this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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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)
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[โ€“] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

M.U.L.E. (1983) still holds up, though I'd appreciate some QOL improvements. It's a multiplayer game where you develop your production and then sell your commodities at auction to the other players (or what the bank will pay as minimum). The theme song is a banger.

Sid Meyer's Covert Action is a fun espionage game. Break-ins, wiretapping, following clues, etc. Released in 1990, so on the line.

[โ€“] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 5 points 16 hours ago

Covert Action is the game that Sid Meyer hated the most and often will mention during talks.

I've seen it played in Youtube and I thought it was fantastic, but I struggled a lot with certain minigames, the myriad of shortkeys it is demanding you to learn and how disconnected the minigames feel from the whole campaign. This is probably a game I really wanted to like, but playing it instead of watching someone play felt like a chore.

That said, RPS folks said it is still fun to play.