exQUIZitely 🕹️
@exQUIZitely • 16,030 subscribers
Not everything was better in the past, but I post about the things that were - mostly 80s and 90s games. I also created exQUIZitely, a retro quiz & trivia site.
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I played World of Warcraft for many, many years (stopped around early Cata days). The one thing that stood out to me more than anything was its massive size. It was literally a world. And it felt huge because you had to explore everything by foot (to start with anyway). This might be a hot take but I always felt that some of the magic got lost with the flying mounts and teleports later on. The upgrade from walking to getting your first mount was nice (it felt like a real milestone) but the flying mount and teleports turned a once massive world into a set of waypoints. I know it's all under the umbrella of convenience but I felt that the world really started to shrink and lost a big chunk of its charm. It wasn't about exploring anymore, it was about getting to the next dungeon or raid as fast as possible, relegating everything else to secondary importance, including all the little details, NPCs, caves, coastlines, mountains, and everything that that was once so wonderful to explore.
exQUIZitely 🕹️726,827 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Imagine seeing this for the first time in 1983! In terms of graphics, this wasn’t just miles ahead… it was basically a whole other dimension. Yes, the difficulty level was insane, but even just seeing one more screen or getting past one more trap was so worth it.
exQUIZitely 🕹️393,991 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
Imagine a whole universe hidden within in a single floppy disk. Yep, that's correct, that's all that David Braben needed to create Frontier: Elite II in 1993. The game simulated around 200 billion stars. Nearly every star had its own system with planets and moons. Each of those systems could have up to 20 planets, and those planets had their own moon(s). By now you might want to get out a calculator to keep track. Oh, and those planets or moons weren't just eye-candy, you could visit all of them in any system, with realistic 1:1 scale orbits, gravity, and physics. All on ONE disk. The first Elite was pure magic. The second one was a masterpiece of such epic proportions, I still can't comprehend how one person can envision and then actually create all of it. Old school developers were definitely a different breed.
exQUIZitely 🕹️124,766 görüntüleme • 14 gün önce
If you ask me, I’d choose pixel-style graphics over hyper-realistic graphics any day of the week. A game with lifelike graphics loses an essential part of what makes games special at their core. The Chrono Trigger intro (1995) is a perfect example of pixel art at its finest.
exQUIZitely 🕹️17,288 görüntüleme • 2 gün önce
Who remembers this little gem from 1989? Super Off Road was different in that it fit the entire track on one screen. The tiniest cars, the craziest tracks, and endless fun, everespecially in multiplayer mode. Between stages you could upgrade your truck with nitro, top speed, shocks, and more. Super basic concept, simply executed perfectly.
exQUIZitely 🕹️27,150 görüntüleme • 4 gün önce
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
exQUIZitely 🕹️60,329 görüntüleme • 14 gün önce
An average picture that you save on your phone or PC has a size of around 400 kilobytes. It doesn't do anything, it's just a static image. Now divide that by the factor 10, so you drop to 40 kilobytes. That's the size of The Last Ninja, developed by System 3 and published in 1987. I still struggle to comprehend, even in the slightest, how programmers back then did what they did - and the worlds they created with the limitations they had to work with. I was simply blown away by the graphics (isometric on the C64 with such an amazing level of detail - simply gorgeous) and absolutely mesmerized by the kickass sound. What Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees conjured up musically will forever be part of gaming history - an iconic masterpiece. 40 kilobytes man...
exQUIZitely 🕹️635,747 görüntüleme • 5 ay önce
Did you know this was Konami’s highest-earning arcade title ever? EVER! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989), developed and published by Konami, is based on the popular 1987 animated series. You and up to three friends can simultaneously control Leonardo (katanas), Raphael (sais), Michelangelo (nunchakus), or Donatello (bo staff), each with unique stats like attack range and speed. You fight thugs and bosses to rescue April and Splinter from Shredder and Krang. Not the most complex story ever... but rather typical for beat 'em ups. A standout feature was the cooperative four-player mode, with players standing side by side at the massive cabinet, each with their own control panel. The cabinet's sheer size and instantly recognizable theme song always stood out, even in a crowded arcade. Genius concept by the way. The "peer pressure" to insert another coin to rejoin when you died (and your friends were still playing) was real.
exQUIZitely 🕹️22,293 görüntüleme • 5 gün önce
The most "claustrophobic" game ever? Descent (1995) is a first-person shooter developed by Parallax Software, notable for being the first FPS with fully true 3D graphics and six degrees of freedom movement. Players pilot the Pyro-GX spaceship through mineshafts on various planets, infected by a virus that has turned mining robots hostile. There you go, the whole story in one sentence! Movement is the game's hallmark: full six degrees of freedom allows free flight in any direction - forward/backward, left/right (slide/strafe), up/down, and 360° rotation - creating disorienting, stomach-churning zero-gravity combat. For someone like me, being claustrophobic, this was both tough to play yet highly fascinating. I feel Descent is an underrated game that got a bit lost in the shuffle of other great games around the mid 90s.
exQUIZitely 🕹️865,540 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce
Seeing this for the first time in 1990 is hard to put into words. Adventure games weren’t new, of course, but this one catapulted to the throne quicker than you could say “Threepwood.” Pretty much everything about it felt magical. The graphics were stunning, full of warmth and vibrant colour. The music, the story, the puzzles, and the humour all felt made with enormous attention to detail and real love for the game. The intro alone hooked me instantly. There’s something about that opening scene: the different shades of blue, the moving clouds, the little village at the bottom of the mountain, and the warm, glowing fire at the top. I’ve completed the game several times by now. I’m sure most of you who see this post have too. I’d love to use that Men in Black memory eraser on myself, just to feel that original magic one more time. I sometimes wonder if The Secret of Monkey Island is THE most famous name in the history of adventure games. I have a hard time thinking of one that tops its status.
exQUIZitely 🕹️40,403 görüntüleme • 11 gün önce
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II is 20 years old - but still looks amazing! The cocept was pretty straight forward (and certainly not new): You build your base, research upgrades, lead an army, and try to destroy your enemy. Done a gazillion times... but if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? For LOTR fans it was certainly worth it, and given the success of the movie trilogy, it made a lot of sense to profit from the hype. Definitely one of the better movie adaptions in gaming.
exQUIZitely 🕹️66,827 görüntüleme • 23 gün önce
Some of you will be old enough to remember this. Defragging - and it actually did serve a purpose. It was essential for optimizing slow, mechanical hard drives by rearranging scattered data into contiguous blocks. By doing so increased data load times (since the physical head of the hard drive didn't have to move that much). However, what I remember most was the almost hypnotical satisfaction of seeing all those little blocks flashing, being organized, and just "knowing" that it was good for my computer. In times when you fiddled around with autoxec.bat and config.sys, when every little Kilobyte of RAM mattered, and when hard drives were measured in Megabytes, not Terrabytes, the weekly routine of defragging almost felt like cleaning up your room.
exQUIZitely 🕹️537,132 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce
The early days of FPS games were pure, wonderful mayhem. Heretic is a brilliant Doom clone, developed by Raven Software and published by id Software in 1994. And while it was a very obvious clone and jumping on the bandwagon of FPS frenzy during that era, it took the fast-paced corridor-shooting formula of Doom and also added some technical and gameplay innovations: 1) While Most FPS games had either a sci/fi or military setting, Heretic was set in a gothic medieval world. 2) It allowed you to look up and down, which was a major technical step forward. Doom locked your view horizontally, while Heretic added vertical aiming. 3) Inventory system: One of the first FPS games to let you pick up items and store them for later use (instead of activating them immediately). Standard in today's games, pretty innovative back in 1994. So yes, it was a clone, but also much more than just that.
exQUIZitely 🕹️54,016 görüntüleme • 20 gün önce
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (Westwood Studios, 1993) had one of the best intros and in-game cutscenes of the early 90s. Hearing Captain Picard utter those words was the ultimate nerd chill moment! It's a classic dungeon crawler, highly popular at the time when other games like Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, Wizardry, or Eye of the Beholder were hugely successful. Unlike other RPGs at the time, the goal was to appeal to a less "pro" audience, meaning that the essential aspects such as character generation (rolling/assigning stat points, etc.) was dropped in favor of pre-made characters. Less true to the traditional Advanced Dungeon's & Dragons system, Lands of Lore was supposed to be "easier to get into" even for inexperienced players. Other traditional aspects like finding armor, weapons, and potions were kept. If you liked Eye of the Beholder or the Might and Magic series, Lands of Lore was probably also high on your list. Defintely a must play for any RPG fan of the 90s.
exQUIZitely 🕹️10,864 görüntüleme • 3 gün önce
The last "modern" game I ever played was World of Warcraft, from 2004 to 2010, the end of Wrath of the Lich King. I know there were MMORPGs before (and after), but when the original World of Warcraft launched in 2004, it felt closer to "perfection" than any game before or since. Nothing has changed that feeling to this day. What changed was the game itself after the death of Arthas in Wrath of the Lich King. The original WoW felt so vast, so open, and so alive - it’s hard to put into words. There was no min-maxing yet, no speedruns, no parsing records, no gear score requirements. If you were really "pro," you connected with friends or guildies via Ventrilo. There was no WeakAuras, no threat meters, no Questie guiding you. You quickly learned that even the most expensive vendor gear was trash compared to quest rewards. You had to walk from Elwynn Forest to the Redridge Mountains - and if you dared peek across the river into Duskwood, the spiders there would one-shot you (I’m sure we all did that). The first time you equipped a green item! The first time you swapped it for a blue! And the envy of seeing someone with purple gear, omg! Saving up for a mount and the catharsis when you could finally afford one! The first time you entered the Deadmines, the foolish solo attempt on Hogger only to realize instantly it was a death sentence, stepping into Alterac Valley battlegrounds and being in awe of its size, wiping on Ragnaros again and again before finally killing him, and the sheer joy of celebrating together with your guild. The excitement and awe of entering Naxxramas for the first time, struggling to down Patchwerk, the teamwork, the slow progress, seeing Sapphiron dead on the frozen ground and being moments away from Kel’Thuzad… so close! It truly felt like a massive world - not just in size, but in stories. The announcement of The Burning Crusade and the Dark Portal appearing in the Blasted Lands; you couldn’t wait to walk through it. Then the ultimate climax when Wrath of the Lich King launched, eventually facing the most badass character in gaming history: Arthas. World of Warcraft was magic. Until it wasn’t. Just like Blizzard was once the greatest game studio of all - until they weren’t. Warcraft used to be tough, glorious and epic... now it's pink Disney fluff. Nothing has recaptured that feeling from 2004 to 2010. I wonder if anything ever will again. I sometimes watch the trailer of the original WoW. It still hits close to the (gamer) heart…
exQUIZitely 🕹️417,618 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce
Grand Theft Auto III turns 25 this year. It was the first in the series to switch to a 3D third-person perspective; the previous two used a bird’s-eye top-down view. It still blows my mind how epic it looks even now, a quarter of a century later. In 2001, this was one of most badass games of the year. The open world and the massive depth and scope were truly incredible. Also, how you go from Lemmings to GTA will forever be the biggest curveball in gaming history.
exQUIZitely 🕹️363,890 görüntüleme • 5 ay önce
