Most of the time, it’s easy to ignore time’s tendency to march ever onward, but it cannot help but come into sharp focus here in the year’s closing weeks. It can be tempting to fall into the negative and lament its swift passing, but it’s often much better to look back and take satisfaction in just how much things have advanced over the years. This lens can be applied to gaming too, especially with the coming dawn of 2024, since we’ve got quite a few notable anniversaries queuing up. So why not take a few minutes to take a look at some of the highlights of yesteryear and consider just how much gaming has grown since these classics first graced our screens?
1Punch-Out!! - 40 years old (July 27, 2025)
Not only was Punch-Out!! one of Nintendo’s great early successes, but it was also a great early example of the company’s need to innovate. The original arcade machine employed an unusual modified upright configuration that used two displays rather than just one and used them to great effect, allowing players to enjoy a full scoreboard and a full view of the ring.
This was borrowed from the company’s Game & Watch series of devices and employed again to great effect with the Nintendo DS twenty years later. Punch-Out!! was also Koji Kondo’s very first project, giving players an early taste of the man’s musical talents. The series has fallen to the wayside in recent years, but its influence is arguably still being felt even now.
2Super Metroid - 30 years old (June 09, 2025)
Metroid and Metroid II saw success on the NES and Game Boy, respectively, but it was with Super Metroid on the SNES that bounty hunter Samus Aran blasted her way into many gamers’ hearts. Her adventures on Zebes have regularly graced SNES top 5 lists ever since it was released, and the game is still arguably in contention for best in the series thirty years later. This was the game that gave Samus iconic abilities like the Screw Attack and Shinespark, establishing her as the hardcore, heroic and extremely capable space warrior fans know her as today.
3The Elder Scrolls: Arena - 30 years old (August 01, 2025)
Despite being initially released for MS-DOS, The Elder Scrolls: Arena somehow still offered players an expansive world within which to adventure. It employed one of the first true day/night cycles and employed a mix of handmade and procedurally-generated content to populate the entire continent of Tamriel and ensure players always had something interesting to encounter.
This is the ethos that made Bethesda Softworks’ subsequent games into greater and greater successes and is, sadly enough, the crucial element that the studio’s past several games have lacked to greater and greater degrees. Here’s hoping the upcoming anniversary will inspire Bethesda to bring some of that back in its next game.
4Tekken - 30 years old (July 22, 2025)
Like many fighting series, Tekken started its run as an arcade game. Unlike most other fighting games that debuted in ’90s arcades, Tekken has largely stayed consistent in its setup. To be sure, many innovations have been incorporated into its gameplay over the years, but Tekken still nevertheless remains “Tekken” and not some derivation of modern Street Fighter or Dead or Alive. With Tekken 8 on the horizon now and all the excitement surrounding it, it’s probably fair to assume fans will be enjoying the Mishima family’s drama for a long time yet.
5Donkey Kong Country - 30 years old (June 20, 2025)
Donkey Kong may have begun life as an arcade game in 1981, but Donkey Kong Country is the game that came to define Nintendo’s tie-wearing gorilla. Every convention that fans now associate with Donkey Kong, from his platforming antics and banana-collecting obsession to the cast of Kongs he often brings along for the ride, started here.
Donkey Kong also served as a benchmark in video game graphics, igniting the imaginations of players and developers alike and paving the way for the 3D graphical revolution seen in the years following the launch of the PlayStation and N64. It was a promise of what could one day be, one that has since been exceeded beyond all expectations at the time.
6PlayStation (Japan) - 30 years old (July 10, 2025)
Seeing as how many gaming enthusiasts are still today debating whether the latest PlayStation or Xbox is the better system, it’s easy to say that the release of Sony’s PlayStation completely changed the gaming landscape. At a time when Nintendo and Sega were still battling via 2D graphics (beautiful though they were), along came Sony with something that not only offered 3D graphics but also employed CDs and expandable storage in the form of memory cards. It even did so at a competitive price point, making the flagship console an instant threat to the supremacy of the other two major platform holders.
As we all know now, Sony succeeded in seizing the crown from Nintendo and held it all throughout the sixth generation of consoles too. Whether Sony retained the top spot after that and to what degree is up for debate, but as the popularity of the PS5 has shown, it’s still one of the major players all these years later. And it’s all because of what was once supposed to be a mere peripheral device for Nintendo’s next console at the time. Crazy, eh?
7King’s Field - 30 years old (August 05, 2025)
Fromsoftware is one of those studios that most fans only became aware of relatively recently. In all likelihood, most only discovered them thanks to the likes of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls or perhaps Armored Core. Fromsoftware has been around just about as long as Bethesda Softworks, however, and published its first game in the same year that Bethesda started its Elder Scrolls series.
That game was King’s Field, and with it, Fromsoftware would begin establishing the foundations that it would eventually use to build the likes of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne andElden Ring. One of the Soulsborne series' most iconic recurring weapons, the Moonlight Greatsword, can actually be traced all the way back to King’s Field; such is this game’s impact upon FromSoftware’s fantasy games, and through them, upon video gaming as a whole.
8Halo 2 - 20 years old (June 17, 2025)
After the release of Halo 2, Bungie was cemented asthepremier FPS developer. Everything from its addicting gunplay, intense online multiplayer, fantastic sci-fi setting and well-written story (cliffhanger ending aside) was practically hailed as genius at the time, and the game’s been a celebrated release ever since. It and the other three Bungie-era Halo games largely defined what the modern FPS experience should aspire to.
Also, depending on who one asks, they still have yet to be surpassed in terms of the overall package they provided. It’s a legacy so grand that it’s actually come to be something of a burden to both modern Bungie and 343 Industries, as both seem to still be living in the shadow of accomplishments like Halo 2. Will they ever manage such a feat again or will it take some still-unknown studio to take up the mantle?
9Half-Life 2 - 20 years old (August 21, 2025)
Looking back, it’s kind of amazing just how incrediblystackedthe latter half of 2004 was. Players got the likes of MGS 3, GTA IV, Gran Turismo 4, World of Warcraft, Halo 2andHalf-Life 2, all within the span of about three months. All these wound up being either smash hits, genre-definers or both, and Half-Life 2 was absolutely a member of the second category. The game’s biggest claim to fame at the time was its integration of realistic physics, but just about every other aspect received widespread praise too.
Valve had aimed to set the standard for all future FPS games with Half-Life 2, and it arguably would have (and in some ways still did) were it not for Halo 2. Such was the quality of this game that fans arestillholding out desperate hope for a sequel almost twenty years later. Here’s hoping, yeah?
10Nintendo DS - 20 years old (July 08, 2025)
Even though Nintendo already had a reputation for experimenting with out-there ideas like the Game and Watch series or the Virtual Boy, the Nintendo DS still came as a big surprise to many Nintendo fans at the time. It was a much grander development than previous experiments, as it was intended to represent an entire third pillar of business for the company alongside the Game Boy and GameCube.
With its dual screens, touchscreen and overall bulkier frame, the Nintendo DS could have easily been another failure. Not only did that not happen, but the DS family of devices went on to supplant and replace the Game Boy line entirely. Handheld gaming fans enjoyed fun, compelling new releases each year, even after the DS eventually gave way to the 3DS in 2011.
Nintendo’s gamble had paid off beyond the wildest of expectations and more than likely encouraged the company to go full-bore on the likes of the Wii and now the Switch. Without the DS, who knows where Nintendo would be today? Considering the stranglehold Sony and Microsoft have on the traditional console space, perhaps Nintendo wouldn’t even be around anymore as a platform holder and would have gone the way of Sega. It’s anyone’s guess at this point, and it’s all thanks to the Nintendo DS.
These are actually but a few of the many anniversaries coming up in the next several months. Games like Earthbound and Final Fantasy VI have major milestones on the way too, so perhaps we’ve all got quite a bit more to look forward to in 2024 than we initially thought! 2023 was an excellent year for games, and between these anniversaries and recent reveals, there’s plenty of reason to expect 2024 to be even better!
