Games you wish you had played when they were new -

[Dom Cruise]

Some games stand the test of time, but some games would have been better experienced when they were new before they were dated or simply because there's aspects of them that would have really appealed to you at a certain age.

One example for me is Phantom Crash on the Xbox, didn't play it until 2018 and while I found the premise of the game really cool, it was pretty dated, not something that would have been great at the time either but would have been better.

Mainly though the game has a very Japanese sense of style, including a large soundtrack of Japanese songs, that I would have found fascinating as a budding weeb back in 2002.

But fall of 2002 was a crowded time with a lot of releases, it didn't get great reviews and didn't jump out to me as something worth trying, but I wish I had, just goes to show even in the better days of gaming journalism it was best to not always go with reviews.

 

[Rand /pol/]

Red Dead Redemption

 

[Ita Mori]

Counter-Strike.
Game needs no introduction if you ever played on PC.

Discovered the original 1.0 WON version in 2006 living in a rural nowhere town. Me and my friends installed it and played it at a local PC Cafe all spring break, attracting many other kids to join in and get as addicted as us.
I hadn't ever played games online before at the time due to terrible internet speeds, but I could boast I had the benefit of daily 6v6 LANs for 3 weeks from sunset til midnight.

 

[sasazuka]

A lot of those visually impressive games released in the west late in the Sega Genesis's life cycle such as Crusaders of Centy, Beyond Oasis, Disney's Pinocchio. and The Adventures of Batman and Robin. Also Panorama Cotton but I don't think that Mega Drive game ever got an official western release.

 

[Sundae]

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The game is phenomenal and stands the test of time, but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to play it when it was just released.

Same thing for Shadow of the Colossus.

There are a couple of other games/series that I wish I had gotten into sooner, such as MDK2, Quake, and Armored Core.

 

[Omnium Ultimatus]

Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. I would've played that to participate in the discussions surrounding the first Touhou game on Windows and also discover early Touhou fan art.

 

[Korpon]

Team Fortress 2. I still play it a lot nowadays and still have lots of fun, but it's one of those games that I wish I had been around for since the beginning days before it was F2P. Old TF2 seemed like a much more simpler and interesting time. Game is still great ofc, Heavy Update soon(tm).

 

[Drain Todger]

@Dom Cruise Phantom Crash was one of my favorites from the Xbox era. It was developed by Genki of Tokyo Xtreme Racer fame. It had a sequel that can be hard to find these days, because they never made very many copies and it didn’t sell very well. S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International, on the PS2. If you liked Phantom Crash, you would’ve loved playing Chromehounds when the servers were still online, if you haven’t already. It kicked ass.

I started off with a PC and Dreamcast and missed out on the N64 era. I wish I’d played Wolfenstein, Doom, and GoldenEye when they were new, but that was a little before my time.

 

[Tour of Italy]

Team Fortress 2. I still play it a lot nowadays and still have lots of fun, but it's one of those games that I wish I had been around for since the beginning days before it was F2P. Old TF2 seemed like a much more simpler and interesting time. Game is still great ofc, Heavy Update soon(tm).

I was part of a forum where we got ourselves a private server for most of 2009. It was one of my favorite gaming experiences, playing with 20-30 of your pals, while the game was much simpler and more cohesive. It’s depressing that there’s no way to go back to that look and feel of the game.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Any of the early FromSoftware, Bethesda, or Swery games, just so I could out hipster the hipsters who claim they've been playing their games since King's Field/Daggerfall/Spy Fiction.

Serious answer, probably WoW. I couldn't afford it and got my MMO introduction on later games, but I've heard many stories about how nothing captured the magic of vanilla WoW. Even the private servers pre-shutdown didn't have the universal ubiquity of golden age WoW.

@Drain Todger already mentioned Chrome Hounds, and I guess the 360 Armored Core games could be added to that as well. I played Mech Warrior Living Legends and loved it, but my friends refused to play it.

I started off with a PC and Dreamcast and missed out on the N64 era. I wish I’d played Wolfenstein, Doom, and GoldenEye when they were new, but that was a little before my time.

Goldeneye has not aged well, and the games being ubiquitous is something I miss. The days of installing Unreal Tournament on college computers for a LAN was also fun that I doubt would really happen these days.

 

[Overcast]

Final Fantasy IX. Didn't actually play it till it was ten years old. I was already pretty blown away by it when I played it then, imagine what eight year old me would have felt about it back then. Helped that I didn't really play any JRPG's besides Pokemon at the time.

I was part of a forum where we got ourselves a private server for most of 2009. It was one of my favorite gaming experiences, playing with 20-30 of your pals, while the game was much simpler and more cohesive. It’s depressing that there’s no way to go back to that look and feel of the game.

https://tf2classic.com/

 

[The Last Stand]

Xbox Live when it started. Halo 2, MechAssault, Counter Strike, Project Gotham Racing, NFL Fever, etc.

Even during its rise and peak (07-11). 360 Live was revolutionary.

 

[Dom Cruise]

@Dom Cruise Phantom Crash was one of my favorites from the Xbox era. It was developed by Genki of Tokyo Xtreme Racer fame. It had a sequel that can be hard to find these days, because they never made very many copies and it didn’t sell very well. S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International, on the PS2. If you liked Phantom Crash, you would’ve loved playing Chromehounds when the servers were still online, if you haven’t already. It kicked ass.

I started off with a PC and Dreamcast and missed out on the N64 era. I wish I’d played Wolfenstein, Doom, and GoldenEye when they were new, but that was a little before my time.

I'm aware of that sequel although I haven't played it.

I almost missed out on the N64, I only got to experience the N64 when it wasn't too old purely by luck and happenstance, it was 2001, I just so happened to have had a friend who had one and was willing to trade it for my PS1 since I no longer needed it after having a PS2, I spent the whole summer of that year playing catch up on the big N64 games like SM64, Star Fox 64, Banjo Kazooie/Tooie, Paper Mario and Ocarina of Time.

I've always been very thankful for that.

Any of the early FromSoftware, Bethesda, or Swery games, just so I could out hipster the hipsters who claim they've been playing their games since King's Field/Daggerfall/Spy Fiction.

I had heard of Spy Fiction when it first came out but I never saw the game for rent anywhere so I never played it, which is too bad.

While I didn't play any of the King's Field games back then I did play From's Echo Night: Beyond, so I can at least say I played something of theirs before they really hit it big with Dark Souls.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I had heard of Spy Fiction when it first came out but I never saw the game for rent anywhere so I never played it, which is too bad.

While I didn't play any of the King's Field games back then I did play From's Echo Night: Beyond, so I can at least say I played something of theirs before they really hit it big with Dark Souls.

I had heard of Spy Fiction, and even saw it in a shop once, but never gave it much thought. It was a spy stealth game during the height of that genres popularity. James Bond, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, not to mention lesser games like Stolen. Spy Fiction was just another one of those.

Like most people, I knew From as the Armored Core people, and I heard of Bethesda due to Oblivion. Only a friend who was a big RPG nerd knew what Morrowind was pre-Oblivion. I don't remember anyone at the time pointing to those devs and predicting they'd get to be as big as they are now.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I had heard of Spy Fiction, and even saw it in a shop once, but never gave it much thought. It was a spy stealth game during the height of that genres popularity. James Bond, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, not to mention lesser games like Stolen. Spy Fiction was just another one of those.

Like most people, I knew From as the Armored Core people, and I heard of Bethesda due to Oblivion. Only a friend who was a big RPG nerd knew what Morrowind was pre-Oblivion. I don't remember anyone at the time pointing to those devs and predicting they'd get to be as big as they are now.

Spy Fiction looked like decent fun to me but not enough to buy it, I probably would have rented the game but many games with smaller print runs never made it to video store shelves.

I've always regretted not taking a chance and buying games that looked interesting to me but never were available to rent more often than I did, but the path of least resistance when you're a teen is to ask for a 5$ rental than a 50$ purchase, especially when a game doesn't get great reviews.

I did later start to be more bold and buy more games though, which was the case with Echo Night: Beyond, never saw it on video stores shelves but it looked interesting enough to me to buy it (and it got decent reviews), I had heard of Armored Core but never played any of them (though I wish I had) so Echo Night: Beyond was my introduction to From and their name stuck out to me as unusual and memorable, so I found it interesting when years later suddenly everyone was talking about them.

Finally I actually played Morrowind on the Xbox, but I was too young and the game was too complicated for me to grasp, I didn't understand how the combat worked, mostly I just wandered around towns exploring, but didn't get very far in the game at all.

I also knew Bethesda as the publishers of that 2003 Pirates of The Caribbean game, which although I never played it I remember magazines emphasizing that it was from the same publisher as Morrowind.

But when Oblivion was announced I recognized it right away as a sequel to Morrowind, kinda interesting that I can say I was there before the series really struck it big although I didn't know what I was doing when I played Morrowind.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Ultima Online, City of Heroes, Spacestation 13. Maybe also WC3 Dota before it became huge.

It's a combination of them being historically significant and them hitting at a time when I was a bored teenager and had tons of free time to play games.

 

[Wonderful Id]

I bet I might have liked Deus Ex more if I played it when it was new. Every time I've tried to play it now, it feels like a shooting stealth game with bad shooting and bad stealth.

That being said, I didn't play System Shock or Ultima Underworld until way later either and both those games are totally still playable so maybe Deus Ex was never a good game after all.

 

[albert chan]

The Far Cry series, since I was supposed to get it a few years ago, but I procrastinated.
Luckily, Pyro shares my love for this game.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The Far Cry series, since I was supposed to get it a few years ago, but I procrastinated.
Luckily, Pyro shares my love for this game.

Far Cry 1 was interesting as a tech demo. The Crysis before Crysis existed. It also had an interesting theme. A FPS in a tropical paradise instead of grey hallways and World War 2 settings that were popular at the time. Now, it's not really special, especially since those ideas have been done better since.

I'm curious how Far Cry 3 holds up. I never got around to 4 and 5, but 3 was released back before the Ubisoft formula of craft upgrades, climb towers to reveal the map, and clear region was a meme.

 

[Autumnal Equinox]

City of Heroes/Villains. Sounded like an awesome game from everyone I talked with, but I was never that big into MMOs so I kept putting it off. Servers shut down a few years back and now it's too late. Looked really fun though.

Darkspore looked like an interesting curiosity I would have liked to have tried as well