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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[–] Sophocles 2 points 8 hours ago

A lot of pre-1990 games are pretty clunky, so you kinda have to see them either as someone from the era would or try to appreciate them for what they are today. That being said, a lot of them are still fun with this in mind.

The Gauntlet series is probably my favorite early game. It's better played with 2-4 people, but can be played alone. It's essentially a dungeon crawler, but the levels and enemies are interesting and fun to navigate.

Some other good ones are Dig Dug (pacman but more fun and underground), Galaga or Galaxian (arcade space shooters), Adventure for the Atari 2600 (first rpg and first easter egg in video game history), Rampage (be a giant monster and destroy buildings), 1943 (airplane shmup (shoot em up) with cool powerups and pixel art) and toobin (also a shmup where you're on an inertube and navigate perilous waters. Sounds boring but it has really cool level progression and game mechanics later in the game).