31-Day Mage Challenge: Day Three – “What is your favorite Nostalgic Classic?”
3 min read
Hola, NPCs! Day Two of our challenge saw us looking to the future but today we will do just the opposite and look back to the past. Gaming memories in our formative years largely shaped the kinds of games we’ve come to enjoy as adults, and we can never forget the landmark titles that have remained truly timeless. So…
“What is your favorite Nostalgic Classic?”
The Timely Mage
So many options. SO MANY! I’m not really sure I can pick one over another but one I haven’t discussed much yet is Altered Beast. The Sega Genesis was the system I really started getting into gaming on and Altered Beast was one of the first games I played because it came with the system. It was also the only game I really played all the way through with my dad as well as my brother. Whenever I hear “Welcome to your doom!” or “Power up!” I’m instantly brought back.
The Black Humor Mage
Pokémon Sapphire. I played Silver before that but I never beat it because I was too young at the time. I beat Sapphire a million times over, though. Great game for long car rides!
The Rage Mage
Superman 64. Flailing arms and jumping through rings reminds me of my drunken, carny father. He wore a cape, too. Until the helicopter rotor accident.
The Green Screen Mage
Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for the Game Boy. I spent hours and hours and hours playing that game when I got my first Game Boy. That was my first Game Boy game and there was a lot of picking it up and putting it down, so it took me a good few years to get good enough and sit long enough to beat it. Thank God for those cheat codes. I found my old sticky note with the codes for every 10th level a few months back when I was moving.
The White-Out Mage
Super Mario Bros.! It was the only game we had for a long time on our NES. I think I remember the family buying this at Toys R Us. I can still picture like a slanted shelf and florescent lighting. This was also the first game I rage quit…
The Well-Red Mage
As a classics gamer, this question gives my 8-bit brain a meltdown. Too many choices! I have to pick just one? Okay, okay, so I came up with the conclusion that Super Mario Bros. 3 is my ultimate, all-time favorite nostalgia classic. That game is perfect. I’m sorry. It just is. I spent endless hours playing it, finding it’s secrets, warping with whistles, getting stuck, getting unstuck, and experimenting with the many power ups. Easily the best platformer, the best title from the Mario franchise, and one of the best games on one of the best systems of all time.
Did you enjoy this post? Consider becoming a Warrior of Light and join us in restoring integrity and quality to entertainment journalism. We specialize in long-form, analytical reviews and we aim to expand into a podcast and webzine with paid contributors! See our Patreon page for more info!
Kudos to all mages & above commenters, quality stuff!
For Lord C… *Hmm*
Ps1: FF7!!!! (we already know! *Grins*) but also FF6, FF8, FF9, Bubble Bobble, Spyro, Abe’s Oddysee & Exodus, Broken Sword 1&2 & Soul Reaver.
N64: GoldenEye, Yoshi’s Island, Mario Party & Smash Bros.
GameBoy: Cyraid, Tetris & Link’s Awakening.
Megadrive: Sonics 1 to 3D.
P.C: gotta be the ‘Lucasarts’ era! (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle etc) & Simon the Sorcerors 1thru4, Feeble Files & Lemmings.
Snes: Final Fantasy: Mystic Warriors (I think?) & Link to the Past.
My favourite nostalgia classic would be Tomb Raider on the Sega Saturn. It was the first game I played which used a story that the player was supposed to follow (rather than something that has no relation to the game being played), used interesting puzzles, had an enjoyable gameplay and used designs that were actually intended to be admired (such as the camera zooming out to allow the player to see the giant sphinx, rather than a background that the player runs past). Even though the graphics are dated, I still like the smooth surfaces of the animated sequences and the way the levels seemed to be lit with a warm light. I can also remember some of the lines from the game still.
I actually have never played any Tomb Raider game. Not once. Sad face.
Great choices. I’m torn by Bubble Bobble and Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion… remember spending a lot of time on both of these… happy days 🙂
Bubble Bobble is great! Good nostalgia choice. Thank you for sharing!
Gonna throw people for a loop with this one: Seiken Densetsu 3. Whenever I download a SNES emulator it’s one of the first games I download along with it.
That’s the Secret of Mana-sequel one right? I know I never beat it but I got pretty far. Just like Secret of Mana, itself.
Yup, it’s the sequel. One of the best RPGs of any age of gaming.
One of my favourites is Faxanadu for NES. It has a killer soundtrack, great atmosphere, and lots of action RPG elements that really round out the experience. I do also love Mario 1/3, though my favourite from the NES Mario games is definitely SMB2. Great list!
I forgot about Faxanadu! I barely got to play it but the name is really unique. I’ll need to revisit it. And I’m surprised! SMB2? That’s an unusual choice. Why 2, out of curiosity?
Definitely revisit Faxanadu when you get a chance. I appreciated it much more as I got older (and the awesome password screen music is amazing… makes those long passwords bearable to type in!) SMB2 was the first game that I ever played that had meaningful playable character choices. I grew to love the uniqueness of that game and the added or reduced challenge of each level depending on who you played with. Compared to the other Mario NES games, for the aforementioned reason and a few others, this one had more replay value. I have a masochistically fierce love for doing all-Luigi playthroughs, or seeing if I can use each player an equal number of times. Mario 1 and 3 are amazing in their own right, but there was something about 2 that drew me in then, and still does!
My nostalgic classic would be a tie between Super Mario World on the Super NES and Rogue Squadron on the N64. My wife on the other hand has a soft spot in her heart for Spyro on PS1, Goldeneye on the N64, and the Donkey Kong Country games on SNES.
However, I’d never want to go back to play most of the games I have nostalgic feelings for. I know that Rogue Squadron would never live up to those memories for instance. Rose-colored glasses and all.
Definitely all great games! This was a really hard question to narrow down to just one. Nostalgia can be really disappointing sometimes, revisiting things you know you liked only because you were a kid at the time! Thanks for sharing!
The original Metroid. When the NES first came out my uncle bought one along with three games, Super Mario Bros., Dragon Warrior and Metroid. I enjoyed all three, but Metroid had me mesmerized. At one time I had honed my skills well enough that I could easily beat the game from start to finish in well less than the three hours required for the best ending. It is an awesome creation.
You pop in the cart.
Push it down.
Press power.
Queue eerie music.
“baaaaaaa-dum, baaaaaa-dum, baaaaaaa-dum, baaaaaaa-dum”
Perfection…..
Close second, the original Final Fantasy. I found it long after I started gaming, but I loved it so much that it has been my favorite franchise for years, having beat out Star Wars and TMNT as ‘most favorite thing in the world’.
As much as I love it, though, Metroid will always hold a special place for me.
Aw you know we be lovin’ that Final Fantasy around this blog! Thanks for sharing. I’ve never been able to play Dragon Warrior, but I can definitely vouch for Metroid and SMB. They were “game changing” for the industry”.
Heh heh… Like the above comment, mine is Final Fantasy 7 : ) I do count PS1 as the newest inclusion of ‘retro’ and it’s certainly nostalgiac : D
Can’t argue with that choice, and I meet a lot of peeps who identify 5th gen consoles (PSX and N64) as retro and nostalgic.
Tak and the Power of Juju is one of my favorite Playstation 2/platform games. I’ve been urging to play it again, especially since the developer behind it unfortunately shut down.
I don’t know that I’ve played that one. It’s been interesting to see that some people have more obscure games as their nostalgic choice.
Hm, I’m sitting here wondering what counts as nostalgic. If PlayStation age counts, FFVII will always be my number one choice, but that’s across all game systems forever and ever even bleeding into favorite story of all time across media, time and space so it’s not really fair for me to use it I suppose hehe.
If I go prior to that era hm, Super Mario 3 IS pretty much close to the perfect platformer. It’s hard to argue with that logic. I also love the metas about how it’s actually a play (you can actually go behind the “settings”), which opened up the interpretation that the entire cast of the Mario games were just actors, which is why they could go go-carting together when in other situations they were mortal enemies.
There really are far too many amazing games of that error for me to just pick one. They all give me that nostalgic sweetness even though we now know blowing in the games did nothing in terms of making them work properly. It was the attempt that counts. Aaaand my phone DID just start playing the orchestrated version of the Super Mario Bros. theme modern technology is with your illustrious choice 🙂
I think nostalgic could mean almost anything, even a game you enjoyed recently, but “retro” or “classic”, personally, means everything prior to 5th generation consoles. So SNES and Sega Genesis would be the latest, and no N64 or PlayStation. That’s the sense I brought to the question. I think 3D fundamentally brought us out of the “retro/classic” era.
It’s a really hard question to answer, though! So many games to choose from. If you had to pick just one, prior to PlayStation, I’m curious as to what it might be? SMB3 indeed?
I think in 10-20 years that era, too, will be retro, but I agree with you completely. Nostalgia (or its close cousin sehnsucht) can be invoked by anything.
I think I’d have to go with Link to the Past. Ah the feels. That final credit song still gives me chills wheneven I hear it.
Link to the Past is a great choice. It must be because I’m older now, but I just can’t stomach somebody in 20 years calling Arkham Knight (which I’m playing now) “retro”. Haha, for some reason it makes me mad!
I think about how our parents must have felt when the music they grew up with was relegated to the oldies station hehe (this is of course me assuming you’re around my age, which I shouldn’t assume). Of course now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m experiencing my “kids these days moments,” too.
I’m about to be 31 and I have constant “kids these days moments”.
I’m practicing my best “Get off my lawn!” for when I have a lawn to yell at children from.
This time thumb up fot the Well-Red Mage and the White-Out Mage: Super Mario Bros 1 & 3 are the best games of the Mario franchise (3 over 1), even though Altered Beast suddenly reminded me the good old days. Apart from SMB3 I’m torn between Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Difficult choice …
It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer. I almost picked Super Mario World but SMB3 cannot be beat.
I have a lot of nostalgia for Super Mario 64. Witnessing a 3D world for the first time amazed me as a child. I have fond memories and still enjoy playing through it today!
That one’s hard to beat. Nostalgia for Mario at all times. He’s such an icon. Thanks for sharing!
Spyro the Dragon.
Aw yeah! I remember playing the demo over and over again when I first got the PlayStation.
A little newer, but mine’s definitely Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. The first game that I played with a real plot and it definitely played a big part in why I’m still more of a Sonic fan than a Mario one. My nostalgia goggles are glued on tight at this point!
I’ve actually never played that one. Thanks for sharing!
Ah, Sonic Adventure 2. I’ll never forget building up my Chao so it could destroy all the others in the races.