Opinion Your 1994 GOTY (DOOM II, Super Metroid, X-COM, FFVI, Donkey Kong Country)

[Bonfires Down]

Guess what, it’s another year stacked with great games. Let’s hear your opinion on 1994.

Some pretty cool FPS games in Heretic, Marathon and Rise of the Triad, but I left them out as I doubt they will get votes over DOOM II.

Honorable mentions 1994:
Magic Carpet
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon
Heretic
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
Marathon
Rise of the Triad: Dark War
Transport Tycoon
Illusion of Gaia
Earthworm Jim
Jazz Jackrabbit
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom
Shining Force II
Demon’s Crest
Alien vs. Predator (Arcade)
Blackthorne
Uniracers/Unirally
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
Tekken
Daytona USA
Soleil/Crusader of Centy
Dynamite Headdy
Killer Instinct
The Need for Speed


Preliminary list for 1995:
Chrono Trigger
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Command & Conquer
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Full Throttle
The Dig
X-COM: Terror from the Deep
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Descent
Earthbound
Worms
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Hexen: Beyond Heretic
Comix Zone
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Discworld
Phantasy Star IV
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana

Honorable mentions:
Crusader: No Remorse
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen
Mega Man X2
The 11th Hour
Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe
Panzer Dragoon
Alien Soldier
Heroes of Might and Magic
Fade to Black
Mario’s Picross
Breath of Fire 2
Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation
Terminal Velocity
Screamer
Beyond Oasis/The Story of Thor

 

[Stevey]

Gotta be DOOM II

 

[Tizoc]

Sonic 3 & knuckles is the only answer

 

[Li Kao]

Voted FF VI, but as always the choice is almost physically painful

 

[TubaZef]

Tough year with DOOM II, Super Metroid, DKC, Mega Man X, System Shock, X-COM...

But I think that in the long run Super Metroid left the biggest impact so going with that one

 

[Alexandros]

Grand strategy on a global scale. Economic management. Close quarters tactical combat. Day and night missions. Research and development. RPG elements. Emergent gameplay that is just as fresh today as it was back in the day. Fully destructible combat environments. Awesome art. A thrilling story. X-Com. The best game of all time.

Do the right thing here, people.

 

[lashman]

Grand strategy on a global scale. Economic management. Close quarters tactical combat. Day and night missions. Research and development. RPG elements. Emergent gameplay that is just as fresh today as it was back in the day. Fully destructible combat environments. Awesome art. A thrilling story. X-Com. The best game of all time.

no lies detected

 

[Li Kao]

Grand strategy on a global scale. Economic management. Close quarters tactical combat. Day and night missions. Research and development. RPG elements. Emergent gameplay that is just as fresh today as it was back in the day. Fully destructible combat environments. Awesome art. A thrilling story. X-Com. The best game of all time.

Do the right thing here, people.

Shame on me
Please pardon me, X-COM !

 

[Deku]

Voted for Megaman X.

 

[Li Kao]

Avatar quote ! No, make that double avatar quote ! Combo

 

[Bonfires Down]

DOOM II: I think I've played both DOOM I and II but I wouldn't be able to separate them. They were super fun and revolutionary but I haven't played them since the mid 90s.

Super Metroid: It's a good game. I also find it quite overrated.

X-COM: Tried to play this long after the fact and it felt archaic to me and I couldn't get into it. It would be even harder for me to go back after the excellence that is modern X-COM.

Sonic 3: Fantastic, one of the best 2D platformers around.

Master of Magic: Tried playing this around the time GOG released it but couldn't get into it.

Mega Man X: I like Mega Man but I have a real problem with how enemies respawn if you take half a step back.

Final Fantasy VI: Without a question the game on the list that had the biggest impact on me. It so creative, fun, emotional and beautiful. But, there are two major issues with the game: 1. Random encounters, even back then they were kinda painful. I don't know if I would be able to face them today. 2. The game completely loses focus at the world of ruin. I've actually played the first half of the game many times but have never been motivated to complete the world of ruin.

Little Big Adventure: Loved it back in the day. I have no idea if it holds up today.

Beneath a Steel Sky: Old school adventure games are too hard and frustrating for me.

Donkey Kong Country: Meh. It's got nothing on Mario and Sonic.

Theme Park: Loved it back then. I can imagine it feels kinda dated at this point.

Jagged Alliance: It was fantastic at the time. Your mercenaries having actual personalities adds a lot to the game. The limited field of view looks painful now, but I imagine I would still really like it today.

Magic Carpet: It was fun back then but I doubt it holds up.

Soleil: For a Sega kid this this was the best alternative to Zelda. It was a really good game though.

It's between FFVI and Sonic 3 for me with Jagged Alliance as runner up. Sonic deserves it more but I reckon I will vote for FF

 

[Kuro]

Grand strategy on a global scale. Economic management. Close quarters tactical combat. Day and night missions. Research and development. RPG elements. Emergent gameplay that is just as fresh today as it was back in the day. Fully destructible combat environments. Awesome art. A thrilling story. X-Com. The best game of all time.

Do the right thing here, people.

What's this image from? Is there some mod to play it on modern resolutions?
And have to agree, new X-Coms don't completely scratch the itch for some reason, they're not scary in the same way.

 

[Li Kao]

Yeah, it looks surprisingly good here. Tempted me too.

 

[Le Pertti]

Super Metroid, holy shit when it came out, genre defining and it still holds up today!

Still, I had to vote for DOOM II, follow up to one the best games ever made and it managed to be better!

 

[teezzy]

How dare you make me decide between Super Metroid and FF6

 

[Alexandros]

What's this image from? Is there some mod to play it on modern resolutions?
And have to agree, new X-Coms don't completely scratch the itch for some reason, they're not scary in the same way.

Yeah, it looks surprisingly good here. Tempted me too.

OpenXcom | Open-source clone of the original X-Com

openxcom.org

 

[Le Pertti]

Ok wait, FF6 was pretty fucking good too.

 

[ISee]

Tie-Fighter is my personal best game of all times. My undisputed number one.

We all cheer for the rebels and want them to be victorious, but deep down we also want to see the empire be mighty, frightening and do well.
Tie-Fighter allows you to experience that fantasy. It's an action-simulation and a very hard game, with excellent mission design, strategic layers, many cutscenes and a story full of dark turns and betrayal. This game doesn't treat you lightly, it wants you to master its gameplay and every (necessary) keyboard shortcut. You feel like a pilot in the imperial navy, first replaceable but you will advance the ranks and if you do very well you'll be even recruited into the inner circles of the emperor himself. You'll be doing his bidding (if you wish), sometimes even against the will of your superiors.
It's a fantastic game.

The original game intro (1:39), which is a bit different from the CD-Rom version.



edit:
But yeah, 1994 was unbelievable.
Once this is finished we should vote for the best year in gaming. I think this one is a strong contender tbh.

And have to agree, new X-Coms don't completely scratch the itch for some reason, they're not scary in the same way.

No, it doesn't. But it is still pretty good imo

Preliminary list for 1995:

No Mechwarrior 2 on that list is a sin!

 

[Bonfires Down]

Voted for Megaman X.

No shit

Are you a fellow Swede btw?

 

[Kuro]

No, it doesn't. But it is still pretty good imo

Agreed, here's hoping they're working on 3rd one.

 

[NarohDethan]

Super Motherfucking Metroid

 

[Kandrick]

So many good games again. Looking back at the lists for each year, it's so hard to pick one game as compared to now for me. Like i don't even know what i would pick for 2019, but 1994 and the years before ? So many games stand out to me.

I mean UFO/Xcom, FFVI, DKC, SWOS, Super Metroid, damn. And even Theme Park, Wing Commander III and others are such high quality games. I would easily vote for any of the first 5 i mentioned as GOTY 1994. They are all that good..

And how to not mention Little Big Adventure ? Fantastic game, and just listen to this :



So many games on that list have an awesome OST too, FFVI, DKC to mention a few


Still, i'll have to vote for UFO: Enemy Unknown. Spent so much time playing that game, just like Civilization that i also voted for in the other thread.

 

[ISee]

And how to not mention Little Big Adventure ? Fantastic game, and just listen to this :

WoW, I've nearly forgotten that one. Thx.

 

[TubaZef]

Donkey Kong Country: Meh. It's got nothing on Mario and Sonic.

I used to like it more than both back in the day, it was amazing but I guess we were much more impressed by the graphics than anything else. Still, it's a good game.

DKC2 and 3 were much better but still DKC set up the foundation,

 

[Alextended]

Yes yes Japan at it again

It's next year for other releases and console ver (xcept EU console ver).

 

[Deku]

No shit

Are you a fellow Swede btw?

Megaman is life
Yes, I am a Swede

 

[KainXVIII]

Little Big Adventure for life

 

[kio]

For me it's a 3-way tie between Sonic 3, Super Metroid and Final Fantasy 6 but since I have to pick only one I'll go with Super Metroid simply because it set the excellence baseline of what an exploration platformer (aka metroidvania) should be and remained in the top spot of the genre for 13 years until a little unknown game called Hollow Knight took it's crown.

 

[fearthedawn]

Tie-Fighter is my personal best game of all times. My undisputed number one.

edit:
2) would be X-Com
3) Transport Tycoon, just for the thousands of hours i played TTDX... wait, that came out 1995

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Final Fantasy VI got the vote. And with that I helped it tie Xcom.

I still consider Final Fantasy VI a favorite game to this day as it's aged fairly well. It has some of the most iconic Final Fantasy game soundtracks for me. I love the variety in characters and to me it has some of the key elements I consider best in the series with characters that have specific abilities and four-person battle systems. I've always felt that dropping it down to three in subsequent games has made combat less interesting.

Super Metroid, Super Punch-Out, and Illusion of Gaia were also great games that year for me.

 

[Oldschool PC]

Easiest choice of them all. The only game that comes close is Master of Magic.

Still, I had to vote for DOOM II, follow up to one the best games ever made and it managed to be better!

Not to be that guy, but Doom II had awful level design and an over reliance on gimmicks. It desperately needed John Romero's input.

 

[gabbo]

All about shooting down rebel scum for the Empire in 1994, with Jazz Jackrabbit as the next most played, for sure.

 

[Phoenix RISING]

What an impossible list to choose from.

Since I have yet to play a bad metroidvania, I'm going to go with Super Metroid, which became the template for the perfect genre.

 

[Digoman]

While I really.... reeeeeally liked both Wing Commander 3 and Tie Fighter, X-COM was on another level. Defined a genre and offered countless hours of fun (and screaming at the screen because the soldier missed a 90% shot).

So even though having Luke Skywalker and Biff from Back to the Future in my space sim was something special, this year my vote goes to X-COM.

 

[Aelphaeis Mangarae]

A lot of really good games in 1994. I think I have to give it to System Shock, though. (I am a little biased towards first person games, which becomes evident as the 90s progress, I think.) System Shock built on the foundation of Ultima Underworld to deliver something that is a clunky to play, but structurally so timeliness that the upcoming remake doesn't stray too far from it. And that's a testament of innovative and polished core game design. It's this curious hybrid of a point and click and a more conventional FPS game. It has atmosphere in spades. And it pioneered the kind of storytelling we take for granted today.

Other games like XCOM deserve kudos. The 90s were such a good period for strategy/strategic game design.

Bonfires Down Regarding your 1995 list, I personally think it should have Terminator: Future Shock on it, at least in the Honorable Mentions section. It was a spectacular achievement in game design that was like nothing people had seen before, and was directly responsible for games like Duke 3D adding mouse look. And unlike its peers, it had mouse look because aiming, including aiming up and down, was such a core aspect of game design. Open environments where you could enter the buildings, driveable vehicles, a dedicated gadget button for using medkits, throwing grenades, etc, and even a radiation mechanic that will be familiar to anyone who has played Todd Howard's later games like Fallout 3/4.

 

[Matimeo]

Donkey Kong Country for me. As someone who hates all the new school platformers, DKC has always stuck with me. Especially the OST. I had never seen anything quite as polished as DKC.

 

[Durante]

Final Fantasy VI is one of my top 3 FF games, and Super Metroid is masterful, but you know what? They don't stand a chance.

• All the one-more-turn 4x appeal of Civilization.
• Tactical battles where good tactics can easily make you win even if your army isn't favored strategically.
• Different races with distinct gameplay styles and unique mechanics.
• Design your own custom mage and select which schools to follow -- focus on one or two for late-game power or go broad for early expansion and versatility.
• Battle spells, sustained spells, world spells, summons, custom spells, oh my!
• Employ or summon heroes, nourish them and level them up until they become juggernauts that massively influence battles they take part in.

It's still my favourite 4x game by far.
...I want to play Master of Magic now.

 

[low-G]

Absolutely incredible year.

I went with Tie Fighter. It's the best Star Wars game ever. It's the best space game ever. There's not much that comes close.

But of course there was even more Doom 2 (bought on release day), Super Metroid (bought on release day), Sonic 3 (rented on release day), Super Punch Out (first discovered it even existed upon seeing it in a rental store - Nintendo Power failed to ever mention it for some reason?), X-Com, DKC (Nintendo got me with that VHS promo they sent out), Wing Commander 3 (bought at release even though my PC could barely handle it, as I loved WC1), Under a Killing Moon (game cost >$85 in retail, and had that bait and switch where once you bought the game it was like 'oh you should also have 16mb RAM' (I only had 4mb), Jazz Jackrabbit, Daytona USA (arcade legend), Heretic...

I mean it's absolutely a cream of the crop year. If not the best year for games ever, it's in the top 3.

Honestly probably literal peak Nintendo AND Sega game output. They never did better. AND one of the best years for PC games.

I would rate XCom higher, but I do think the recentish XCom is a better game. There's no better Tie Fighter.

 

[QFNS]

I played an UNGODLY amount of Tie Fighter back in the day. Loved that thing so much that I basically destroyed the joystick my parents had from using it so much. That game was awesome.

 

[m_dorian]

What a heavy loaded year,
If it wasn't UFO Enemy Unknown, it would be Colonization, If not then TIE fighter. If not then Wing Commander 3 or almost any of the rest.

Damn, it it nostalgia or back then most of the games had a soul?

 

[Chris]

Super Metroid came in a huge box, with a wonderful manual and a huge map. It was so well produced. I was too young at the time to fully appreciate just how big of a game this was to be crammed into a 16-bit console.

I spent weeks playing Star Wars: TIE Fighter, sat in the PC room of my cousin's house. We didn't play it on release, he had a huge Star Wars collection which all the games had came in. I think this was probably around 1996. Still, it was pretty amazing.

 

[Ge0force]

Voted for Theme Park. I've played that game for sooooo long!

 

[Chris]

Theme Park was one of those games I remember going 'well that's clever' when I discovered if you increased the salt level in the food they'd buy more drinks.

 

[Dandy]

I loved Master of Magic, Tie Fighter, and Colonization(soooo good)... But I gotta go with XCOM. What a masterpiece that was. I remember me and my friend would play it together and just hunt civilians and blow up buildings for fun instead of doing what we were supposed to.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Tie Fighter for the win. Loved that game. Remember having to get my mate who was good at the computers to make a boot disk so i could run it. Flying missions with Darth Vader was my imperial pilots dreams come true.

 

[Alexandros]

Those who haven't played the original X-Com may not realize just how many possibilities there are for emergent gameplay. It is truly amazing just how much ahead of its time the game was, and in fact still is in many ways.

 

[ISee]

Those who haven't played the original X-Com may not realize just how many possibilities there are for emergent gameplay. It is truly amazing just how much ahead of its time the game was, and in fact still is in many ways.

Oh, I get it and it would have won in most other years. Don't you think this is an easy decision. But 1994 decided to drop the best star wars game ever created, which also is the pinnacle of space flight games. A genre that has many classics itself like wing commander, elite, privateer, freespace and tie fighter tops all of them.
People always praise rogue squadron as the best star wars flight game. But rogue squadron compares to tie fighter like rebel assault compares to rogue squadron. It's miles above and not even in the same league.

 

[m_dorian]

One of the little things i love about UFO Enemy Unknown is that it is inspired by a British 1970 series called UFO that had this rad theme:

 

[Oldschool PC]

I strongly recommend X-Piratez to any fans of the original. It's one of the best total conversion mods I've ever played.

 

[Chris]

You know, seeing the Microprose logo again makes me sad they disappeared. What a team they were. We'll never get another game like Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.