Minecraft. I've been playing since Beta and host Minecraft servers in my homelab for my friends. I don't think I've gone a whole year without playing it in a very long time.
I'm playing another run of chronotrigger right now. played it on SNES (natively, believe it or not!), Playstation, mobile, pc, Nintendo DS, it's just a fun game with characters I like.
My current meta is to make it to the first time you can travel with the gate key, grind in 65M BC until I've got full screen magic attacks, then happily cruise through most of the rest of the game spamming attacks I have no business having. Later on I get charm and use double charm to get all kinds of nice goodies, finish up all the quests and lavos never saw it coming. Usually by the time I hit lavos I'll have gone through all 3 black omens.
omg I know. Charming those two headed snakes over and over again and by the time you get to lavos it's like "oh, nevermind but maybe the stonger boss after lavos....?"
Commenting because I want to be the change I want to see on the internet.
I try to revisit Kingdom Hearts every few years. Same goes for Metal Gear Solid 3. I play F Zero GX pretty frequently (on Dolphin emulator now, self ripped from a modded Wii). I’ve almost completed every challenge there is on there, only a few staff ghosts left. The speedrun tech in it is pretty compelling. I also “”””speedrun”””” Super Metroid on my laptop in hotel rooms late at night when I’m traveling. I’m not very fast 😥. I’ve been playing versions of Minecraft for most of my life now, I started on version 1.3 ish. My mind was blown when they invented the hopper, so many features in one block. I’ve played vanilla and heavily modded, java and bedrock, alone and with my girlfriend. It’s a special game that will never get old.
I replay Final Fantasy 7 in its entirety (including Gold Chocobo and both WEAPONs) every few years. Other than that, I pull out the old NES and fire up some Tecmo Bowl every once in a while, too.
Master of Orion 2…. At least once a year when I’m traveling, I fire up the Good Old Games version of MOO2 on my MacBook. First off, it’s amazingly fun. Second, I can play it on the m1 MacBook for 20-30 hours with music muted and brightness down to 20%.
It’s the perfect game to cross the pacific with, to get over jet lag with.. to forget about crazy meetings in remote places with….
Whenever I'm having a bad mental health week I'll do a run through of Psychonauts. Psychonauts 2 was amazing and I've got 103% on it but the original just scratches that itch. Especially Black Velvetopia.
The nds sequel could have been great. I liked it for what it was, but they should have changed course to release on the 3ds like the originals and the GBA it would have become a household name as a release title for the 3ds.
This gives me serious nostalgia. I used to play Golden Sun on my purple GBA in the car while my parents ran errands. When Nintendo added Golden Sun to the Switch Online emulator I was reminded of just how great the artwork, sprites, combat... Well, it's a pretty close to perfect handheld JRPG.
Every year I try to revisit some game from yesteryear that I played as a youngster
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1-4, Final Fantasy X, Halo 1, Oblivion, Wayne Gretzky 3D Hockey 98', Tekken Tag Tournament, and WCW vs NWO: World Tour are some of my go-tos!
Every system I have had had Tetris on it, even my old flip phone. It’s not as good a phone game as you’d think. I still greatly prefer to play it with a proper controller.
Shinobi III, I still play it often, I played it for a while last week actually. Also Final Fantasy VII, I was 12 when it came out, so it's technically not a childhood game, but I'll name it anyway because I was almost a kid and I still play it every 2-3 years.
Kinda, it also adds 3 new characters: wario, yoshi, and luigi. You unlock certain characters (mario himself, somehow, luigi, and wario) during portions of the game. Various missions require certain characters to be unlocked, but most of the game can be beaten with just mario. It also has some new levels too. It's a childhood favorite of mine, though best way to play it would be on 3DS or emulator cause the original ds lacked a joystick.
There's not one specific game but every year I revisit at least one game from my childhood. Crash team racing, tony hawk 4, resident evil 4, metal gear solid 3, crash twinsanity, guitar hero 3, cold winter, medal of honor vanguard. I'm thinking of revisiting croc, mercenaries 2, prince of persia, or marvel ultimate alliance this year.
Around Christmas it's always Quake.
Brings me back to my favorite Christmas memories. It was 1996 and playing that on my HP with Intel I processor was magical after playing Wolf3D with PC speaker sounds.
Me and my sister still sometimes end up playing the Mario vs Luigi mode in new super Mario bros or Mario kart DS when I go to visit. We used to play them all the time when we were younger
During a year I will probably replay one of these games:
Harry Potter 2 (on PC)
Jak & daxter 1
Portal 2
Kotor
Gonna have to add Jedi academy to that list too
There's a few too many to name a specific game, but every few months I do try to do a run of one of the NES Mega Man games. Or, for slightly later on, ever since the remastered Quake came out for the Switch I do the occasional run through one of the singleplayer episodes (particularly if I need some semi-mindless distraction and can't be at my comp)
Mario Party and Bomberman are the go-to's anytime me and my out-of-state friends meet up, I would see them at specific fighting game tournaments every year but I've fallen out of FGs so I don't know if they keep it going.
Also not quite tradition but every couple years I replay Xenoblade 1. Just did my 4th playthrough last year.
Either Minecraft or Sonic the Hedgehog 3 would take that title for me
Both of those are games I've played LOTS of when I was younger (well, I am still quite young) which provided me with lots of fun and I just kind of come back to playing them periodically.
Either because there is some cool new community project I want to try or because I just miss playing the games.
I like to replay Pokemon Emerald version sometimes! It's fun to make up new challenges in one of the first games I played of the franchise. Those sprites and music are like a mental health cleanser for me
I don't think this is what you meant, but I remember the night a friend of my dad's came over and installed Doom (shareware) on our computer with floppy disks. I remember not being allowed to play it at first and then, when I finally was, being mesmerised by it. Up until that point I'd been playing Wolfenstein 3D and thought that was as good as it gets. Textured floors, ceilings, stairs and exploading barrels blew my little mind.
So my tradition is that some version of Doom I or Doom II is on basically everything I have. Android (Delta Touch as I love the voxel mod), Switch, Steam Deck - whenever I have a free moment and want to play something but I don't know what it is, I probably bash out a few levels of Doom.
It's perfect to just pick up and play and for some reason I never grow tired of it... which is weird as I generally don't replay games unless I really like them.
Every Christmas I sit down and play the same map Christmas map in Viscera Cleanup Detail.
As for playing tradition. I will always fall back on Tyrian 2000, which I have dubbed as the best use of 15 megabytes you can use. It's a top down shmup from the way back that has a lot of gameplay, plenty of awesome weapons, secrets, and a decent mobile port.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Illusion of Gaia, both for SNES.
Two of my favourite games growing up, still have both complete in their boxes. Have bought and sold a lot of games over the years but these two were just something special that I could never get rid of and I still play em almost yearly.