“What were the games you played in the 90s?”, asked a question on Quora. It sparked a rush of excitement in the gamer in me. Or well, at least the gamer I once was.

Video games were a life-saver in the pre-internet games era. Flashback to the time when you had to buy those little cassettes to inject in your video game player and embark on a crazy adventure.

So here is a quick list to just some of the Video games I played in the 90s:

  1. Prince of Persia

This game was my absolute favourite when I was 5/6, could never cross any levels. Was just was so fascinated by the alluring dungeon setting and the background music. Even my parents would play this game. They would even fight for their turn!

2. Tetris

Tetris seems like such a simple game, but man is it obsessive. Wanting to fit those blocks together like they belonged to each other was your life goal. You can just go on and on playing this game, until it gets too fast for you to handle.

3. Mario

Who hasn’t played this? Never got to saving the princess though.

Even as I write this, the iconic background music, that can probably classified under techno is playing in my head.

4. Battle City

This one was a simple weird game. Played this one quite a bit, because for back them, it was pretty intriguing. Battle tanks fighting it out for victory, what’s not to like?

5. Bomberman

Bomberman was some epic stuff. You had to plant bombs and run away in time, so that the explosion kills your opponents in the game. Planting a bomb and killing yourself was just the worst. Come to think of it, I have technically been a suicide bomber in the video game world. I almost forgot how much I loved this game. We used to make fart jokes about it.

6. Adventure Island

This game was some wow level for the kid me when I played it first. The game is pretty much like Mario, except that you have a weird uncle in green underwear as your main character. It felt like an exotic cool game back then.

7. Pacman

I just recently saw a film called Blackmail, where the main protagonist would stay back in office everyday just to play Pacman. Made me so nostalgic. Pacman had this really hypnotic background music (not saying it’s good music) and is another addictive game. You just want to keep eating your opponents. Hardly ever get bored of it.

8. Circus Charlie

Never a favourite, but circus Charlie was a pretty decent game. You had to do these circus tricks without making any mistakes. Like riding a tiger/lion and jumping through fire rings.

9. Duck Hunt

Duck hunt was such a fun game, all you had to do was shoot ducks. And there used to be a special gun joystick that you buy and use to play this game. Unless my memory is playing games with me.

10. Road fighter

Before I discovered road rash, there was road fighter with cars on the video game circuit. While I was a maniacal fan of road rash, can’t say the same for Road fighter. Pretty simple game where you just had to do right and left and ensure you didn’t crash before the finish line. Think you would also run out of petrol and had to pass through petrol boxes to keep driving in the game.

Think I ll wrap the video games list and move on to computer games now.

Computer games I played.

  1. Wolf 3D

This was the first computer game I ever played. And played the hell out of it. Never knew back then (I was seven/eight?) that in the game you are supposed to be a spy during the world war and that the dude I fight in the end is actually Hitler! The game was filled with Nazi posters and photos of Hitler.

Just loved playing this game and finding hidden vaults with treasures.

2. Dave

Don’t think I would have played it otherwise, but had very limited options to play when we got a computer at home back in the 90s.

3. Road Rash

Just thinking about this game makes me so happy. I played it for years, even after finishing it.

Bike racing with the option to kick and hit your opponents with a chain? And even beat up cops? Definitely way too cool for a kid.

I used to always pick this player called Rhonda and assumed it was a guy. Was in for a pleasant surprise to know it was a girl!

4. Doom!

If road rash was my first love, doom was my second. I was/am a big fan of the horror genre and doom gave me a horror genre game!

I know kids who refused to play it back then because they thought it was too scary.

Me? I couldn’t be more excited when I used to play the game that was filled with ugly monsters, demons, blood, and toxic lakes.

I think these are my favourites from the 90s, the rest of the games I played were early 2000s.

(Orginally answered on my quora page)