Friday Five – Favorite PS1/N64 Era Games

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week we help you get to know our writers with the help of a top 5 list! This week: Favorite PS1/N64 Era Games

So last week you probably remember us doing favorite 16bit games. That was easy, that generation of consoles presented there games in 16 bits it was nice. The next gen you had things getting out of hand with 32 and 64 bit systems on the market! Long story short, that’s why this isn’t Favorite XX-Bit Games. Regardless of that, a lot of us really came into a gaming glory during the days of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1. Of course we grew up with things like Atari, NES, SNES, etc, but we were small children at the time. By the mid to late ’90s we were pre-teens into teens and our tastes began to expand. Though not that much, since we picked mostly the same type of games as the previous generation! Enough of this though, let’s get on with the lists.

Chris

1. Final Fantasy VIII – I didn’t really know which Final Fantasy from this era I wanted to pick, but as you read on you’ll see Tactics, VII, and IX are all picked. So I decided to go with Final Fantasy VIII, so it could get some love too. Now the other PS1 Final Fantasy were all great, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed them all. VIII gets a lot of crap from people because of the Draw system, and some other things. But seriously that game had a fantastic story, and the junction system was simple enough to use but crazy awesome if you really got into developing it.
2. Super Mario 64 – I played this game for god damn hours when I got my N64, then it came out on DS and I played it for even more hours! You almost never go wrong with a Mario game, and Mario 64 really jumped everyone’s favorite turtle battling plumber into 3D well.
3. Mario Kart 64 – The original Mario Kart on SNES was fun, but Mario Kart 64 is where the game really got great. It felt fast, the battle stages were a ton of fun, and just racing around all those crazy tracks could keep you busy for hours. Every Mario Kart tends to have something special about it, but I think Mario Kart 64 is definitely the top of the Kart Racing, hell even just racing game genre.
4. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time – This game felt like it took forever to come out, and it kind of did. If Link to The Past is my favorite Zelda game, than Ocarina of Time is easily my second. It was just such a huge epic game that spanned time, obviously, and the story just felt bigger than previous Zelda titles. Plus when you get Epona in the middle of the game, that whole section is just awesome.
5. Spider-Man: Enter Electro – Spider-Man has a real love hate relationship with video games. The older side scrollers like Maximum Carnage were fun, and from what I hear the more recent titles are kind bleh. But The two games for PS1 really got Spidey to start hitting his stride, and the second one Enter Electro did it best. These weren’t the best Spider-Man games, that title goes to either Spider-Man 2 (the movie game) or Ultimate Spider-Man. But this one was definitely a step in the right direction.

Honorable Mention: Tony Hawk 1 & 2 – These games were just a ton of fun, I played the hell out of them to the point I could clear most stages in a single run, well as long as it was possible anyway. The music is what really did it though, both games just had such awesome soundtracks.

Drootin

1. Final Fantasy Tactics – This is still my favorite console game of all time and probably my favorite game ever (with only Diablo 2/3 close). The gameplay is awesome and it has one of the most intricate and twisting plots in any game I ever played. I’d recommend this game to anyone.
2. Super Smash Bros. – While I’m not really the biggest fan of fighting games normally Smash Bros is awesome.
3. Final Fantasy VII – This is the first RPG that I played and it was an Eye-opener. I pretty much only played sports games and platformers up until I played FF7 and since then RPGs have been near the top of my list of favorite genres.
4. WWF Attitude/WWF SmackDown 2: Know Your Role – My 2 favorite wrestling games of this era were some of the most played games during this time so I have to include these on my list.
5. Blast Lacrosse – The only ever retail-sold National Lacrosse League game (a digital download game was available on the 360 a few years back) has to be on my list. The game isn’t very good but also not complete garbage. Its very arcadey but it has the real teams and real players of the time so at least it had that going for it.

Vogel

1. Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time – I never had an N64 but I got this as a bonus on the Gamecube. It’s one of my favorite games ever.
2. Tomb Raider 3 – the first Tomb Raider game I really got into, but it made me want to go back and play the previous ones.
3. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 – I played the hell out of this game. I remember sinking so much time into this game because I loved the gameplay and the soundtrack.
4. WWF SmackDown 2: Know Your Role – I used to be really big into wrestling and the first couple Smackdown games were great.
5. 007 – Golden Eye – As I stated earlier I never owned an N64 and I got a ps1 about 2 months before getting a PS2. In other words I needed a 5th.

Eric

1. Tomb Raider 2
2. Final Fantasy IX
3. Final Fantasy Tactics
4. Pokemon Stadium
5. Paper Mario

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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