HF Retro Game of the Year - 1994 - Vote in the Poll!

[karnige]

People can say donkey Kong country is just nostalgia or it’s too short or easy or whatever but I play for the music and snow level graphics alone. The mine level was so cool when I was young. I still love this game.

Ive played it numerous times since the release. still a great game.

 

[PilotRedSun]

I forgot that Castlevania Bloodlines came out in 1994. That was one of the last good Genesis games that I played when it was new. The art was shabby in places, but it was a more forward thinking Castlevania than Super Castlevania IV.

 

[Osprey]

Never mind.

 

[The Nemesis]

The correct answer is and always will be Super Metroid. That game is goddamn near perfect.

 

[SniperHF]

I don't mind if y'all wanna take over the retro votes but there actually is a method to my slower pacing
I will maintain control of the current yearly polls though so don't get any ideas.

Keep in mind that a PC to play these games back in 1994 probably cost like $2000, while being near the end of their console gneration you could probably get a SNES for $100 at that point.

Quite a lot of PC gaming in the 80's and 90's took place delayed.
I didn't play Doom or Diablo or Mechwarrior 2 until at least a couple years after they were released. It's one of the reasons the biggest PC hits tended to have long tails in their sales.

You'd buy your used hardware or low end current hardware to play the old stuff you missed. This is even more the case outside North America. You talk to South American or Russian/Eastern European gamers and instead of talking about KOTOR or whatever in the early 2000's they'd be talking about Fallout and Baldur's gate.

Where as with consoles even if you didn't own the game you could rent it.

 

[crowi]

Went with X-COM. Loved it and continue to love even the dummied down versions.

 

[Osprey]

I just remembered that Transport Tycoon was 1994. It's a grave injustice that that isn't a poll option. Like X-COM, that game is revered and considered unequaled 24 years later. As much as I love X-COM, I would have to think long and hard about that. Maybe this is for the best, though, so that I don't have to choose between them.

Man, 1994 was such an epic year for PC gaming: X-COM, Transport Tycoon, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, Master of Magic, System Shock, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Doom II, Heretic, Magic Carpet, Wing Commander III, The Need for Speed, Theme Park and no doubt more that I'm forgetting.

 

[Desdichado93]

I just remembered that Transport Tycoon was 1994. It's a grave injustice that that isn't a poll option. Like X-COM, that game is revered and considered unequaled 24 years later. As much as I love X-COM, I would have to think long and hard about that. Maybe this is for the best, though, so that I don't have to choose between them.

Man, 1994 was such an epic year for PC gaming: X-COM, Transport Tycoon, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, Master of Magic, System Shock, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Doom II, Heretic, Magic Carpet, Wing Commander III, The Need for Speed, Theme Park and no doubt more that I'm forgetting.

Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter is a different game and was released in 1997.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Doom II

 

[Osprey]

Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter is a different game and was released in 1997.

Thanks. I was in too much of a rush to get it right, though I do know that they're different. Also, X-Wing has always been my favorite, since it was the first, and all of the ones that came after just kind of run together in my mind.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

8 year-old me wasn't even aware it existed...but c'mon...FFVI.

 

[NyQuil]

Thanks. I was in too much of a rush to get it right, though I do know that they're different. Also, X-Wing has always been my favorite, since it was the first, and all of the ones that came after just kind of run together in my mind.

Tie Fighter had such impressive campaigns in terms of story that it's hard to believe it's a flight sim.

 

[Shareefruck]

8 year-old me wasn't even aware it existed...but c'mon...FFVI.

FFVI is my favorite FF, I think it's brilliant, and was a close consideration for me, but what separates Super Metroid from Final Fantasy VI for me is that if we're really nitpicking, there is comparatively a bit of unfocused bloat with FFVI, and some grandiose creative decisions that can sometimes feel like they exist for the sake of grandstanding. FFVII is a bit like that too. I love minimalism, and some of VI seems to lean towards the opposite extreme.

Meanwhile, there isn't really a single beat or moment in Super Metroid that feels unnecessary or out of place. It's just crystallized perfection.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Super Metroid and it isn't even close.

The great grandpappy of speedrunning and it, in combination with Symphony of the Night spawned an entire subgenre, and even then Super Metroid has yet to be topped.

 

[Shareefruck]

This is how far I would take it, actually. In the hypothetical event that Super Metroid never existed, but all of the games that it influenced did and remained untouched, if Super Metroid was released today without any changes, without the benefit of hindsight, nostalgia, or historical context, in my opinion, it would still be easily the best game of the year, and the best in its genre, beating out games like Hollow Knight and Dead Cells.

 

[Jasper]

I'd vote for Master of Magic if it was there but Doom 2 is a close second.

 

[Teemu]

TIE Fighter

 

[NyQuil]

I'd vote for Master of Magic if it was there but Doom 2 is a close second.

I still play that game.

Very impressive range of replayability and strategic options.

I remember playing HOMM and while impressed, was annoyed that city placement was static.

MoM had a lot of depth to it that was far beyond the more modern fantasy strategy games.

 

[Jasper]

I still play that game.

Very impressive range of replayability and strategic options.

I remember playing HOMM and while impressed, was annoyed that city placement was static.

MoM had a lot of depth to it that was far beyond the more modern fantasy strategy games.

I was never able to get into the HOMM games. They could've blatantly ripped off MoM and give it a new paint job and I'd be happy. But every one of them I tried always seemed off on a few things, the static cities definitely being one of them.

 

[RandV]

FFVI is my favorite FF, I think it's brilliant, and was a close consideration for me, but what separates Super Metroid from Final Fantasy VI for me is that if we're really nitpicking, there is comparatively a bit of unfocused bloat with FFVI, and some grandiose creative decisions that can sometimes feel like they exist for the sake of grandstanding. FFVII is a bit like that too. I love minimalism, and some of VI seems to lean towards the opposite extreme.

Meanwhile, there isn't really a single beat or moment in Super Metroid that feels unnecessary or out of place. It's just crystallized perfection.

Really the only 'flaw' with Super Metroid is really obscure and the same one Chrono Trigger had: it's a game where the original flavour works best so its damn hard to follow up. The best Metroid experience is when you start the game with nothing but your single pea shooter, and you have to find your chozo powerups along the way while exploring a number of different interconnected biomes (plant level, lava level, underwater level, etc).

But there isn't a good reason why the Galaxy's elite bounty hunter Samus Aran needs to start out like this every game, causing them to get creative in inventing ways to force the issue. Metroid 1 and 2 were small enough that they could get away with rehashing Metroid 1 to make Super Metroid, but while you can't hold it against the game itself you have to wonder if they couldn't have altered the story or lore to make it a bit more conductive to creating sequels. Like just build into the story that the Chozo powerups and artefacts Samus finds for her Chozo power suit are localised to the specific planet she finds them on, or something like that.

 

[Shareefruck]

Really the only 'flaw' with Super Metroid is really obscure and the same one Chrono Trigger had: it's a game where the original flavour works best so its damn hard to follow up. The best Metroid experience is when you start the game with nothing but your single pea shooter, and you have to find your chozo powerups along the way while exploring a number of different interconnected biomes (plant level, lava level, underwater level, etc).

But there isn't a good reason why the Galaxy's elite bounty hunter Samus Aran needs to start out like this every game, causing them to get creative in inventing ways to force the issue. Metroid 1 and 2 were small enough that they could get away with rehashing Metroid 1 to make Super Metroid, but while you can't hold it against the game itself you have to wonder if they couldn't have altered the story or lore to make it a bit more conductive to creating sequels. Like just build into the story that the Chozo powerups and artefacts Samus finds for her Chozo power suit are localised to the specific planet she finds them on, or something like that.

Unpopular opinion, but to me, that's a good enough reason not to bother making sequels for it and let it stand on its own, personally.

As much as I love Metroid Prime, you shouldn't need to find a way to followup perfect games by coming up with an excuse to rehash the same formula without it feeling forced and inorganic. It feels forced and inorganic because it IS forced and inorganic. Coming up with a convenient story-reason for it to happen doesn't change that.

 

[Osprey]

Tie Fighter had such impressive campaigns in terms of story that it's hard to believe it's a flight sim.

That's what I've always loved about the Wing Commander series and what I liked about X-Wing. I don't remember that about TIE Fighter, but I think that I played it less than I would've liked because there were so many terrific games released in 1994. With games like X-COM, Transport Tycoon, Master of Magic, Wing Commander III and the rest demanding my time, a slightly improved spin-off of the previous year's X-Wing probably got less play time than it should've. It's been over 20 years since I've played any in the series, so I should really dig out my old joystick one of these days.

It's also been so long since I played or even loaded up Master of Magic. Oh! Speaking of Civilization spin-offs, I just remembered that Sid Meier's Colonization is 1994, too! There's yet another game that chewed up my time that year (and for a few years after). That was such a great year for PC gaming with so many masterpieces and few bad games. I imagine that some of it had to do with how developers were able to just focus on gameplay and storytelling on the mature DOS VGA platform. They didn't need to sacrifice as much of that time to support Win95, SVGA, 3D, CD-ROM, digitized speech, FMV and multiplayer, like they would in the coming years.

 

[NyQuil]

Colonization is the only game that I got Mrs_NyQuil to play excessively.

 

[Osprey]

Colonization is the only game that I got Mrs_NyQuil to play excessively.

It has one of my favorite ever soundtracks. The tunes are so catchy. Once in a while, I'll listen to the soundtrack outside of the game. I may not have realized how much it contributes to the game until I played the 2008 re-make. The re-make is fine and might even be superior in many ways, but it's just not the same without the original music.

 

[The Macho King]

I still play that game.

Very impressive range of replayability and strategic options.

I remember playing HOMM and while impressed, was annoyed that city placement was static.

MoM had a lot of depth to it that was far beyond the more modern fantasy strategy games.

MoM is the MoO2 of Fantasy 4x (in that after 25 f***ing years we still haven't had a worthy successor, although at least Age of Wonders 2 and Shadow Magic were pretty decent).