Here is my gaming list:
Mount and Blade Warband.
Civilizations II, III and (sometimes) IV. I bought 5 off Steam and didn't like it that much (though that's more a Steam thing).
Sim Cities 1, 2000, 3000 and 4.
DF
Eversion
Microsoft Pinball. Oh god, pinball. I've spent hours on pinball.
The interesting thing about all of these is that either they're pretty old, or they *act* like they're old. Eversion came out just last year, but it looks like '90's. DF is so bizarre, it doesn't apply to the old/new distinction, at least not in the normal way. Pinball is old; Sim City 4 came out in 2003, and Civ IV in 2005; and I'm not that fond of Civ IV. And M&B concentrates on fantastic gameplay; its graphics are crap.
I was 4 when the '90's ended, but in gaming, I'm more of a '90's child then a Noughtier or a Dickiteer. I bought Spore once, but I didn't like it that much; it's the sort of game that should be sold for five bucks, because you play it three times and get bored. I bought Civ V because I'd heard good things about it, but Steam just ruined it for me; it makes it impossible to play. I did like the game, but the real reason I shelled out fifty bucks to get it was that, well, Sid Meier is a god by now in the gaming world.
People keep sacrificing graphics for gameplay, and it pisses me off. Now I may be a jaded old-style gamer for whom five pixels a unit is enough for me to distinguish everything, who dreams in ASCII and gets creeped out by life-like imagery. But really, I know lots of people who play Civ III. They don't like it because it's pretty, because it really ain't. They don't like it because it's complex. It isn't that, either. They like it because it takes 2001 graphics, a game engine that works extremely well, puts them together, and makes a game you'll stay up until 3 am playing a decade later. How many 2011 games are going to keep people up in 2021?
It isn't just graphics, either. In modern gaming, games are either sandbox...and get boring...or they're strict...and they get boring that way, too, because there's no room to goof around. I mean, SimCity was open-ended, but it wasn't sandbox. You absolutely have to balance your budget, your services, your transportation, and then and only then can you craft your vision. Civ III wasn't open-ended, either, but in so many ways the world was your oyster. Culture? Domination? Conquest? You could settle how you wanted, you could fight the mightiest war in history, and lose...and then, five minutes later, it's 4000 BC again, planning to take a world you don't know. That was fun. That kept you up until 3 am...and it wasn't easy to get bored of it.
I'm optimistic. I'm hoping that we'll reach a plateau in graphics- maybe we're reaching it now- where any improvement in graphics isn't really noticeable, and we'll get back to gameplay itself. I'm also hoping that when we plateau, even casual gamers will take a look at what they've made and say "This is just another constrictive but pretty game. It's just as pretty as its predecessor, but it isn't any more fun." And the gaming companies will be forced to take a good, hard look at the Civ IIIs, the Sim Cities, the M&Bs and the DFs of the gaming world and say "These do what we need games to do, so how do what these do?" Gaming's a mass-market industry now, more so than even ten years ago, and the indie industry isn't going to save it. The indie games will provide models, inspiration, ideas, but only hipsters are playing indie games...well, and hardcore nerds like us... and it's only when EA and Activision and 2K decide "People don't like what we're making, but they don't know what they like," and revamp the old games- then and only then are we going to save gaming. But it won't be until then, and if EA and its ilk stick to their guns, the whole culture is going to go down the drain.
There's still time to fix this, of course, and I think it will be fixed. So here's to hoping that the era of pretty graphics and big-ass guns is coming to an end.
EDIT: Woops! Please move this to the gaming forum!