Six games from the '90s and 2000s that still hold up

Nostalgia is a tricky thing – childhood memory loves to embellish, and what seemed like a masterpiece at age ten often turns out to be janky nonsense with terrible controls once you revisit it as an adult.

But some games pass the test of time without any allowances for age or rose-tinted glasses – you get sucked into them exactly the same way you did twenty years ago.

A discussion about these kinds of titles pops up regularly in gaming communities, and the list keeps circling back to the same genres – shooters from id Software, strategy games from Westwood and Ensemble, plus arcade racers and platformers from the late 90s.

One line that comes up almost every time is "stay awhile and listen" – the iconic phrase from merchant Deckard Cain in Diablo 2, which became a meme all on its own long ago.

Age of Empires II launched in 1999 from Ensemble Studios and remains one of the most played real-time strategy games out there, thanks in large part to the 2019 Definitive Edition remaster with upgraded graphics and an active multiplayer scene.

Red Alert 2 from Westwood Studios arrived a year later with an alternate history take on the USSR vs. Allies conflict, complete with psychic beams and Tesla coils, and people still play it today on the CnCNet service with full online multiplayer support.

Both games rely on the same simple formula – clear mechanics, readable balance, and units that stick in your memory at first glance.

DOOM from id Software set the standard for the shooter genre back in 1993, long before the term "first-person shooter" even existed, and the tight corridors, demons, and driving soundtrack still hold up without a single patch.

Diablo 2, released by Blizzard North in 2000, became the gold standard for dungeon crawlers with its randomized item generation, and it still thrives today thanks to the 2021 Diablo II: Resurrected remaster, which kept the original gameplay almost entirely intact.

Need for Speed Most Wanted from EA Black Box in 2005 gave the arcade racing genre its police chase system with the heat level mechanic, forcing you to flee cops across the city, and that never stopped being fun.

Some of the younger players in the thread also named Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas as games that hooked them the same way, which got the older crowd thinking about their own age.