Some of my favorite games are ones that offer a complete experience in one (non-marathon) play session.
I’ve specified “home” games because technically most arcade games can be completed in one sitting if you’re good enough or use cheats. I’ll also leave out scrolling shooters, even those that weren’t originally arcade games, for the same reason. And games like Tetris, which don’t have the sort of start-to-finish structure I’m thinking of here.
What does that leave? Games like
Bruce Lee
This is an ancient C64 game, but I still can’t think of a better action platformer. I used to play it through and then immediately play through NG+. (What was the first game with NG+, anyway?)
There have been some nice remakes of this game over the years as well.
Another C64 game, this one designed by David Crane who would later give us such games as A Boy and His Blob. Ghostbusters was ported to other platforms but none of them were as good, in my opinion.
As much as I like SimCity and SimCity 2000, I think this is my favorite of the Sim games. You win by driving the humans and their pets out of their home.
I know I said I’d exclude scrolling shooters and this is sort of in that category, but it’s a prime example that I can’t leave out. I play through Rez at least once every year or two and it’s been nice to see it keep getting ported to newer platforms. My first time playing in VR mode was at a SB meetup.
you climb up the pirate ship, then you go down into the pirate ship and observe a bunch of weird stuff with cool ass art. wourme sent me this one it’s great
you accelerate towards a junction point and hit traffic, the crash plays out, $$$s are awarded for massive damage. Sometimes you hit it big by chance, sometimes you miss most/all of the traffic. In a second run, you start to develop a strategy á la
if i hit that Truck somewhere along the second half of the trailer, it rolls over, blocks the oncoming crossing traffic and eliminates 90% of all traffic, let me try that out…
Third run, you start to fine-tune your approach… until you hit a bus (JACKPOT) and you develop a new strategy, and suddenly unlock an even bigger pileup
rinse and repeat.
Easy to understand, hard to master, quick Couch-Coop gameplay loop, different stages/scenarios — perfect bite-sized sessions par excellence.
Isn’t this basically games without password or save feature? Or maybe that just facilitates it. Games have to be beatable in a single sitting when you can’t just resume later.
Anyway, I nominate Plok. Because I could never beat it as a kid. I blamed it on the lack of saves. Compared to Donkey Kong Country which I did manage to see the credits roll in, even if it took me days to finish. Though later I was able to get through DKC in under an hour after replaying levels over and over for fun, so maybe multiple-session games can become one-session games with practice.
Another fond memory is playing through Super Ghouls and Ghosts in a single sleepless night.
If so, Sunsoft didn’t get the memo when they created Blaster Master. Really, though, you’re right that this would apply to a lot of older games in theory.
Maybe the difficulty level is also a consideration. It definitely is for my initial examples. I’d say the NES Super Mario Bros. games qualify (especially since you can warp) but many (most?) NES action games a person of average skill/dedication could never beat at all, let alone in one sitting.
I did the same thing with Super Ghouls and Ghosts, passing the controller back and forth with a friend (a friend who, incidentally, could consistently beat Ninja Gaiden in one sitting).
It feels like there’s a ton of options for this, but the first one that jumped to mind was JUMPGRID
Basically have to move around nine points on a 3x3 grid gathering stuff while avoiding obstacles, it is all very fast and a true test of reflexes and mental processing speeds in a very Super Hexagon kinda way. This not being a hit still baffles me.
This simple, rhythmic platformer has four levels easily finished within an hour or so. It has this great build up of sounds where each token you collect unlocks a new track to the current background music, and a new mechanic that reacts somehow in rhythm to the added track. I play it at least once a year when I need a buzz. Recommendation: play them in order 1-2-4-3, because level four was added as a bonus well after the initial release and I think level three ends more conclusively.
Refunct
Also a platformer but in 3D, and you climb an ever evolving tower by pushing buttons that build more. Probably a half hour or so, maybe an hour on first play.
