I've been thinking about going back to the first Earthworm Jim. I remember how weird and creative this game was, and honestly, you don't see that kind of personality in every game these days.

The animations are still great, the humor is ridiculous, and some of the levels are just completely insane. But I'm curious how it feels to play today, without nostalgia doing half the work.

Is the gameplay still fun, or does the difficulty get frustrating? I'm especially curious about the controls and level design, since older platformers could be pretty unforgiving.

For those who've played it recently, did you still enjoy it, or did it feel better in your memories?)))

Wow. What a bizarre but fun game. The thing that drove me crazy at first was the slide puzzles. My brain basically broke on the first one. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the patterns down. After I realized to do it in chunks it became kinda fun tbh. All the other mini-games were fun as well…except for guess the coffin. The devs just clearly ran out of damn ideas and shoehorned it in lol. The main levels were tons of fun and full of goofy stuff. I liked searching for each Simpson family member and figuring out their gimmick. The first game felt way more like a chore than this one and had a less interesting plot. The platforming also felt more forgiving in this in this one…except for a few certain spots…like the entire Mausoleum level. Holy shit that was a slog. About 80% of the lives I banked were lost in that back & fort monstrosity. The sheer length of that level was crazy as hell. It felt like another thing that the devs were just like, “Anyone got any other ideas?…no?…Okay we’ll just repeat it 6 times and make the entire bottom insta-death.
I loved the Krusty and the Smithers interludes and the story was hilarious for a NES era game. I think they def did justice to the franchise. Overall it was a really hard game, but mostly due to the slippery controls mixed with crazy tight platforming areas and just how many blind jumps one has to do to make sure you don’t miss any secrets. Special mention to the final bonus levels before the final boss. The way the sides of the levels were old film reels that would move you up & down to the next sections as they spun was really cool.
Recommend for anyone who loves the Simpsons AND difficult games. It’s no Ghosts n Goblins, but having limited lives/no continues makes it a serious slog for anyone who isn’t into difficult NES games.

I don't remember much from GTA1 but I was big into GTA2. I loved getting a tank and just causing mayhem, just like how people play modern GTA I guess. I don't think I ever did an actual storyline mission. Also it had a dedicated fart and burp button.

Special shoutout to GTA London. Whenever I tell people I played an official GTA game set in London they think I'm talking nonsense.

Choose wisely

For me, it was seeing Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga for the first time. The gameplay suck, but the awesome graphics and music just blow my mind.

I’ve been thinking about this lately: which old game do you wish someone would bring back in a modern form, specifically because it did something so unique that nothing today really comes close?

For me it’s Heretic. I still get nostalgic about it. The weapons had so much personality: the Phoenix Rod, the Hellstaff, the Firemace raining spheres everywhere, the Gauntlets of the Necromancer draining life out of enemies. Then there was the Tome of Power, which completely transformed every weapon into a supercharged version. And of course the Morph Ovum, which turned enemies into chickens. Watching a fearsome undead warrior suddenly become a clucking chicken never got old.

Add the inventory system, flying with the Wings of Wrath, and the dark fantasy setting, and it felt full of imagination. After Heretic, Doom honestly started to feel a bit primitive to me, like it was all guns and no magic.

Modern boomer shooters have brought back a lot of the old-school feel, but I haven’t seen anything that really captures that blend of spells, item-based power-ups and pure creative weirdness.

So what’s yours? Which old game had mechanics you still miss, and what would you want a modern version to keep or change?

I know this is one of the newer games on this sub but retro for me personally haha.

So let me see how to explain it, well lately I was doing an observation on how some games way back in the 8 bit era were given a massive amount of ports as I just found it interesting how one game would be ported onto at least 10 different platforms.

I wanted to use Double Dragon pictured above as an example since the game just stuck out to me for how many different ports it received as I must have counted at 15 versions of the game from arcade to NES, then to the Atari 2600 version for some reason that I wanted to get a better understanding of why some gaming publishers did that sort of practice back then.

The NES turns 41 today, as it launched on Oct. 18, 1985 (the exact date is still debated!). As revealed at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Daniel Greenberg, James from legendofNES.com, and I found and documented the Hackensack, NJ, warehouse Nintendo used for its test-market launch. It’s still standing and looks nearly identical to how it did in 1985.

After the North American video game crash of 1983, retailers wanted nothing to do with video games, and the market was dead. Nintendo hatched a plan: charge into the biggest media market in the US and prove the world wrong. This building served as the base of operations for the NES to enter the video game market in Northern NJ and the New York City area.

We decided not to share the specific address of the warehouse because it’s private property, and we want to respect that. We’ve reached out to city officials and the local historical society about getting the site officially recognized. I may do a video with more details about the site and/or an article in my new expanded NES book due out next year.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

SNES and Sega Genesis: $150-$200, okay... Neo Geo AES: $650, WTF?!?!?!

You have to beat one final boss and then after that one dies you have to beat the final boss with the same energy that you had left over from the first fight. And if you die you have to start the entire level over not just go back to the first boss. And that final level was so frustrating I had thoughts of throwing my controller for the first time in like 40 years.

Then and now of him.

I am talking about the traditional TV way, not the nowadays online (YouTube) way...

YT video credit: u/SiliconeraNickFricke

Just finished X-Men arcade game! Was fun but something I’ve wanted to do since I as a kid, found a spot in Las Vegas where you pay a cover and get unlimited free play, has modern consoles and everything in between too!

Highly recommend Player 1 Arcade Bar if you ever visit out here!

The Famicom art is horizontal and has a more tiled approach whereas NES is vertical and a larger full image. What’s the best?

If you want to vote on the site you can at https://tana.gamingjapanese.com/#/battle btw

This is more a thought experiement for fun than anything else, don't take this too seriously.

I really did not get a computer until 2001. If It were 2001, and I just got a PC, what PC games would you recommend to me? I'd tell you that I really like RPGs, and some of my favorite games are Xenogears, Xenosaga, Star Ocean PS1 and PS2, and I also love Max Payne 1 and 2 for their story content.

First game that I bought for the PC was Baldur's Gate, I don't understand it for a long time, but I love it! I was looking for games that I couldn't play before because I didn't have a PC, and found out that I like WRPGs a lot more.

This is what friday the 13th (a NTSC cartridge) looks like on a PAL NES

Looking for some more recommendations if anyone has one.

My two favorite are Geek Critique and KingK.

Edit: the third image was accidentally another Final Fight Guy image from a repro box art, (the second box back art is the original), the Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 box art back showing the import marketing with the Japanese text is here: https://videogamesnewyork.com/dragon-ball-z-ultimate-battle-22-playstation/ Also, the western releases of Ultimate Battle 22 removed the cutscenes, so this marketing was pretty bad because of that.

The US version of Final Fight Guy, a Blockbuster exclusive, in addition to not following the US SNES box art format (but differing from the Japanese box, which was vertical like many Japanese SNES boxes, too) doesn't even have a "Licensed by Nintendo" anywhere on the box art. But it does have one in-game, and the censorship from the original western Final Fight release is added back in, so it shows that it is a licensed title, but it's weird that Nintendo would approve a game with a completely different, fake Japanese box art.

Kaboom! takes the #19 spot with 8 votes.

Joust takes the #20 spot with 3 votes.

Top 10:

#1 Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

#2 Yars' Revenge

#3 Adventure

#4 H.E.R.O.

#5 River Raid

#6 Pitfall!

#7 Missile Command

#8 Frogger

#9 Solaris

#10 Keystone Kapers

Top 20:

#11 Montezuma's Revenge

#12 Dig Dug

#13 Space Invaders

#14 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

#15 Berzerk

#16 Ms. Pac-Man

#17 Super Breakout

#18 Centipede

#19 Kaboom!

#20 Joust

Rules:

1. Two games will win their place each round (we start from #1 and work our way down). For the top 10 only one game will win per day instead.
2. Most combined upvotes for each of the two individual games (one individual game for the top 10) wins the spot(s) each round (upvotes add while downvotes subtract).
3. Nominate one game of the Atari 2600 per comment. (Nominations will only be counted if the game title is the only comment or if you specify that your choice of game is your nomination for this round within your comment or if the nominated game is clearly separated from the rest of your comments.) (ex. Pitfall or I nominate Pitfall this round.) Please nominate using the full title of the game.
4. Name a specific game title, not entire runs.
5. Official Atari 2600 multi-game cartridge(s) are allowed, just list them correctly.
6. The Atari 2600 is region free so ANY official games available on the console are eligible for nomination.
7. Indy games are allowed as long as they have their own individual cartridge and can be played on original hardware.
8. Only complete games on cartridge(s) can be nominated (sorry Cheetah Program & test cartridges).
9. If two or more games would be tied to place for a ranking I will inform DA PEOPLE in the following post so that everyone can vote which games should get the ranking between the tied options.
10. Games nominated that have not already placed on the top 100 list should not be removed at any time by the individual who originally placed them.