Opinion: 10 Amazing Video Games From the '90s That Have Not Aged Well

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

It's the only thing that can account for the rosy way we regard many of the games from the past, despite the fact that they really have not aged well at all.

Case in point: the ten games on this list.

Don't take this the wrong way; these games are still fun, and some of them are classics. But it's hard to deny that they're simply not as good as you remember them being. The years haven't been kind to the titles on this list.

Maybe the graphics look worse than you remember. Or you don't remember the level design being so bad. And were Goldeneye's controls always so terrible? Read on for games that we've loved that have not aged as well as we'd hoped.

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This is a tough pill to swallow, but for many gamers who remember Goldeneye fondly going back and trying to play it nowadays is like trying to sleep in footie pajamas as an adult: it just doesn't look or feel right.

Be honest: the graphics looked better in your memory than they do in that screenshot up there. On the other hand, you may actually remember constantly switching between "Honey" and "Solitaire" controls trying to figure out which were less terrible.

Goldeneye is still a ton of fun today, particularly with beer and friends. But it's aged poorly in a few key areas—and Perfect Dark was always better anyway.

Speaking of N64 shooters, remember Turok and Turok 2? Of course you do. They were huge, epic games where you could shoot dinosaurs with crossbows and get all kinds of awesome weapons!

OK, so the Cerebral Bore was awesome. But playing Turok 2 is like taking a class called "what video game level design used to be like, and why it's not like that anymore."

You may still enjoy it if you like getting lost for several hours at a time only to get stomped on by an overpowered boss and get sent back to the beginning of the level.

The unfortunate truth is that Crazy Taxi just doesn't hold up compared with today's open-world games. Back then being able to drive freely around a city was mind-blowing, but in hindsight the city is tiny, the gameplay is unimaginably repetitive, and the only real replay value lied in the game's challenges.

You have to admit Crazy Taxi bowling was fun, but on the other hand it's thanks to this game that we can't listen to Bad Religion or The Offspring anymore.

OK, there are actually a lot of reasons why we don't listen to those bands anymore, but there's something to learn here nevertheless: if you're going to bother licensing songs from popular bands in your game, get more than two.

The thought of playing Sonic in 3D may have warped your young brain to demonic levels of excitement, but the reality of Sonic Adventure was barely anything like the 2D Sonic games that came before it.

You enjoyed it as a kid, but the game's many, many rough edges have not stood the test of time. When you pick up your Dreamcast controller again only to die on the same level 500 times in a row you'll agree.

Donkey Kong 64 was never a good game. But there was a time when you were too young to know the difference, and like Sonic Adventure this game got by merely by being a 3D game starring characters you already liked.

Make no mistake: Donkey Kong 64 was pure evil. Unless you're the type of person who enjoys constantly switching among 5 lumbering, clumsy characters so you can painstakingly collect 10 million each of five different colors of a hundred different collectibles, leave this game alone and keep your fond memories of it intact. Because that's literally all it is.

Unlike Donkey Kong 64, Abe's Oddysee is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. It's simply dirtier, slower and harder than anything we're used to today, and playing it now feels more frustrating than challenging.

There are many different types of difficulty. But even the most patient gamers may find it taxing to play the same levels over and over and over in this game. There's a lot of trial and error involved, and with no quick-saves and plenty of deaths Abe's Oddysee should only be revisited by the hardest of hardcore gamers.

This is the game that started it all, and you probably spent hours and hours playing it as a kid. But if you try to play it now all you'll be able to notice are the many important features that are missing.

Chief among them are the manual and the revert, moves that you let chain tricks together in later Tony Hawk games. Without them your combos in THPS1 were short-lived and feel abrupt and choppy by modern comparisons.

Crash Bandicoot is another frustrating experience for nostalgic players who want to revisit gaming's "glory days." Crash was a mascot back in the '90s; this series of 3D platformers went toe-to-toe with Super Mario 64.

But somehow Mario 64 is still exultingly joyful to play, while trying to get through the original Crash Bandicoot games is like getting slapped repeatedly by an old friend who you haven't seen in a very, very long time. It stings even more because you were hoping for a happy reunion.

You don't have to get very far in Crash Bandicoot to discover how brutally difficult, unfair and unforgiving Naughty Dog's original series was.

Ouch. Again, don't take this the wrong way (even though you definitely will); Final Fantasy VII is, and will always remain, among the best games ever made. It's a pinnacle of a certain type of RPG, and there is still plenty to get out of replaying it today.

But it just looks. So. Fucking. Ugly.

Oh, and now that you're not 12 you'll realize that the writing is legitimately terrible. Even if you still love the characters, the world, and the story you can still admit that the dialogue is almost laughably bad.

Now, commence hateful comments.

This may sound unbelievable to your rose-stuffed ears, but every generation of Pokémon game has been better than the one that came before it. Gold was better than Red, Black was better than Diamond, and so on, all the way up to the current games, X and Y, which are arguably the best the series has ever been.

Yes, that even applies to the generation that introduced a garbage bag as a Pokémon.

You and I and all the other kids who grew up in the '90s have countless good memories of link cables, Mewtwo duels, Elite Four replays, searching for Mew—you get it.

But without the many, many features that modern Pokémon players are used to, like breeding, online trading and battling, actual graphics, a stats system that makes sense, held items, natures, an intuitive Pokémon storage system, a visible experience bar, and countless others, Red and Blue really don't hold up very well at all. The truth is—and this is a rarity—you're much better off playing the remakes!

What games do you remember fondly that didn't age well?