Genre Throwback / Video Games

#-C

• The Japan-only PlayStation game '70s Robot Anime Geppy-X is a Shoot 'Em Up done in the style of... well, a '70s robot anime, complete with a '70s art style, Monster of the Week plot, over-enthusiastic narrator, an OP and ED at the beginning and end of each level, and even mid-level commercial breaks for fake Geppy-X merchandise.
• '90s Arcade Racer is a throwback to, well, arcade racing games from the '90s like Daytona USA, Ridge Racer, and Sega Super GT. The developers specifically tried to replicate and update the exaggerated, high-speed driving physics of the games, as well as their over-the-top, fantastical race tracks.
• For a while, any time a new Adventure Game came out and got any press, people treated it like the sole hope for the resurgence of the genre (while ignoring excellent titles like The Longest Journey and Syberia). Telltale Games were probably the most visible, putting out episodic adventures regularly until their demise. It helps that some of their titles are sequels to "classic" adventure games, such as Monkey Island and Sam & Max Hit the Road.
• Axiom Verge is a throwback to early Metroidvania games.
• Bayonetta and its sequel feel like throwbacks to late-'90s Dreamcast era Sega.
• Blazing Chrome: Contra-style Run-and-Gun games from the '80s and '90s, as well as sci-fi action films from the same era like Terminator.
• The Wii version of A Boy and His Blob — '80s cartoons.
• A Hat in Time invokes the feelings of the 3D open-world Collect-a-Thon Platformer genre, namely Super Mario 64.
• From the same developer and publisher as Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (see below) comes Bravely Default for the 3DS, a throwback to Final Fantasy games from the SNES and PS1 years. It uses the classic job system mechanic seen in Final Fantasy III and V, a visual style similar to that of Final Fantasy IX, towns rendered in a style resembling the pre-rendered graphics of the PS1 games, and a world map similar to the ones seen in all Final Fantasy games prior to Final Fantasy X.
• Julius Mode from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow strips out all the Metroidvania and most of the RPG elements from the game and turns it into more or less a traditional 16-bit-era classic Castlevania game.
• Daisuke Amaya, creator of Cave Story, had intended to show his love of the 2D Metroidvanias of old, with retro-style graphics (hand-drawn by him) and music (in TurboGrafx-16 style, composed by him).
• Code of Princess is a Spiritual Successor to Guardian Heroes, and a throwback to 90s Sega Saturn Action RPG Beat 'em Up games.
• Cosmic Star Heroine pays homage to 16-bit JRPGs, featuring a sci-fi setting similar to the original Phantasy Star series, battles that unfold on the field like in Chrono Trigger, and Sega CD-style low-res animated cutscenes.
• The 2017 video game Cuphead is one huge throwback to The Golden Age of Animation, especially with the works of Walt Disney and, most notably, Max and Dave Fleischer. Gameplay-wise, it's also a throwback to shoot-em-ups such as Contra, Silhouette Mirage, and Parodius. According to the Credits Gag, it was even set in 1930, and most Fleischer cartoons were set in The Great Depression, where gambling in that era was viewed with more criticism; and asbestos curtains in one of the stages were only Fair for Its Day, though asbestos is now seen as an environmental pollutant and a health hazard rather than a fire safety measure.
• Cyber Shadow: Nintendo Hard 90s Platformers, particularly games like Ninja Gaiden and Strider.

D-G

• Daymare 1998 wears its throwbacks to '90s Survival Horror, particularly the early Resident Evil games, not just on its sleeve but in its very title (it's set in the year 1998 just like the original Resident Evil, albeit here in full '90s Period Piece mode rather than Next Sunday A.D.). While the gameplay is that of a more modern Third-Person Shooter like the more recent RE games, it otherwise hearkens back to the scarce supplies and complicated puzzles of its forebears. It was, in fact, originally supposed to be a Fan Remake of Resident Evil 2, but a cease-and-desist letter from Capcom, who were working on their own official remake of such, caused Invader Studios to retool it into a standalone game that homaged its inspiration.
• Devil Engine is a throwback to '90s Horizontal Scrolling Shooters, being more focused on muscle-memory gameplay and flying through and fighting in tight quarters than the more modern Bullet Hell style (although some of the harder patterns can get fairly dense). In particular, the gameplay and visual style are very evocative of Thunder Force and R-Type.
• Devil May Cry 5, intentionally or not, can be considered this. The game was designed from the ground-up as a love letter to fans of the series, and as such, plays very much like the previous decade-old installments in the series, rather than taking cues (such as equippable gear, semi-open worlds, and RPG Elements) from more modern melee action games like God of War (PS4), Dark Souls, or NieR: Automata. In his review of the game, Eurogamer's Martin Robinson likened it to "an outrageously pretty PS2 game". This was not a bad thing, as the game released to critical acclaim with most reviews enjoying the classic DMC feel.
• Doom (2016) takes the trope near its logical extreme, bringing back nearly everything from the classic Doom games, plus elements from most of id Software's other classic shooters like Quake. Its success in turn inspired a wave of indie "boomer shooters" that hearken back to '90s First-Person Shooter games like the original Doom games, Quake, Redneck Rampage, and Blood, with a focus on fast-paced run-and-gun gameplay, large arsenals of exotic weapons, retraux graphics that evoke the sprites and low-polygon models of '90s games, old-school gameplay mechanics (especially key hunts for progression and a lack of Regenerating Health in favor of health pickups), a Totally Radical "extreme" aesthetic, and lots of blood, brutality, and gore.
  • The 2018 indie FPS DUSK helped popularize the genre, to the point of the trailers features a lot of wordplay referencing their inspirations.
  • Ion Fury specifically homages sci-fi shooters like Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior (1997), right down to it being made in the Build game engine that powered those games and having Jon St. John voice the Big Bad. The protagonist is a Distaff Counterpart to Duke, with a similar love of one-liners and pop culture references.
  • AMID EVIL is this to fantasy-themed '90s shooters like Heretic and Hexen.
  • WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, running on the Quake engine and made by several veterans of that game's modding scene.
  • Project Warlock, which combines influences from both '90s FPS games in its gameplay and older 8-bit and 16-bit games in its graphics and pixelated aesthetic.
  • Strafe is a roguelike take on the genre.
  • ULTRAKILL is described by the creator as "Quake meets Devil May Cry", combining fast-paced first-person shooting with stylish action.
  • HROT is heavily inspired by the original Quake.
  • Prodeus is a FPS in the style of Doom, Doom 64, and Quake.
• Double Dragon Neon is a throwback to old-school Beat Em Ups, especially older Double Dragon games, as well as The '80s themselves.
• Dragon Age: Origins is done very much in the style of mid-to-late '90s RPGs based on Dungeons & Dragons, and was envisioned as a Spiritual Successor to BioWare's own Baldur's Gate, one of the most noteworthy of said games. It's also a throwback to '80s epic High Fantasy like Willow, Ladyhawke, and the Conan movies. Dragon Age II, meanwhile, is more in the vein of the high camp, Low Fantasy syndicated television series of the mid-late '90s, like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, and The Adventures of Sinbad.
• In a way, Dragon Quest IX is this for the older Dragon Quest games, especially to Dragon Quest III. Rather than a party of pre-made characters with their own jobs (even if they are customisable by the player) and personalities, the entire party is created by the player in everything from appearance to class, evoking a similar feel to older RPGs. At the same time, the game keeps many Anti-Frustration Features added to the series and Dragon Quest VIII's talent system.
• Dragon's Crown is Vanillaware's love letter to all the classic High Fantasy games of the past, such as Wizardry, Dungeons & Dragons, and Golden Axe.
• Driveclub — '90s "simcade" racing games like the older Need for Speed titles that emphasized the Rule of Cool in racing exotic cars through exotic environments, with gameplay that was less interested in strict Gran Turismo-style realism than in capturing how people who'd never driven such cars imagine it would be like.
• The Emogame series — Old-school, 16-bit side-scrollers, with their final levels (especially in the second one) specifically homaging Metroidvania-style games. The average Super NES game probably wasn't chock full of Black Comedy and audacious, twice-line-crossing humor, though, and certainly didn't allow you to kill the final boss by skull-fucking him.
• Epic Mickey — The Golden Age of Animation.
• The Etrian Odyssey series is a love letter to the first-person dungeon crawler genre that consists of games like Wizardry and Dungeon Master, using grid-based maps, characters that you give names, cosmetic customizations, and skill builds to, and relentless enemies that can get beginner players killed easily as early as the first floor of the main dungeon. The early games even intentionally use synthesized soundtracks and sound effects! While some of the cosmetic elements were modernized when the series moved from the DS to the 3DS, most notably the soundtrack, the core gameplay of exploring grid dungeons with player-created characters remains the same.
• Evil West is noted by many critics and reviewers to be a single player Xbox 360/PS3 Always Over the Shoulder Third-Person Shooter with a mix of Beat 'em Up elements. This is considered a good thing as the game takes a formula that works while modernizing it. Unlike most shooters from the 7th generation, Evil West does not use any cover mechanics. Emphasizing on dodging, twitch shooting, and melee in-between. There is more of an arcade nature as all of your weapons are on recharge or cooldown, and there is no reloading.
• Shinji Mikami, maker of the Resident Evil games up through the fourth one, consciously designed The Evil Within as a throwback to the tropes of those games and '90s Survival Horror in general.
  • The Evil Within 2 on the other hand is a more of a throwback to Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, with some minor influences of Silent Hill and System Shock. The game has the protagonist of a previous game returning to face their nightmares again. The horror takes place in a town called Union with a population, instead of being isolated to a singular location. The town has open-ended/semi-open-world level design that allows exploration and dynamic environments.
• The Fallout series is an homage to '50s B-movie sci-fi flicks with a good dash of horror tossed in.
• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a reincarnation of '80s sci-fi action movies, stuffed to the brim with manliness, explosions, meta humor, one-liners, and even Michael Biehn voicing the protagonist. And neon, lots and lots of neon.
• Fe's collect-a-thon gameplay (trading pink crystals for new abilities) and low-polygon graphics are throwbacks to N64-era 3D platformers.
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is an intentional throwback to mid-'80s console RPGs, iffy gameplay mechanics and all. (Not so) coincidentally, it is made by the same developers of Final Fantasy III DS and Nostalgia (Red Entertainment).
• Fire Emblem Fates features a bit of this with the Conquest route. The limited resources and lack of grinding (unless you shell out real money for DLC) make the game play like the older Fire Emblem games.
• Freedom Planet is a throwback to the 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games specifically, and to the '90s era of 16/32-bit Genesis/SNES/PS1/Saturn mascot platformers more broadly, taking huge inspiration from Treasure's games, Mega Man, and Rocket Knight Adventures.
• Friday Night Funkin': The game's simple yet addictive gameplay, fun yet abrasive tone, art style, and cameos come together to make a love letter to classic Flash content, particularly what one may find on Newgrounds. The arrow display brings DanceDanceRevolution. Fans have compared the concept where the player must repeat the stage character to Parappa The Rapper. Even the main character Boyfriend was also compared to Parappa as well.
• Ghost of Tsushima — Classic jidaigeki films, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa, to the point of having a Deliberately Monochrome option that recreates the grainy film stock of The Seven Samurai.
• God Hand — Classic arcade beat-em-ups.
• Gridd: Retroenhanced echoes 1980s vector graphics shoot-em-ups.

H-M

• Hatred — '90s shooters like Doom and the original Postal that attracted controversy for their ultra-violent content. The game's logo◊ is even consciously modeled on that of Doom.◊
• Hi-Fi RUSH is a throwback to action games seen on the 6th generation consoles seen on the Dreamcast or PS2. Harkening back to 2.5D and 3D action games such as Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry, Jet Set Radio, and God Hand.
• While the games in the series beforehand had a very strong Film Noir feel, Hitman: Absolution, with its cast of eccentric and oddly-dressed characters, had a distinct 1980s Exploitation Film feel to it (but with a definite modern day setting).
• Hotline Miami is a throwback to violent '80s action films (and could also be considered an homage to Drive (2011), which in itself is a Genre Throwback to the same thing) and is covered in the garish neon colors of the era.
• Hotshot Racing: '90s arcade racing games like Daytona USA and Ridge Racer, complete with hyper-saturated, low-polygon graphics designed to hearken back to the look of those games.
• Interstate '76 and its Spiritual Successor, Vigilante 8, throw back to a number of '70s Exploitation Film genres and tropes, especially in their depiction of a dystopian Next Sunday A.D. rooted in the decade's oil crisis.
• Knack is this to the cartoony platformers of the PS1 era, especially Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.
• The Legend of el Lobodestroyo Vs. la Liga de los Villanos is this to late '90s/early '00s platform games by Rare, in the style of Banjo-Kazooie.
• Legend of Grimrock — Faux First Person 3D dungeon crawler RPGs like Eye of the Beholder.
• Lost Odyssey — Turn-based RPGs of the late '80s/early '90s. The main driving forces behind the game worked on the original Final Fantasy games.
• Mass Effect is in the style of '70s/'80s Space Opera, with Mass Effect 2 moving into a darker '90s-style area, and finally Mass Effect 3 brings in elements of modern sci-fi, complete with J. J. Abrams-styled lens flare reminiscent of the Star Trek reboot films from said director. Mass Effect: Andromeda, the next installment in the franchise, seems to be going for the Space Western setting of cult science fiction like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a throwback to the Cold War-era spy genre.
• La-Mulana is a throwback to classic Nintendo Hard metroidvanias, most notably Maze Of Galious and Castlevania.

N-P

• Narita Boy — Both '80s Science Fiction movies and classic High Fantasy novels. Cassette Futurism and cheesy synthesizer music fuse with fantastical environments and an epic hero's journey.
• The New Super Mario Bros. series was a throwback to 8-and 16-bit-era 2D platformers, especially past installments in the Super Mario Bros. franchise, but modernized in a big way with 2.5D graphics.
• ObsCure — Post-modern, Genre Savvy Teen Horror movies from The '90s, especially those written by Kevin Williamson like Scream (1996) and The Faculty. The sequel ObsCure II, meanwhile, is this to college-set horror films like Urban Legend and The House on Sorority Row.
• The Outer Worlds is one to two different genres, in two mediums.
  • In terms of story, it's this to Planetary Romance stories like Buck Rogers. A space colonist spends many years in cryogenic stasis until they are woken up and they have thrilling adventures in an exciting future. Except the future they woke up in is less Star Trek and more "Firefly meets Idiocracy" — the people of the future are hostile simpletons who revere their thoroughly incompetent and often immoral corporate overlords to Cargo Cult levels, peppering everyday conversation with company slogans and insulting and fighting with fans of rival companies.
  • In terms of gameplay, meanwhile, it's this to the Western RPGs of the '90s and early '00s like Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Deus Ex with its focus on player choice and non-linearity in an open environment. It was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, who promoted it as a Spiritual Successor to their game Fallout: New Vegas, which was itself a successor to the first two Fallout games (Obsidian having been founded by former devs at Black Isle Studios, the makers of Fallout).
• Painkiller and Serious Sam are both this for early-to-mid 1990s first-person shooters.
• Persona 5: Elements of previous Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games are brought back in P5 after being absent from Persona 3 and Persona 4, including the ability to recruit Mons through negotiation, and guns as an equippable weapon for all party members. Elements of the SMT main series' "YHVH vs. Lucifer" narrative also bleed into this game near the end, with Yaldabaoth having elements of YHVH's characterization (chiefly, his desire to subject humanity to his whims) and being defeated by a Persona that is a Gnostic interpretation of Lucifer.
• Pillars of Eternity is a throwback to late '90s Black Isle Studios games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, even being developed by some of the same people who were at Black Isle. Ditto Torment: Tides of Numenera, which likewise had some of the same people as Pillars working on it.
• Pizza Tower harkens back to The Renaissance Age of Animation-era Zany Cartoons, such as The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life, as well as the games inspired by them, like Boogerman and ToeJam & Earl.
• Prodigal throws back to top-down dungeon crawlers, taking inspiration from the classic The Legend of Zelda games with a color palette similar to those found on the Game Boy Color.
• Puppet Combo, the one-man studio of Benedetto "Ben" Cocuzza, makes games that serve as throwbacks to both '90s Survival Horror (complete with deliberately low-poly graphics) and sleazy '70s/'80s exploitation films and slashers. Their game Babysitter Bloodbath was even originally created as an adaptation of Halloween (1978), but was quickly retooled after Cocuzza got a cease-and-desist letter.

Q-S

• Rally Trophy is a heavily retro ('60s and '70s) take on the rally racing sims genre, with lots of Played for Laughs lampshading and Stylistic Suck.
• Read Only Memories is intentionally designed to a be throwback to late '80s and early '90s Cyberpunk works such as Bubblegum Crisis and Snatcher.
• Resident Evil:
  • The earliest games in the series bore a heavy influence from '70s and '80s zombie B-movies, most memorably with the notoriously campy live-action intro to the original game.
  • Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Resident Evil 3 (Remake) are not only part of their namesakes, but throwbacks and modernized updates to late 90s survival horror.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard: To the exploitation films and Hillbilly Horrors movies of The '70s, particularly The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), including a recreation of its famous dinner scene.
  • Resident Evil Village: With its Ruritania setting and various monsters and villains inspired by vampires, werewolves, and mad scientists, all rooted in classic Gothic Horror aesthetics instead of the more modern Sci-Fi Horror found throughout the rest of the series, this is Resident Evil doing its take on the Universal Horror films of the '30s and '40s (and, by extension, the Hammer Horror films of the late '50s and '60s).
• Rockstar Games loves this trope, with many of their titles homaging various films and film genres.
  • The Grand Theft Auto games are this to classic Hollywood crime dramas, the inspirations being different in each game. Grand Theft Auto III and especially Liberty City Stories are inspired by mob movies like The Godfather and GoodFellas, San Andreas is a throwback to '90s Gangsta Rap and Hood Films like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and Vice City and Vice City Stories share so much DNA with Scarface (1983), Miami Vice, and Carlito's Way that they can be seen as Spiritual Adaptations. GTA IV and V, for their part, while less overt in their inspirations, still contain a lot of influence from the stylish '90s/'00s crime thrillers of Michael Mann et al., most notably Heat with the former's Bank Robbery level and the latter being built around a series of heists.
  • Red Dead Redemption not only does this with The Western, but a case can be made for each part of the game being a throwback to a different type of Western. The first third of the game hearkens back to the old-school John Ford/John Wayne Westerns, where morality was more black and white and the focus was on America's westward expansion, complete with cattle drives, cowboys, and outlaws. The middle part of the game, meanwhile, feels more like revisionist "spaghetti Westerns" like the Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy and Django, where there were no clear-cut heroes and the harsh reality of life in The Wild West was emphasized. Finally, the last parts of the game are set in the comparatively "civilized" town of Blackwater and on the Great Plains, having very strong elements of Sam Peckinpah’s New Old West of uncivilized men in civilized worlds to them.
    
    Then you have RDR's expansion pack, Undead Nightmare. While the middle section of the main game was a throwback to spaghetti Westerns, Undead Nightmare throws back to another Italian Exploitation Film genre — the '70s zombie movie of Lucio Fulci et al.
  • Bully is a throwback to '80s teen comedies. The developers said that they wanted to keep the setting timeless, and so they gave everything a distinctly '80s aesthetic with only a few bits to remind players that it's technically The Present Day, while also including '50s influences in the Greaser Delinquents you encounter.
  • L.A. Noire, as the name suggests, is a throwback to Film Noir from the '40s and '50s. As pictured on the main page, its Updated Re-release goes all-out with this, its box art evoking the film posters of that era and even boasting of its ultra-high-definition visuals in a manner similar to how old movies with CinemaScope were advertised.
• RPG Maker is a Game Maker designed to create games styled after SNES-era JRPGs.
• SATAZIUS is a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter developed as a love letter to 90s-era horizontal shooters, featuring elements such as checkpoints, massive bosses, and labyrinthine stage designs, released in 2012 when Bullet Hell games had become the standard and far eclipsed non-danmaku games in popularity.
• Sabotage Studios is an indie game developer that has received acclaim for its titles focused on this.
  • The Messenger (2018) is a Retraux throwback to Metroidvania Platform Games.
  • Sea of Stars is a throwback to SNES-era JRPGs, but it looks much more modern than the studio's previous foray.
• Fittingly for a game based on a movie (and comic) that is itself based on old-school arcade and Nintendo games, the licensed game of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a throwback to old-school Beat Em Ups.
• Shovel Knight is a throwback to NES games in general, but it pays extra tribute to classic Capcom games such as Mega Man and DuckTales.
• The future in Space Channel 5 is heavily inspired by the retro-futurism of the '60s and '70s.
• Splatoon, with its colorful aesthetics and dialogue, unusual cross-genre soundtrack, and overall feel, is heavily evocative of 1990s Nickelodeon branding, with a hint of early Sega Dreamcast games. The first game's North American commercials in particular used a cheesy soundtrack that would feel right at home with the classic kids commercials of that decade.
• The Suffering deliberately patterned its visual style after practical effects heavy horror movies of the 1980s and '90s. The devs even contracted Stan Winston's company to design the monsters as if they were to be built for use in a film, then made the in-game models from the studio's work.

T-Z

• This trope is the key gimmick of games made by Terarin (Missile Dancer, Raging Blasters, Star Gagnant, and so forth), being games released from the late 2010s onwards that have the look and feel of the late-1980s-to-early-1990s era of Shoot 'Em Up games (mainly evocative of Turbografx 16 shmups), rather than being styled after more modern Bullet Hell shmups.
• Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure is a throwback to the era of Full Motion Video games, with real actors against the in-game CGI backgrounds.
• Tormented Souls, released in 2021, is made in the style of fixed-camera Survival Horror games like the early Resident Evil and Silent Hill titles, but with modern graphics.
• Until Dawn is an interactive version of the teen slasher movies of the '80s and '90s, one in which the player gets to decide who lives and dies. The inspiration was more overt in the earlier builds of the game, which featured a Wild Teen Party, a pop soundtrack, and campier dialogue, though the final version played things a bit more seriously.
• Jonathan Blow made The Witness in part to bring back the Adventure Game genre with more refined modern game design sensibilities.
  Blow: What I'm trying to do as a designer is take everything about adventure games I don't like — 'cause I loved adventure games when I was a kid but, man, as a game designer now who has ideas about design I just look at them and I think they're all really bad and I just kind of solve them in a way that uses our modern understanding of game design as best as I can.
• Viewtiful Joe is an Affectionate Parody and a throwback homage to Toku and superhero movies.
• The Wolf Among Us: Neo-noir movies of the '70s and '80s such as Night Moves, complete with neon-drenched streets, retro-sounding synth music, and a gritty, cynical atmosphere where nobody gets what they want, but everyone gets what’s coming to them.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order brings back elements of classic FPS games (such as a Hyperspace Arsenal, health packs, and large maps), though it does still have some hints of modern FPS (health regenerates to at least 25%, and it has a cinematic flair about it).
• The Wonderful 101 is a Spiritual Successor to Viewtiful Joe and a throwback to Sentai.
• Uncharted is a throwback to pulp adventure stories, and features (and updates) many of their tropes.
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors — Horror B-movies, though with a pretty wide range in time period, ranging from the Universal Horror monsters of the '30s and '40s to the Little Green Men, Fish People, and Big Creepy-Crawlies of the '50s and early '60s to the eponymous zombies of the '60s and '70s, and even then-recent threats like murderous Living Toys, Hockey Mask and Chainsaw slashers, and what appear to be the Sand Worms from Tremors.

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