episode of DOOM and widely regarded as the best, in 2019.
Symphony of the Night. I played it for the first time a few years ago, and it holds up really well next to modern metroidvanias, better than Super Metroid IMO.
Super Mario World and Advance Wars
