8 Nostalgic Games from the 90s and 00s

In the old times, when Apple was just a fruit and TikTok was the sound a clock makes, people still played games. In fact, gaming was one of the most popular things to do in the 1990s and 2000s.

Sure, it looked a little bit different – you’d play them on CD Roms, for one, and the graphics were somewhat retro – but they were special because, at the time, they featured cutting edge technology and were, for many of us, the first games we ever played.

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, here are eight fantastic nostalgic games from the 90s and 00s. Here’s some top TVs for retro gaming if you want to play them again.

8 Nostalgic Games from the 90s and 00s

Spyro the Dragon

Dating back to 1998, Spyro the Dragon is a popular 3D game that just exudes the 90s. The protagonists are the purple dragon, Spyro, and his sidekick, a dragonfly called Sparx. The duo travels across the Dragon Kingdom to defeat the evil Gnasty Gnorc, an antagonist who took over five dragon homeworlds.

It’s a classic levels game, with the player finding valuable items to score points while avoiding the baddies. Ultimately, you can complete it by defeating Gnasty Gnorc, but it takes a while to do so!

The game used a rendering system which has been used in lots of other games since then, and Spyro himself was used as a mascot for the PlayStation platform. Spyro the Dragon games are still released today – the latest was in 2018.

Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot is a PlayStation game dating back to 1996, with releases still coming out today. It’s mainly based on platform games, but there is also go-kart racing.

Set on the Wumpa Islands (a fictitious archipelago), the games revolve around a mutant bandicoot created by a Doctor called Neo Cortex.

Cortex created Crash and wants to track him down and kill him, as he was an experiment that failed. The game’s premise is for Crash to catch Cortex and stop him from taking over the world.

Doom

Doom is a popular video game series that focuses on fighting demons and saving the planet from alien invasions.

Dating back to 1993, it was one of the primary first-person shooter video games, a model used many times since. More than 10 million copies of the game have been sold, and its last release was in 2019.

Doom has become a whole franchise now, with novels, board games, and films based on it.

Windows Casino

When the internet was still in its infancy, online casinos had to be downloaded. Windows Casino was a CD ROM-based game, and players needed to install it onto their computers. Because this was a relatively new concept, RTG casinos came up with a coupon code to persuade people to try it out for free. This essentially means the game offered one of the first no deposit casino bonuses ever!

On offer were popular card games like solitaire or virtual fruit machines. However, Windows Casino is a far cry from the gambling game provided today, and because there are much more sophisticated online casinos available nowadays, it’s not available anymore.

Wii Sports

Famous for being a type of game that encouraged people to get up and move rather than just sit in a chair, Wii Sports was remarkably well-received when it first came out in 2006.

You could play it by holding the controller in your hand. On-screen, there would be a figure, and every time you moved your arm with the controller, the figures would follow by moving their arm with whatever they were holding in the same direction. This could have been a tennis racket, baseball bat, or a bowling ball depending on the game.

By doing this, you could play some of your favourite sports online!

With modern technology, the older version of Wii Sports is now redundant. However, new releases have come out, with a new Wii Sports for the Nintendo Switch coming soon.

Lemonade Stand

Lemonade Stand was a simple yet popular game that gave business-savvy kids their first experience of corporate life!

In the game, you run your own lemonade stand, take money from people and deal with external factors like rain or a sudden rush of customers. It’s a fun game to play, but also is probably one of the most educational games on this list.

If you want a real trip down memory lane, you can actually still play Lemonade Stand today.

Neopets

In the 00s, Neopets was one of the most beloved games for people young and old across the world. It can be enjoyed even today, with plenty of kids and adults still playing.

It was an all-online game first launched in 1999. Participants would create their own ‘Neopet’. They’d care for it by buying it food (which they could usually earn by playing games). If they had extra cash, they could purchase other cool things like paintbrushes to paint their pet differently.

You could also travel around the Neo world, a globe with different lands, each representing a different culture. If that wasn’t enough, there were chat rooms allowing you to speak to other Neopets fans, and you could make your pets their own website!

While spending a lot of time on Neopets was not always considered productive, many people viewed it as a good learning experience for children. The games helped them learn the value of money, and some children even learned IT skills, like HTML!

Habbo Hotel

Founded in 2000, Habbo Hotel markets itself as “the world’s largest online community for teens”. The game lets you have your own character, create a home, trade items, and chat with people from all over the world.

Habbo Hotel is still a thing now (it’s now called just “Habbo”), but it’s much less popular than it once was. In the early 00s, there wasn’t any social media, so Habbo Hotel was one of the best ways to pass the time online. Nowadays, teens are much more likely to spend time on TikTok or Instagram.

Habbo Hotel also had its fair share of scams, and sadly some kids were victims of online bullying. There are a few reasons Habbo Hotel fell from grace, and this one was probably best left in the early 00s.

This post should have given you a lovely walk down memory lane. Whether you used to play the PlayStation, get active on Wii Sports or take care of your Neopet online, it’s fair to say that gaming is very different nowadays. Of course, you can play some of these games even now, but many of them are well in the past. However, it’s always nice to think about them sometimes, for a little dose of nostalgia!

 


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