There was a time when gaming only had mainstream pretensions and was just starting to find its feet, when it didn’t have limitless resources and Hollywood-level visuals and the men and women behind its creation thought ‘gameplay’ and not ‘bottom line.’ It was a beautiful time, and it birthed some cute, 2D kids that, thankfully, never grew up. Generation Y arguably spans from between 1982 to 1995, so: in your mid-to-late 20’s?  You’re one of us and, if you were a gamer during this exciting period of emergent home entertainment folly, all of the following titles are probably going to stoke your nostalgia fires good and proper.

Super Mario World
Nintendo
SNES, 1990
It might’ve been preceded by three other Mario games, but here’s where creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s most unlikely hero really cemented his place in the history books as one of gaming’s biggest icons. So good it’s been re-released three times, it’s still widely regarded as platforming’s finest hour(s). 


Sonic the Hedgehog
Sega
Mega Drive, 1991
Sega weren’t without their own history-making mascot in the early ‘90s, and that mascot took the prickly blue shape of Sonic, a hedgehog fond of traveling at the speed of sound. He’s been a largely ignorable quantity in recent years, but back then there was nothing else like zooming for rings and Robotnik.


The Legend of Zelda
Nintendo EAD
NES, 1986
Triforce! One of the first games to mix top-down tonking with a real sense of lofty adventurin’, Link’s never-ending quest to whisk the titular Zelda from the clutches of Ganon/Vaati/whoever started here and has yet to end, with the new Wii U set to receive the latest and greatest in the series next year.