In an increasingly hectic and uncertain world, it’s sometimes enjoyable to go back and appreciate older media from a simpler, quainter era. Video games are no exception to this desire, with many gamers wanting to experience (or reexperience) the look and feel of titles released decades prior – even if it’s a fairly recent game designed to emulate such older aesthetics. Here are just a few modern games with retro-styled presentations that should be given a spin.

10. Mega Man 9 & 10 (2008, 2010)

Following a nearly 10-year absence of releases in the Mega Man franchise’s “classic” series, it was announced in 2008 that the ninth entry was finally going to be released, and it was going to be featured in retro-styled, 8-bit graphics like the first six NES games. Mega Man 9, which was released as a digital title across multiple platforms, was a successful and highly praised “back-to-basics” experience that was directly followed up by the similarly retro-themed Mega Man 10 in 2010.

9. Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (2009)

Released digitally via the WiiWare service for the Nintendo Wii back in 2009, Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth was an expanded remake of an earlier title originally debuting on the Game Boy – but now with significantly sharper and more advanced 2D graphics. Despite being a well-loved and celebrated title, the game is now completely inaccessible due to WiiWare’s discontinuation in 2019 – however, in the meantime, the same creative team behind TAR developed and released a similarly retro-styled remake of Haunted Castle, which was included in last year’s Castlevania Dominus Collection.

8. 3D Dot Game Heroes (2010)

Featuring an entire in-game world constructed out of three-dimensional “pixels” (called a voxel), 3D Dot Game Heroes is a fun and wonderfully self-aware little title that blatantly homages (and somewhat parodies) elements from the original Legend of Zelda and Hydlide. While it’s also effectively “stuck” on the PS3, 3D Dot Game Heroes should still be sought out and given a chance by anyone who’d like to experience a retro-styled but bizarrely beautiful-looking game that evokes a joyful feeling of open exploration and adventure – while also not entirely taking itself too seriously.

7. Steel Empire (2014)

Originally released on the Sega Genesis back in 1992, the scrolling shooter Steel Empire would feature a nicely designed and presented alternate history setting with a heavy “steampunk” aesthetic (one of the selectable aircraft even being a dirigible balloon). Following a lesser-known 2004 port for the Game Boy Advance, Empire would later be remade and released digitally on the Nintendo 3DS in 2014 (with a later Windows port in 2018), as given a much more vibrant and detailed visual update – albeit, one featuring a retro-styled presentation hewing fairly close to the original game’s appearance.

6. Sonic Mania (2017)

In what can only be called a true godsend (and indirect apology) for another round of then-disappointing Sonic the Hedgehog games released after Sonic Generations in 2011, Sonic Mania was a genuinely fun, retro-styled celebration of the series’ classic 16-bit entries. Lovingly crafted by a team of dedicated Sonic fan-game developers, Mania‘s core visual and gameplay designs were specifically based on creating a hypothetical 2D title as it would’ve looked on the Sega Saturn.

5. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 1 & 2 (2018, 2020)

Developed and released as a supplemental game to the then-upcoming Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (itself a spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night), the first Curse of the Moon was purposely designed to harken back to the original, retro-styled aesthetics of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse from 1990. Though deemed too short and derivative of its source material, CotM was still given much attention and praise by those who appreciated its simple but challenging gameplay, as further refined and expanded on in its sequel Curse of the Moon 2 released in 2020.

4. Panzer Paladin (2020)

Acting as a sort of gameplay hybrid between Mega Man‘s “classic” series and – to a certain extent – 1988’s Blaster Master, the weapon combat-focused platformer Panzer Paladin was originally released for the Nintendo Switch in 2020 (followed by PS4 and Xbox One ports in 2024). The game, which brings together retro-styled pixel graphics and old-school anime storytelling, tasks players with guiding a rescue service gynoid piloting a self-aware mecha through multiple locations across Earth to do battle with various monsters based on each region’s existing folklore and mythology.

3. Alisa (2020)

Clearly designed to emulate the exact look, feel, sound, and setting of the original Resident Evil game released for the PS1, Alisa actually takes a refreshing – not to mention downright creepy – change from the former by featuring bizarre, toylike “automatons” as enemies instead of zombies and other infected/mutated animals and plants. Likewise, the mansion setting of Alisa is comparatively much more abstract and surreal than even the weirder segments of RE1‘s boobytrapped Spencer Estate.

2. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge (2022)

As I alluded to in another article of mine, the release of Shredder’s Revenge arguably jumpstarted the current trend of developing retro-styled arcade “brawlers” based on older media properties (with last year’s MMPR: Rita’s Rewind following in fairly close footsteps). However, Shredder’s Revenge would not only showcase top-notch design and quality provided by members from the same team behind Streets of Rage 4 but would also effectively serve as a very worthy successor to Konami’s previous two TMNT arcade games in both presentation and sheer playability/replayability factor.

1. Crow Country (2024)

Also serving as a purposeful throwback to older survival horror games for the PS1, Crow Country – notably (and unusually) emulating the visual aesthetic of Final Fantasy VII – is a wonderfully realized little indie title with a genuinely creepy atmosphere and featuring an intriguing mystery at the heart of its main story. While obviously being very retro-styled in its graphical presentational and gameplay functionality (and also being a pretty short and not necessarily difficult affair), Crow Country is nonetheless admirable in the ostensible love and care that was put into its development.