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What are some games that you recommend emulating today?
I should be getting a Steam Deck soon and plan to spend a lot of time diving into old console libraries.
What are some games from previous generations that you recommend revisiting today? That is: games you feel have aged well and that aren’t readily available via a re-release or re-master elsewhere.
Any console and any recommendation is fair game, but I’m definitely interested in the kinds of recommendations that aren’t likely to show up in “The 25 Best Games for the [Console Name]”-type articles out there. I already know Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid are great for the PSOne, for example, but what about the thousands of other games for the system? Give me some deep cuts!
Oh boy. Get ready for the flood.
The four great Quintet games for the SNES: ActRaiser, SoulBlazer, Terranigma, and Illusion of Gaia. They're action/adventure games, often with philosophical themes thinking about life, humanity and what it means to be human. Sometimes with a side of city or village reconstruction.
Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. Also action/adventure, also citybuilding, but now for PS2 and in 3D. Less deep plotwise, but fun.
Breath of Fire 1 and 2 for SNES, 3 and 4 for the PS2. RPG's, kind of like the Final Fantasy series in that there's consistent theming but varying characters and plots.
Lufia I and II for SNES. Clever, ahead of their time, especially Lufia II which contains a full roguelike dungeon crawler inside of its RPG adventure. Heavy on the environmental puzzles.
EVO Search for Eden: Side scrolling beat em up, where you start as a tiny fish and grow through the eras as you eat things and take their power. Think Spore, kinda.
Ogre Battle: Strategic battlefield combat, where you build control the combat groups, but they handle combat on their own. Lots of strategic depth, interesting story, fun, challenging game.
Secret of Evermore: Adventure RPG. Goofy, amusing story, must play.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors: top down combat, running around trying to save the NPCs while you fight off horror movie monsters using squirt guns and other silly weaponry. A ton of fun, super challenging.
SoulBlazer is a 10/10, but I haven't heard of any of the others.
You have some great experiences ahead of you, then. I did try to avoid the commonly recommended games, but every one of those recommendations are games I've played through more than once and still appreciate. If you loved SoulBlazer, check out Terranigma and Illusion of Gaia first. They're the other two parts of an unofficial trilogy.
You must play the fan translations for ActRaiser and EVO. The original Translations have a lot of cut content and aren’t great with what is left.
Oh, cool. I'll have to look those up. I do recall that EVO's story was particularly arcane in the default translation.
What a superlatively good list. Everything on here is great; it's wonderful to see Ogre Battle, one of my favourite games of all time.
I think the Super Nintendo console is ideal to emulate because, while 100% retro and nostalgic, the gameplay, sound, and graphics are more likely to please modern sensibilities. And it had some of the best games.
I really like Chrono Trigger, the SNES version of Earthbound, Mario 3, and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. But really, pretty much any list of the best SNES games is a great start.
Yeah, I'm not going to say that SNES games are better than modern games, but near the end of the platform's lifecycle there had been a generation of game designers that had been honing what could be done with pixel graphics and chipset music. It's a small part of a much larger ocean of game design now, but within that smaller pool you got some truly excellent execution.
Yes.
I actually could say the same about the Genesis/Mega-Drive, @kfwyre. Moonwalker, Comix Zone, and Castle of Illusion were revolutionary for the time and play very well to this day.
Racketboy has a couple series of articles that are my favorite resource for this kind of thing:
The "games that defined" lists are the more obvious must-play ones for a particular system that you'll hear about a ton. The "hidden gems" lists have a lot of less-common choices, and I think they're usually categorized into genres. All of the lists that I've ever looked through have been extremely solid.
Give a shot at some of the Lucas arts adventure games. Sam & Max: Hit The Road is my little favourite and I don’t think it ever got remastered. Monkey Island and day of the tentacle as well but those did get remastered.
The original versions of those games (and many more) are generally best run through ScummVM, but they don't have a Steam Deck specific build yet. Apparently the Flatpak version works reasonably well out of the box on the Steam Deck, but YMMV:
https://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?p=96854#p96854
You can play Curse of Monkey Island (aka MI3) in ScummVM, and it's never been remastered. As far as I know that one was only ever released on Windows, but this method will allow you to play on a Mac (and presumably other platforms, though I haven't personally tried that).
It's a bit different from the first two games but it's really good in its own right. The art direction and animation are beautiful, if limited by compression and a 256-color palette. The game introduces some memorable new characters like Murray, and it's also the first in the series to feature full voice acting with a cast so incredible they've largely all reprised their roles in the rest of the series, including the remasters of the first two and the upcoming Return to Monkey Island. Honestly I loved the original unvoiced games as a kid but Dominic Armato IS the perfect Guybrush Threepwood. I can no longer conceive of the character without him. Likewise Earl Boen is a perfect LeChuck. Ron Gilbert didn't make CMI but I let that stop me from playing for too many years.
Honestly, I’m of the opinion that emulation is great for reliving old favourite games, but it’s not so great for trying out new games.
Every time I try out stuff from the PS2 era it’s just a reminder of how far gaming as come and how relatively mediocre games like Simpsons Hit & Run were so popular back then but wouldn’t hold up at all if released today.
I think that it really depends on the game. Some games had interesting stories, refined core gameplay loops that remained fun when done a hundred times, and accessible user interfaces. Those hold up today.
There's also a lot of things that were interesting because they were new, but new games have done better. for those, why bother replaying them? Rogue Legacy 1 and 2 are a great example of this. The second game so thoroughly eats the first one's lunch that there's not really any point in looking back.
I just got my MiSTer set up and it’s doing a lot to point out that retro games are actually not terribly well represented by emulation. This is especially true as consoles started to become 3D. A lot of the deformed textures that happened with it were ok when displayed at native resolution on a TV set with composite video, but when rendered at high resolutions to look good on your modern displays they are somewhat nausiating.
I don't know what MiSTer supports for filters, but a CRT filter works wonders for resolving this issue, especially if you can get one with a mild phosphorescent flow to add a smidge of blur.
It breaks the shapes up, and a phosphorescent filter helps keep it from looking like a darkened grid.
There are some basic filters but the better solution is to simply plug it into a CRT monitor.
MiSTer probably doesn’t have this option since it goes against the spirit of the device, but if you/anyone reading this is emulating PSOne games, PGXP perspective correction is (IMO) essential. It gets rid of the awkward jittery textures and visual “swimming” that plagued the device. These were present on original hardware, so emulating games faithfully will reproduce them, however I find them super uncomfortable now and hard to look past. PGXP helps correct that and gives (again IMO) a better experience than native.
You can see an example of the correction here from Tomb Raider II. In the floor and ceiling in particular, the textures warping and snapping are very apparent, but these are completely remedied once the perspective correction has been applied.
Here’s another particularly pronounced example from Tenchu which shows how it fixes warped lines.
PGXP works well for level geometry but it’s a real mixed bag when it comes to character animations where jitters are often built in.
Have you played Lemmings?
I don't know what version would be best, but here's a web-based Mac emulator that has it.
Lemmings was one of the first games I ever played, and I loved it! I played it on DOS instead of a Mac though.
Some Sega Genesis games
The classic Sonic games are getting remasters released next month as "Sonic Origins", so I'd recommend that over the originals. The remasters look great and the games benefit from the widescreen HD treatment. I'm not sure if it will be compatible with the Steam Deck though.
The remasters are made by Headcannon, who made Sonic Mania and made the previous remasters of Sonic 1, 2, and CD. The remasters are all reimplementations of the game instead of using emulation. All of their work has been really polished with the level of attention you'd expect from dedicated fans. But the Sonic 1 and 2 remasters were previously only released on mobile platforms for reasons unknown, and Sonic 3&K never had a remaster released, so it's great to see all of this finally fixed.
I have an odd request, but I've been trying to remember the name of an old Genesis game I played as a child. I only have a fuzzy recollection of it but since you're so familiar it would be great to pick your brain.
In it you are some type of hero, with magic or sword wheedling, and fight your way down a canyon against monsters. I think the view is looking down the canyon (this could be just one level and we were terrible) at about a 45 degree angle. the colors were all on the darker, red hue (blacks, purples, maroons, reds, oranges). I don't remember much more than that. Any thoughts?
Also, if I can add another game to your Genesis list, it would be Paper Boy. I'm not sure how it has aged, but I loved it as a kid.
Your description is a bit vague. But oddly enough I think I might know what you're talking about even though you're mixing up some of the details. I think you're talking about Techno Clash. It's a pretty nifty game for the time, with some pretty cool aesthetics, but you were probably terrible at the game because it had some really brutal difficulty. I don't think I ever got past the second stage myself.
And if you like that you might also like the Genesis version of Shadowrun. But be warned that it's also brutally difficult.
Ok, after watching the vido for Techno Clash it seemed close but not quite right. I decided to do some heavy googling, and after going through literally every single Genesis release, I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Heavy Axe II. I'm not completely sure if it was the same game as the canyon I remember (I can't for the life find footage of that scene in any game) but everything else seems right.
In my search though I came across forgotten favorites like Toe Jam and Earl, Earthworm Jim, Clayfighters, and Vectorman.
Hmm, for something a little more recent, I think I'd recommend Persona 5 and Persona 3 Portable on the PS3 and PSP respectively. Persona 4 golden got a steam release so it's available natively. Some of the best JRPGs I've played, and I'm not usually a super fan of the genre. Persona 3 Portable is notable for putting a ton of effort into making gender selection more than just an aesthetic difference and rewriting good chunks of the story for the female version of the protagonist. Makes me sad that was a bit of a one off for Atlus.
Kirby's Dreamland, Adventure and Dream Course(Gameboy, NES, SNES). These three games are favorites of mine that are truly some of the best of their generation.
Qix: a fun puzzle type game where you draw lines to constrain a moving dot thing. Pick a platform, I've played it on GameBoy and SNES
Pacman: The New Adventures (SNES): it's a real-time point click adventure, and just a fun game to play that offers a unique, hilarious experience.
Wario Land 4, GBA: a tight platformer with fun mechanics, funny story, and excellent mini games.
A bit niche but I've been really enjoying emulating older console-only FPS games but with user-created mouse and keyboard controls.
So far, there's the never-released version of the Xbox 360 Goldeneye with support, the entire Metroid Prime trilogy, and the Timesplitters games. The Metroid games have a ton of user mods created to also vastly increase the graphical fidelity and fix some remnant bugs, so it really feels like a full on remaster.
Quite coincidentally, I discovered PrimeHack just yesterday and got really excited about it! I’ve never played the Prime trilogy, but I’d love to. Definitely something I’m going to do — if not on the Steam Deck then definitely on my PC. Do you have any pointers/links regarding recommended mods and getting those going?
Also, Timesplitters 2 got hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay from me back in the day (chasing all those challenge trophies!). A KB/M version of it sounds absolutely fantastic (and might even help with the game’s high difficulty). Thanks for putting that on my radar!
I'm really curious about this. I've been itching to play TS2 again and this sounds like the best way to do it. Trouble is, I'm on a MacBook Pro. I've got the beefy M1 Max so hardware-wise I should be up to the task, but as far as I can tell the Mouse Injector that enables K/M support is only available as a Windows executable. I do have a Windows 11 for ARM VM running in Parallels, so I could try to get this working in there, but I'd rather not run console emulators inside Microsoft's own x86 emulation layer. Especially since there's a Mac native universal binary for Dolphin. This hack sounds great but I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble.
I used this guide on ResetEra to some very good results.
Double commenting to say that I got this up and running, and it's awesome! I'm not using the texture packs, but simply rendering the game at a higher resolution is good enough for me. Installation was dead simple, as there's a Flatpak for PrimeHack.
Only issue I'm running into is that my mouse cursor hangs out in the middle of the screen and doesn't go away (even with that option toggled in Dolphin), but I honestly stop noticing it's there once I'm playing. Also, the input mod doesn't work for keys that either require more than one input or have multiple options for inputs. I might change around the default config to remedy it, but I haven't played the game enough to trust that my judgment on the controls is better than what PrimeHack has already selected.
I'm thinking this summer I'm going to do a themed playlist for myself where I play through emulated first-person games that have modded in KB/M support. The fact that this is a thing (and that it doesn't feel like a hack at all) is so, SO cool.
cc: @TheJorro
Okay, I broke down and installed the texture packs too. That was the right call. The game looks gorgeous in 1080p with sharper textures.
Nice! Glad you're enjoying. Not sure about the mouse cursor issue, are you playing on Linux? The only known bug (on Windows anyway) is a green square in the middle of the screen during morph ball mode, but that's solved by removing a particular texture.
The mouse cursor thing may just require something extra on the OS level to clear it temporarily. I know some games have that problem in Windows and there are utilities to help hide it away as part of DxDraw.
I’m running on Linux (Pop!_OS 22.04). The mouse cursor is honestly a non-issue. When I’m playing the game I don’t even see it, as it’s aligned with the crosshairs and I’m too busy looking at the environment. The only time I really notice it is when the game goes to cutscene. I also don’t get the green square in morph ball mode.
I’m beyond impressed with how well all of this works. Like you said: it feels like I’m playing a legit remaster. I texted a screenshot to one of my friends who loved the Prime series as a kid, and he immediately got the setup running as well so he could revisit the games.
Awesome -- thank you! Not sure if either of my rigs are powerful enough to run the texture packs, but the button prompt fix looks awesome. Even if I have to just play it vanilla, the KB/M support alone will make it worth my while.
If you've got the time, Xenogears for PSX/PS1 is to this day my favorite game and has a cult following.
It's about 56 hours long and was originally proposed as FF7 to Square. Turned out it was a bit too dark but they spun it off into a new game. There's a companion book that may be worth finding a copy of called "Perfect Works" with a fan translation that I'd highly recommend to help explain parts of the game.
From the fandom website:
"...the game discusses and deals with a lot of mature and controversial subject matter, such as religion, genocide, sexuality, discrimination, and more. The game is known for its religious allusions, containing overtones of Gnosticism, Jewish mysticism, Jungian psychology, humanism, and Abrahamic religious symbolism, as well as questions about the nature of existence, humanity, culture, faith and religion."
https://xenosaga.fandom.com/wiki/Themes_and_topics_of_Xenogears
Also, Yasunori Mitsuda's (Chrono Trigger/Cross Composer) music is fanfuckingtastic! 24 Years later and I still regularly listen to the album of this game.
The dev ran out of time and had to ressort to a final-episode-of-evangelion style kind of narration style for disk 2 so they could finish the story.
It's jarring and may put you off (however, teenage me didn't mind).
Completely agree about the music. In fact "Xenogears Creid" (an orchestrated album) is my reference album for whatever new audio equipment I may come into.
Apparently the story is a bit more complex than that; some time during the planning stages they had decided that it would be turned into a multimedia franchise where part of the story would be told in the form of OVAs and manga. Those plans got scrapped so they had to insert the story back into the game somehow, and that’s part of why a lot of it is just exposition. They never had planned for some of those sections to have gameplay.
On the SNES, be sure to play Live A Live, it’s my favorite find on the console. It was never released outside Japan, so you’ll have to track down a fan translation.
It’s a JRPG split in 8 episodes set in different eras (stone age, old Japan, a western themed episode, a near-future Akira-like scenario or even far-future space horror). The fight system is also rather in-depth for a JRPG, with enemies positioned on a chess-like field, giving it a more strategic feel.
The game flew completely under the radar for western audiences but they’re doing an official remake now on the Switch, which is kinda cool.
I don't imagine these constitute deep cuts by any stretch of the imagination, but if you haven't played them I wholeheartedly recommend the Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons gameboy colour games. They were utterly formative of my early years of gaming alongside Pokemon, and IMHO they still hold up very well indeed.
If you want to emulate stuff with a Twist, using something like Dolphin VR to emulate Nintendo games, (particularly Metroid Prime) is always a blast.
There is also the Super Mario 64 decompile, the Ocarina of Time decompile which may or may not be ready, and the wide screen port of Super Mario World which is super impressive.
So now I'm more awake and I can think of way more interesting recommendations
It's actually super hard to recommend arcade games for emulation because the late 90s and early 2000s were something of a golden age of unique arcade game designs, so one thing that you might want to do is to just look through a listing and play them at random! That being said, here's a rather broad range of easy recommendations. A few of them are novelties that you'll either love or at least have enjoyed playing once because it's so unique.
Just keep in mind that as arcade games you can't play them like console games. Avoid the compulsion to press the coin button and continue and try to get the best score you can, and then play again and again to beat those high scores!