What's the best 2D video game ever made ?

[AndyD]

Then Zelda III it is.

[kevin]

 This is a game I played a lot as a teenager.  Was the first game (that i can remember) that used a more cinematic approach..  

[Apple II] Karateka (1984) (Broderbund)

[Laskiapina]

I have to say Commander Keen too :D
Keen 4 is my favorite. I believe Keen and Day Of The Tentacle were the main reasons I wanted to try programming.

[kevin]

 Mario was (and still is) an all time classic, as such it can often over shadow other lesser known but still great games of the era.    I didn't have a Nintendo machine at that time, so was only exposed to such clones as The Great Giana Sisters Which was pretty legendary on it's own.

 Amiga Longplay [322] The Great Giana Sisters

 

 I was big fan of shoot'em ups (Still are).  On the Amiga SWIV was incredible at the time, playing co-op  was a favorite, it's one of the only shoot'em up games i have vivid memories of completing.     It's also one the first games that i can think of that spooled 99% off the floppy disc during play.   So there's no levels as such, you just battle all the way through it until the final boss.

 SWIV On Amiga

 

 
Nebulus on the C64 was another that really caught my attention.  Like a lot of classic games of the 8bit era,  it's a great example of innovative design over coming hardware limitations to create a great game.    

 Nebulus on the C64
 

 A lot of 8bit games (on hardware like the C64) were jam packed with complex effect programming.   They might seem trivial today, but writing decent scrolling screen with sprite multiplexer was no walk in the park.     Games like Uridium demonstrate this.    

 Uridium

   

   

 (c64 version)

 

 (Spectrum version)

   


 One the grand daddies of 80's the era would have to be ELITE though,  personally it wasn't game I played much of, but this game could easily be considered the great great grand farther of some many modern day techniques, such as procedural generation to name a few.   Not bad for a game written on 8bit cpu (who needs multiples& divides :) ) with less than 64k of memory.    

   Elite

   

  Another interesting step in terms of early 3d game would be The Sentinel.  While not real time, attempting filled 3D polygon landscape on 8bit machine was way ahead of it's time.    


 The Sentinel

 

[ATLUS]

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

[feildmaster]

I'm gonna be biased.

If you want non-multi/old school i'll say Zelda.

If you want what i think is the best 2d game, I'd say MapleStory. (Before the current owners fucked everything up)

[bmorris]

Super Mario World was my first console platform game, and I've always considered it to be the platform game par excellence. The Donkey Kong Country SNES games were also excellent, although I only played the third one for the first time recently on an emulator. My brothers used to play the four Megaman games on the NES a lot, but they were too hard for me...

Based both on my childhood experience and on mature reflection, I name as my best 2D video game of all time ... The Lost Vikings. Great concept, great levels, great challenge. I only played the sequel recently, but that's awesome too. Definitely worth checking out both games if they're new to you  :)

And lest we forget: Pacman !

Edit: I was thinking only in terms of consoles when I wrote this. If we're including PC games as well, look at my avatar to see where I stand.

Edit 2: Considering online flash games too, The Codex of Alchemical Engineering stands out. And you'd be hard pressed to find a better snooker game than Billiard Blitz: Snooker Star.

[kevin]

The Lost Vikings (Longplays)

(amiga version)

DOS  (Full Walkthrough)

[monkeybot]

Castle Quest was ace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spl9OP8Ivmc

on the BBC.

[bmorris]

That CastleQuest looks good, might give it a go sometime.

You mentioned Icy Tower, Kevin. A few years ago, I had a phase of playing that game daily (it's addictive) but after they updated it and made it harder, I stopped. It was nice getting to every new N-100th floor for the first time and seeing the new artwork, and all the while, me and my brothers' dream was to get to that elusive 1000th floor. I did finally manage it, about five or six times in total, but on most of those occasions, I bottled it not long after passing 1000. However, one time, when I was "in the zone", I kept on and on going, reaching about floor 1120, and I tell you, it was a singular experience. I was on another planet.

[cybermind]

A few came to mind while reading this post. In my younger years where I sat in front of the breadbox C64 I did not care much for The Great Giane Sisters but my younger sisters did though (which annoyed me greatly when our mother forced me to let them play as well), today I enjoy The Great Giana Sisters a lot! But the greatest 2D platformer I played must have been Flashback. It had a very good atmosphere, and firing the gun gave great satisfaction! The scenery was great and with much variation. I also liked Another World. I completed it back in the days on the Amiga and I recently played and completed a re-release of the PC version, it contains a level that was not in the Amiga version, the level was also in the original PC version. I have played the PC version before without being able to figure out the extra level. I also liked Syndicate, A LOT! Can Syndicate be in this thread as it was 3D isometric? Dune II, and Persian Gulf Inferno were also great 2D games. Wings of Fury gave me a lot of great hours. Does Eye of the Beholder fall out of the 2D category, seeing that it featured a simple 3D view? Well, anyway, my favourite has to be Flashback. There is a new version of Flashback in 3D by the way. I had hoped for a Flashback 2 with a new story and new locations, though...

EDIT: Forgot Superfrog... :-) (And LOADS of others)

EDIT 2: And more recent 2D games I like very much, FTL and Eschalon Book I (I just started playing Book II and I have not bought Book III yet). I played Book I a long time ago for a few hours, but those hours were only a scratch in the surface of what the game had to offer. I completed Escalon Book I not long ago. I am very excited to get Book II going :-) Hammerwatch is a great CO-OP game for the PC.

[monkeybot]

Flappy Bird.

Not really.

[kevin]

prolly would be for  people born post 2005.

[kevin]

   C64 Thrust longplay. All 24 levels


   

[game6789]

Thrust remind me of solar jet man on NES. Might be where the idea of the game came from.