What old-school series have remained consistently good into the modern age?

Hello, what series come to mind as continuing from ye old times, 80's and early 90's into the modern age that have remained relatively unscathed, devoid of a "bad spell" or multiple shitty entries.

Has one so-so entry, but pretty much all games are solid/great

Somehow Ubisoft hasn't fucked this up.

Edit - We are also taking into account port quality across various platforms.

The Streets of Rage series is the first that comes to mind.

Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Streets of Rage, Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Tekken, Guilty Gear, Doom, etc... surprisingly quite a few, even if some of those have had some relatively weak entries.

Somehow, I knew OP was going to mention Ys. Nihon Falcom franchises like Ys and The Legend of Heroes haven't changed that much since the late '80s, yet they've remained consistently good to this day.

Examples:

• The Legend of Zelda
• Wonder Boy
• Dragon Quest
• Metal Gear
• Street Fighter
• Ys
• Ninja Gaiden
• The Legend of Heroes
• Streets of Rage
• Virtua Fighter
• Doom
• Tekken
• Wipeout
• Pokémon
• Resident Evil
• Gran Turismo
• Half-Life
• StarCraft
• Xeno

Easily Doom by far.

Started From this

To

This and still kicking. No other franchise come close as most franchise got ruined after words.

I agree with Doom.

Mario is always good.

Zelda is generally good.

I expect the next Metroid to live up to the hype as well.

Ha, wish that were true and I definitely considered it. One of my favorite franchises, been a fan from the start.

But the last excellent game was 2005 and the last good game was 2008 (yeah NG2 is rough around the edges, nearly broken on potmn, but still has the best player-side combat in the series).

Since then though, we've had the mediocre NG3+RE and the straight up abysmal NGZ. Only two new games in 12 years and they're no good.

Definitely have high hopes for the series return. They understand how they fucked things up, and Nioh shows that they still have it. But things haven't been pretty for NG in a long time man.

These are some of the old-school games i liked alot, these games look simple nowadays but if you play then today you will still enjoy alot playing them. Remember in mind these are not in any particular order

Super Mario Bros

Pac-Man

Metal Slug

Snow Bros

Hitman

Other than that if you guys want to explore about these games click on the link below

https://favouriteoldschoolvideogames.blogspot.com/2020/10/favourite-old-school-video-games-ihave.html

Tekken.

@Yams1980: yeah Civ is a great example. I'd say 6 is objectively great too - it just makes some big changes that don't work well for some fans of how things "should" work. Include me in that - the road system is doofy and war management with allies is too. But technically I think they work fine and can be explained, I just liked things the old way. Personally, I'd rather have them try those things out and annoy me occasionally, because it also leads to positive changes. I do like the districts, for example. If I wanted to play Civ III for the rest of my life I could :-)

@ConanTheStoner: Ninja Gaiden going to shit is a tragedy. I’m still considering buying the X1X just for NGB and NGII. Only place where they’re enhanced and I can’t play that Sigma trash.

@Juub1990:

Worth it man, they both clean up nicely in 4k, and with NG2s performance fixed up that game plays sooooo much better.

NG2s main game still has its frustrating design issues (obviously), but even just playing the mission modes at a locked 60 is good shit.

Sucks buying a new box to play old ass games, but it seems we'll never have another option lol.

Metal Gear ? I don't think anything in the series has flopped since MGS1. Don't know much about the older games. Portable Ops might be crap but I think in 2006 for handheld game it was pretty impressive.

Sonic ... lol

NG3 Razor Edge is a good underrated game. And Yaiba NGZ is a spin-off, so I don't think that should count.

But it depends on where we set the cut-off point for the modern age. I would consider Gen 7 onwards to be the modern age. And Gen 7 did have NG2, which was a great game.

-Mario (platformers mainly; every other genre the plumber has touched? not so much)

-Smash (c'mon, Smash 4 was the worst one, but it's still good)

-Tekken

-Mega Man (again, just the platformers)

-Street Fighter (circa II)

-Zelda (Twilight Princess was a disappointment for me, but again, still a good game)

I don't think anyone has mentioned Dragon Quest yet so I'll add that one to the list. It's been going for almost 35 years strong.

Final fa.... never mind! :(

@Pikminmaniac: I mentioned Dragon Quest above. But yeah, that has been consistently good.

Wasteland

Battlefield (not sure if it counts as Old School)

Total War

Civilization

I heartfully agree with Ys and Dragon Quest.

Super Mario (Main platform series)

The Legend Of Zelda (Main series)

Doom

Dragon Quest

The main Mario and Zelda games come to mind, of course there's also Smash Bros., Ys and many others.

Not many... that's for sure.

• Uncharted
• Ducktales
• Streets of Rage
• Prince of Persia

That's all I'm willing to really think about it. Almost every other series has had a minimum of one disappointing game. Example, for Tomb Raider, both Chronicles and AoD were bad. For Zelda, the 2nd and Skyward Sword were not good. For a series to be consistently good for long stretches is rare.

Streets of Rage 4 is my game of the year, what an amazing game. I went to PAX last year, and out of EVERYTHING there, I came away thinking about Streets of Rage 4 as the most impressive game. I bought it on Switch, PS4 and PC. What a game.

Could that be a typo?

@Jag85: Hate to say it but the series is now 13 years old and started two gens ago as of the PS5's release. That's older than some of the people on here.

As for the quality, even the Vita game was great.

@Telekill: I wouldn't consider anything from Gen 7 onwards to be old school. That's modern gaming to me.

This board barely has any active users under the age of 20. The average age of this board is in the 30s. Most of the young Zoomers don't visit forums or message boards. It's all about social media for them.

Dues Ex

Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart, Donky Kong, Smash

A few off the top of my head would be:

- Super Mario Bros.

- The Legend of Zelda

- Mario Kart

- Smash Bros.

- Final Fantasy

- Dragon Quest

- Street Fighter

- Tekken

- Halo

- Forza

- Gears of War

Probably Call of Duty? This is a tough one. I know I should say the Mario or the Zelda series’s - but they’ve had some stinkers whereas CoD continues to be high quality and a consistent fan favourite.

The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario. I mean no other franchises have contenders for Game of the Gen each gen.