1994:

It's time to talk about some of the games that came out in 1994. A few of these I haven't actually played myself, but a few I have.

So let's start off with a pretty good one:

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The Elder Scrolls: Arena

Man, just the name alone. It really makes me wish I had played this back in the day, but I hadn't really been familiar with the Elder Scrolls series until the later Oblivion, pre-Skyrim days. But then Skyrim really took it off. I guess I never really felt the need to go back and play this one, but I imagine if I did i'd have a blast. Maybe I will sometime.

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Donkey Kong Country

Everybody and their mother should know about this one. Donkey Kong Country is easily one of the most exciting platformers that Rare has ever created. Not only is the gameplay really fun, but the soundtrack is fantastic. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong make a really good duo. And for a developer to make a platformer with two characters at a time and have it work flawlessly is an epic achievement in its own right. There will be a more in depth look at this game coming up. But yes, definitely falls into the category of games that I will never forget my experience with.

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Warcraft: Orcs & Humans

Although I'm really not a fan of World of Warcraft that much, I do have a lot of lifetime love for the Warcraft RTS games, specifically of course Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. But, a franchise has to start somewhere right? And what better way to do that with the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Believe it or not, I have actually played this one before. I didn't play enough of it to really get a good feel for what it had, but I did play Warcraft II and that game was and probably still is a really good RTS. Definitely one of my favorite series of games in general.

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Mega Man X

Yes, I realize the Japan release of this game was December of 1993, but it wasn't actually released in North America until 1994, so it counts. Shut it.

Anyway, I remember owning a copy of Mega Man X and loving the **** out of it. Genuinely a really fun game for the Super Nintendo. Although I really don't talk about Mega Man that often, I do give them credit for always being sort of just straight up what they want to be. I've never really been disappointed with a Mega Man game and from what I've seen of the games I haven't played, they all seem really good for the right reasons.

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Earthworm Jim

I think the only time I ever saw Earthworm Jim was from a neighbor or something because they had a copy of it. I don't really remember much about it, but I know that it is pretty well respected in the gaming world, although pretty obscure at this point. Not surprising to see that this game did well in terms of ratings, since as I said, I believe people were generally favorable of this game, and I only knew that from hearing about it years after its release.

1994 seems like it was still a pretty good year for gaming. For people that got to experience Warcraft for the first time, I imagine their minds were absolutely blown. I would've love to experience that when it came out the first day.

woah 1994 was awesome! I think my favourite era of gaming was the early to mid nineties. From Amiga to Genesis. Although I'm a huge Sega fan in general and love the 80's (Sega Master System).

I've played this one a ton. It's pretty rudimentary, but it's the Elder Scrolls game I like coming back to now and again the most. The soundtrack is burned into my memory. In a good way.

What is it like?

A lot like Daggerfall but even simpler, which means it only barely managed to give an impression of a big world, in which you could do anything you wanted. Technically, you can play a thief and roam an open world, but dungeon crawling is the only thing that feels fleshed out in any way. Even then, you mostly just spam the mouse to try and kill things before they kill you (So far, so Elder Scrolls).

It's my favorite year ever in the classic gaming era.

I still have nightmares about Daggerfall's dungeon system. Lost in a galaxy of nonsensical corridors, the quest target glitched behind a wall after two hours of searching, ancient liches snapping wet towels into my ass all the while. By Azura, what a ****fest.

That's why you gotta make sure to make a custom class that has a teleport spell, even if it's a warrior. Then place a teleport anchor by the entrance when you enter a new dungeon.

It's true. The dungeon's are nightmares. Some of them are just crazy huge. I've even found several dungeons with broken secret teleporters that didn't provide any way back out of huge, deep down maze systems. I don't think their auto generation code quite worked and they certainly didn't manually test every single one of those many thousands of dungeons.

Yeah, making a char with as many spell points as possible is absolutely essential, otherwise you can't even cast Mark/Recall until way later, 'cause even with a high Int you only get like one or two spell points per level.

But the whole Immunity to Magic/Weak to Poison, Paralysis, etc., trick makes up for it. ;)