I love my retro video games and still have a habit of loading them up when I feel that way inclined. There were so many good ones that carry special memories for me which sounds so nerdy and lame but they hold a special place in my heart so I don't care! There are only certain games that can do it and usually its the memories that you have with your friends and family while playing them as much as the games that make them as good as they are.
So without further adieu I will start listing them from 5 to 1 with the game the system and the reasons behind why it was as good as it was.
NUMBER 5) Counterstrike - PC - When Counterstrike first came out I was in my final years of high school and a cable or ADSL modem was a state of the art piece of technology. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had Counterstrike with a fast connection setup at his place and we made a habit of skipping classes at school to get back to his place for a game. We had the room decked out with computers, headsets and this eventually lead to clan wars where we would pit our team against others on a league ladder. I don't think I have been as stressed or felt so involved with a game before and I guess this is the equivalent of what LOL and DOTA2 are today for anyone playing competitively as a team trying to crush your opponents. The game is still played today and was way ahead of its time. The graphics, the strategy and the teamwork all make this one of my favourite games of all time. There was something special about throwing a frag grenade at a terrorist who thought he had escaped you only to finish him off as he ran around the corner. I should also mention the maps were fantastic and classics like Dust / Dust 2 / Aztec / Italy / Bunker were all some of my favourites. As far as I know these all still get played today some 20 years later!
NUMBER 4) Golden Eye - N64
I guess I must have been a junkie for shooting naughty terrorists but GoldenEye was the best of the best when it came to getting together with your friends after school or on a weekend and cranking the 4 player multiscreen on a big TV. It was hotly contested, tears were shed and punches were thrown all while playing through some of the coolest levels and guns gaming had seen to that point. It was probably the first game I can recall where you actually had to get a feel for each weapon and know how to use it properly and the strategy involved in the multiplayer was fantastic.
I should also mention the single player game was a work of art in itself with special challenges and hard to reach time limits making some of the difficult levels near impossible to complete within the time constraints. Only the absolute die hards got through it all. Credit also to Perfect Dark an improved game that came out later on for the N64. It was better than GoldenEye but it didn't carry the same nostalgia and by the time it came out most had moved on from the GoldenEye craze
NUMBER 3) FINAL FANTASY 7 - PlayStation 1
Ok so this one wasn't so much a multiplayer game but I still had friends over all the time watching me play or we would be rushing or arguing about whose characters were better or who was further into the story. You know a game is good when you basically buy the actual console pretty much for that game. What made this though was the story and the bad arse nature of everyone's favourite bad guy Sephiroth. It was like watching a movie while you played and having one of my characters Aeris cut down by this psycho after I had spent 20 hours levelling her up made me even more invested!
The music was insanely good, the graphics ahead of their time and the story as good as anything going around to this day. There's a reason you have so many fanboys and die hards still loving this game to this day, it was epic and its probably unlucky not to be number 1 on the list.
NUMBER 2) SECRET OF MANA - SNES
Square soft has had many great games but something about this one made it so good. The music, the story, the SNES multitap playing it with your mates. It basically didn't get much better than this. This was the game that you would hire from the video store and play without sleep with your friends and talking shit all night. Everyone would fight over who got to play each character and all 3 had really good reasons for wanting to pick them. There were epic boss fights, insane battles and it was the kind of RPG you kind of want to keep playing to get to the end before you had to return it. It was recently remastered on Steam and I dare say i'll be picking up a copy!
NUMBER 1) - CHRONO TRIGGER - SNES
All hail the king baby! This was the game. It was one player but what it lacked in multiplayer features it more than made up for in music and storyline. Changing between different dimensions and picking up new characters along the way this game was so ahead of its time for a SNES title it wasn't funny. It had all the features of your Final Fantasy type games with skills that would cross over between characters. There were hidden areas, secret chests and boss battles that made you have to think long and hard about how to defeat them. I would often initially get this game from the video store and struggle to get it down in a week. I bought it eventually and even still the game has great replay ability and I now have it setup for my kids on a ROM. So good I cant recommend enough even 25-30 years later the game is still worth playing and hasn't been tarnished by newer better models.
HONORABLE MENTIONS - These games were seriously unlucky to miss out!
Mario 64 - N64 - Gotta get those 120 Stars!
Daggerfall - PC - Where Oblivion, Morrowind and Elder Scrolls started!
UFO Enemy Unknown - PC - Wonderful game that has been remastered in recent times
Legend of Zelda - A link to the Past - also the first Zelda on NES gets a mention as well
Rock n Roll Racing - SNES - Shred's in another timezone!!!!
Hope you enjoyed people! What did I miss :)