Retro Games Worth Playing

Played any old games lately? Played any good old games lately? Yeah, tends to be that way, doesn't it? You get a hankering for some dimly-remembered game from your youth, Gauntlet, perhaps, or Mortal Kombat. So, you download an emulator, which doesn't work too well, never mind, grab another. That works fine, then on to the laborious and legally dubious task of tracking down the particular game your nostalgia genes are craving. If you're lucky, you might not even have to give up your email address to get hold of it, but it still takes precious time. Eventually, you're all set, the emulator, the game, it's all good to go. I'll be generous and assume from then on, it all goes swimmingly and soon you're dodging bullets, eating dots or hopping across a busy road with gay abandon.

For about five minutes.

Nostalgia is a seductive, but ultimately shallow beast. Once the initial rush of recognition has faded, it's only the inherent worth of a trip down memory lane that makes it durable. That's the point of this blog; tracking down past games that still hold up today. I'll try and avoid the obvious ones, like Elite, Super Mario Bros., or Doom and remind you of, or introduce you to, barely-remembered classics, games that slipped through the cracks and ambitious titles that gave a glimpse into the future of videogaming.