What games did you feel were a product made from their time?

Not really talking about the hardware they were produced specifically on but what games have you played that you thought really reflected the time they were made? My top contender would be Super Battletoads from RareWare for the arcade,final fight and I guess some of the army men games count

Goldeneye 007/ Perfect Dark. A product of their time, unlikely we’ll ever see anything special like that, again.

@outworld222:

Isn't perfect dark getting a new entry ,it doesn't seem dead yet

Arcades and light gun games come to mind. Motion control games where a rave that came and went pretty quickly as well.

@poarstman: yes. But the original one was a product of the time.

Weren’t the current developers also struggling, with development, however?

Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Arcade games like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz even light games like Area 51.

Halo:CE

You could probably guess roughly when this released just from the art work.

Great question! One that immediately comes to mind is The Oregon Trail—totally a product of its time. It taught a whole generation about dysentery and made pixelated wagons weirdly exciting 😂. You can really feel the era it came from, both in gameplay and design.

Same with the early Text Adventure games—back when graphics were limited, and everything hinged on your imagination and typing the right command. That kind of gameplay just wouldn’t hit the same today.

Even classic board games like Scrabble kind of reflect that older, slower-paced game style. Though honestly, tools like Scrabble Word Cheat and Word Solver make it way more fun now, especially when you’re stuck trying to make sense of a tough rack.

What about you—any games you think could only have come from their specific moment in time?

I tend to think any game would work in any era. If it’s fun or interesting it will always been fun and interesting. Sure you can sometimes tell when they released based on art and theme but that does not mean they would only be playable/popular in their specific decades.

Probably the only ones that are literally a product of the time and didn’t catch on are those full-motion-video ones like on Sega CD that tried incorporating real video instead of console graphics. Never played any but gameplay was very limited due to being cinematic.

I don’t mean cutscenes. I mean the ones that used video as the core of the game.

Dante's Inferno - God of War clone, never would have caught much steam otherwise.

Most of licensed games from the NES era, countless MMORPG's that wanted some of the WoW pie.

I suppose you could spin an argument for any game to fall into this category though. I like this question.

Crazy Taxi. Really enjoyed it when it first came out but not something I really want to play these days.

Usually games that have a heavy focus on presentation over gameplay are products of a certain time as they have very little less going for them. Shallow pleasures for shallow people.

Example Gear of War is very much a product of its time, sure the gunplay and cover system are serviceable but they're not exactly doing anything grand outside being visual marvels upon release. That's why the sequels have failed to recapture the series earlier entries. I do feel Gear 2 is still a solid game, it's just also not a very interesting game either. When we have Third Person Shooters such as Vanquish and Control Gears 2 just cannot compete, thus solely being a nostalgia trip.

Then look at a game around the exact same time with Ninja Gaiden 2 which recently got the Black 2 version. & new people love that game wholeheartedly. Because it didn't rely on presentation. Sure Ryu is the coolest chad around but the hook is the gameplay, and how different it is from its competition in the 3D Slasher space.

*It's why the Oblivion Remake is a very interesting one. Because I do feel it is a perfect game to remake, assuming it's done with a lot of love and care. The RPG systems is what puts it over younger brother Skyrim which became so streamlined one could argue it's an Action game and no longer a RPG. Oblivions main crippling flaws is its combat, which was never the selling point of these games anyway. & yet the remake is redoing the combat entirely to be less redundant.