Sim City : One of the first games that essentially let you play God, “Sim City” gave you the reins to a city. Build it up, destroy it – the choice is yours.
Paperboy
Gaming’s great gift is allowing us to indulge in the kind of behaviour society frowns upon. Doing your job well gets you the high score, but flinging papers all over the place and subverting suburbia is hella cathartic. Play Retro Games Online in Browser!
Ms Pac-Man
It introduced new maps and was harder: this gender-confused pill gobbler made for the most successful US-produced coin-op.
Day of the Tentacle
No retro list would be complete without a classic point-and-click adventure, and there’s none finer than Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman’s barmpot sci-fi. Tipping its cap to Fifties monster movies and Chuck Jones cartoons, its time-travel plotline affords you bizarre pleasures. Uproariously silly.
Street Fighter II Turbo
It’s smoky arcades filled with old cabinets that have been left scarred from cigarette burns, and unused credits sliding down onto floors that are perpetually sticky with cheap, stale booze. It’s teaching friends how to do the perfect dragon punch motion. It’s beating that bigger kid by doing Blanka’s electric attack. It’s unlocking Akuma and then immediately losing half of your life bar within seconds. Turbo might be the definitive version of Street Fighter II, but whichever one you played, the memories will no doubt still vividly linger.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
If Super Metroid taught us to fear the unknown, Link’s epic quest made it exciting again. A top-down Hyrule rammed with secrets and surprises, it’s a delight to explore. Not least when you figure out how the light and dark worlds slot together. Unlike these days where you’re given a nudge if you stray too far, here you’re encouraged to get gloriously, hopelessly lost – and you’ll have a whale of a time doing so.
Sensible Soccer
For a certain generation, football rivalry wasn’t just between Fifa and Pro Evo. It was the pace and banana shots of Kick Off versus the sharp passing game of Sensible Soccer. For our money, Sensi wins: it gave a glimpse at tiki-taka way before Barca made it fashionable.
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