1998

Unreal

Starcraft

Baldur's Gate

Metal Gear Solid

Battlezone

Vigilante 8

Medievil

Grim Fandango

Gran Turismo

Thief: The Dark Project

Resident Evil 2

Need for Speed 3

Turok 2

Spyro the Dragon

Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus

Falcon 4

Half-Life

.

And that's without even looking at Nintendo releases!

Generally though, 1995-2005 is the greatest decade in gaming IMO.

CT Special Forces (Not the 2005 3D version obviously)

Halo 1 was going to be multiplatform before Microsoft threw half a bank at Bungie. There was never any talk of Halo 2 appearing on PS2 at the time; the franchise was an Xbox property. Besides, it's not like PS2 was short on great FPS's; and they all had the crosshairs in the correct place.

Wherever you read it, made it up.

Sony had no intention of ever releasing a quality product in the PSC. They half-assed every phase as cheaply as possible and then slapped it on the market for double what it was actually worth. It sold well, so mission accomplished.

If they'd done it properly and included more of what people wanted then it would have harmed PSN sales of old games and Sony would've been shooting themselves in the foot. So they answered peoples wishes by giving them a Mini and kept people buying PSN Classics by keeping the majority of games people actually wanted behind a paywall.

It's like people are surprised gaming companies exist to make money and pump as much of it as they can out of consumers.

It's their own fault for making it a Mario game. They could easily have released a clone with different characters; sure Nintendo would still have been annoyed but it wouldn't be the slam-dunk non-sanctioned intrusion of company property that SMB-C64 was. It's remarkable in the 7 years that no one realised Nintendo are the least caring+sharing company in gaming and if they released a Mario game they wouldn't be allowed to distribute it.

I (perhaps unfairly) blame World of Warcraft for this. Down to the popularity of the game, it convinced consumers that it was normal to pay monthly to play online. And so eventually other games followed suit, and then the practice migrated to other platforms who wanted a piece of the "People are willing to pay us for no reason" pie.

I don't fully understand all the pricing structure nowadays so i just avoid all big publisher modern games. There are often 5 different versions of the same game and not a single one has ALL the content. What's a "Season Pass" get you if it doesn't give you all the DLC? Why do some games have a SP as an extra purchase, while other have it as part of the base game? Why are the extras so tiny and pointless?

Not every game used to get expansion packs, but when they did they were usually worthwhile. Can't say the same for "unlock packs" which as far as i can tell just make available stuff that's already in the game for a fee.

I'm not fussed. I play games with both and don't find myself wishing they were the type they're not.

Amstrad CPC

No particular order.

• The Curse of Monkey Island
• Beneath a Steel Sky
• The Settlers II
• Total Annihilation
• Warzone 2100
• Theme Park World
• Age of Empires 2
• Midtown Madness
• Sports Car GT
• Re-Volt
• Grand Prix 2
• Doom 2
• Unreal
• Half-Life
• Duke Nukem 3D
• F-117A Stealth Fighter
• Jane's USAF
• Star Wars: Tie Fighter
• Freespace 2
• Worms Armageddon
• Lemmings
• Baldur's Gate
• Planescape: Torment
• Jazz Jackrabbit
• Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus

It's not really a fair answer as i've never enjoyed them, but anything from second-gen does nothing for me. It's primitive yet striving to be more, i get that it's where console gaming as we know it came from. But i consider it puberty for the industry: A phase that it had to go through but one we wouldn't want to go back to. Even older machines whose entire libraries were tiny variations on bat and ball games i find still to be amusing in small doses because they're not trying to be more. But second-gen systems just look and play badly to me and there's nothing on them that i derive any enjoyment from.